Replies to post #120124 on Tornado Alley (PROG)

[StephanieVanbryce]

Once upon a time, back in the mythic “Wild Wild West,” we had epic battles between “Cowboys and Indians.” In today’s Lush Lush East — the East End of Long Island where a Hamptons summer rental can run $500,000 — we now have “Rich Boys and Indians” going at it.

The Rich Boys here, Wall Streeters who consider the Hamptons their own private getaway, don’t want the nearby Shinnecock Indian Nation — where annual incomes run around $15,000 — to build a proposed casino on the tribe's reservation. This battle, a new New Yorker profile details, has been going for some time. In the end, some observers feel, the Rich Boys might actually lose. [ http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2010/12/13/101213fa_fact_levy ]

In Washington, meanwhile, the Rich Boys are winning big. Again. The tax deal the White House cut last week has delivered unto America’s wealthiest a set of tax breaks that Americans, by a two-to-one margin, don’t want the wealthy to get. [ http://www.businessweek.com/news/2010-12-08/obama-s-deal-to-extend-high-earner-tax-cuts-unpopular.html ]

So who’s to blame? The President? Or does the tax cut deal reflect a rift far more fundamental? In this week’s Too Much, we go searching for an answer.

http://toomuchonline.org/tmweekly.html

[StephanieVanbryce]

Top executives at Tiffany & Co., the world’s number-two luxury jeweler, must have been pinching themselves last week. Things simply could not be going any better at the Manhattan-based global chain. The good news started with a third-quarter profit report that showed Tiffany earnings up 27 percent. That kicked off a stock rally that helped triple Tiffany’s share price over its 2009 low. And then last Monday the White House announced a tax cut deal that will add an average $360,000 to the discretionary income of America’s richest 0.1 percent, the high-end luxury sector's prime clientele. Those extra dollars should mean even hotter sales for Tiffany’s swank new handbags like the lizard-skin Laurelton, a $4,800 offering lined in the retailer's “instantly recognizable robin's-egg blue.”

Tax Cut Deal adds an average 360,000 to America's RICHEST 0.1.
http://www.taxpolicycenter.org/taxtopics/Compromise_Agreement_Taxes.cfm

Tiffany's 4,800 lizard skin handbags.
http://www.bagsnob.com/2010/07/tiffany_co_launches_new_bags_d.html

[StephanieVanbryce]

Also pinching themselves last week: the heirs of all the mega millionaires — and the five billionaires — who've kicked the bucket in calendar 2010, the first year since 1916 without a federal estate tax in effect. Those heirs had been keeping their fingers crossed, hoping that Congress would not vote to restore the estate tax retroactively for 2010. The tax cut deal announced last week includes no restoration. The deal, the Wall Street Journal reports, actually makes 2010 even sweeter for wealthy heirs. Some of these heirs face a capital gains tax on the profits they make from selling the stock they inherited in 2010. The new tax deal gives heirs the choice of either paying that capital gains tax or having the 2010 estate of their dear departed taxed at the much-reduced estate tax rate the tax cut deal puts in effect for 2011, whichever ends up costing the heirs less . . .

Five Billionaires
http://mhs.typepad.com/threepointfive-45/dying-free-of-the-federal-estate-tax-billionaire-deaths-in-2010.html

2010 even sweeter for wealthy heirs.
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748703493504576007690799044986.html

Estate tax plan would benefit wealthy even more
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/12/10/AR2010121006931.html

[StephanieVanbryce]

Still another happy subgroup of America’s super rich: private equity and hedge fund managers. The top 25 hedge fund managers last year averaged just over $1 billion each, but paid taxes at a 15 percent rate on most of those earnings, mainly because a special loophole lets fund managers treat the bulk of their income as capital gains. This neat trick saves them about $200 million on every $1 billion they make. The Obama White House earlier this year proposed ending this “carried interest” loophole, and the House this past May passed legislation that wipes away most of the carried interest tax break. The tax cut deal the White House announced Monday carries no carried interest reform provision . . .

The Rich List
http://www.absolutereturn-alpha.com/Article/2453645/The-Rich-List.html?ArticleId=2453645

The House this past May passed legislation that wipes away most of the carried interest tax break. The tax cut deal the White House announced Monday carries no carried interest reform provision . . .
http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2010-12-03/tax-boost-for-hedge-fund-executives-dropped-from-bill-by-senate-s-baucus.html

[StephanieVanbryce]

Last week’s fiercest tax-the-rich debate in Washington may actually have taken place off of Capitol Hill — in the legislative chambers of the District of Columbia city council. That council took up a proposal Tuesday that called for a tax hike on D.C. residents who make over $200,000 a year — to maintain child care and rent assistance programs for local low-income families. Argued tax hike co-sponsor Jim Graham: “People say this is about soaking the rich, but let’s be clear, the budget before us soaks the poor, and if you had a choice between soaking the rich and soaking the poor, which would you accept?”

A Council majority decided to accept the latter. By an eight-five margin, they voted down the proposed levy on D.C.'s wealthiest . . .


http://voices.washingtonpost.com/dc/2010/12/dc_council_rejects_tax_increas.html?wpisrc=nl_buzz

[StephanieVanbryce]

The History Behind the White House Tax Deal

The tax cut pact the Obama administration announced last week has angered a good many Americans. But
the pact's lavish generosity toward America's rich should not have given anyone a surprise.

Most of the chatter on the tax cut deal the White House has bargained out with GOP leaders in Congress has revolved around the deal's short-term implications, the dollars that extending all the Bush tax cuts for two years — and declaring a one-year Social Security tax “holiday” — will move into America's pockets.

Those dollars — about $77,000, on average, for every 2011 taxpayer in America’s richest 1 percent and just under $400 for average taxpayers in the bottom 20 percent — certainly do make for lively reading.

But the deal's most significant impact, as economist Paul Krugman points out, will almost surely be long-term. We now face “the increased likelihood that low taxes for the rich will be made permanent, crippling policy for decades to come.”

And with this increased likelihood, we may have entered what Wealth for the Common Good co-founder Chuck Collins has just dubbed a “death spiral to plutocracy”: The more wealth concentrates, the more the rich use that wealth — and power — to rewrite our economic rules and concentrate privilege even more.

The White House, by contrast, sees no great danger at all in the extension of the Bush tax cuts to America's richest. In appearances last week, the President dismissed as “purists” those attacking his willingness to make that extension.

“The American people,” the President pronounced, “didn't send us here to wage symbolic battles or win symbolic victories.”

Over 60 years ago, a Democratic Party predecessor to President Obama took exactly the opposite tack. That President, Harry Truman, faced a situation not all that different from the imbroglio that confronts President Obama today.

Victorious Republicans, after the 1946 elections, were demanding across-the-board tax cuts that would mostly benefit the nation’s rich. Truman refused to go along and vetoed the tax cuts GOP lawmakers sent him. In 1948, Republicans finally overrode one of those vetoes. But Truman made them pay.

The GOP, Truman charged repeatedly later that year in his campaign for re-election, “helps the rich and sticks a knife in the back of the poor.”

Truman would go on to score a stunning upset. His consistent opposition to tax cuts for the wealthy had earned him the public trust. That public and Truman, after decades of economic distress, had come to share the same perspective: Vast concentrations of private wealth endanger the national well-being.

America's most revered political pundit, columnist Walter Lippmann, had reflected on that perspective back in May 1937, after the death of John D. Rockefeller.

The nation, Lippmann noted, would likely never see a fortune as grand as Rockefeller's ever again. The 97-year-old John D. had “lived long enough to see the methods by which such a fortune can be accumulated outlawed by public opinion, forbidden by statute, and prevented by the tax laws.”

In the United States, Lippmann would add, “sentiment has turned wholly against the private accumulation of so much wealth.”

Truman understood that political reality. He would have never cut the deal that the White House announced last week — or dismissed the struggle to rein in the rich as something merely “symbolic.” That would have been unthinkable.

And that raises an interesting question. Just when did a deal like last week’s tax cut pact become “thinkable” for a Democratic Party President to make? Ironically, that political sea change in “thinkability” has its roots in the Truman years.

As President, after World War II, Truman did eagerly stand up to right-wingers on taxing the rich. But on other fronts, he tried to steal the right wing's thunder. His moves in that direction, starting with the introduction of “loyalty oaths” in 1947, would set the stage for the hysteria of “McCarthyism” that exploded out in 1950.

The resulting “Red Scare” cast a deep chill over America’s political discourse. Mainstream opinion makers began steering clear of any stance that smacked of “class conflict.” They stopped talking about the rich. Robber Barons, they opined, had become ancient history. America’s class struggles had ended. To move forward, the nation needed simply to concentrate on “growing” the economy.

For mainstream liberal politicians, this emphasis on “growing” the economy had enormous appeal. Growth offered an easy way out of their Cold War box. By chanting the “growth” mantra, they could talk about progress without having to talk about inequality — and risk getting labeled a parlor pink or worse.

By granting “growth” star billing, these politicos could ride out the Cold War unpleasantness, as one University of Missouri historian has noted, “evading tough decisions about the distribution of wealth and power in America.”

In the early 1960s, President John F. Kennedy would take this preoccupation with growth another step further from the New Deal’s egalitarian ethos. High taxes on the rich, Kennedy proclaimed, inhibited growth. An economy “hampered by restrictive tax rates,” he argued, “will never produce enough jobs.”

The Kennedy administration would send Congress a proposal to cut America’s income taxes across the board. The top rate on high incomes, then 91 percent on income over $400,000, would drop to 65 percent under the Kennedy plan.

Congress would eventually approve most of what Kennedy sought. In 1964, the year after his death, his successor Lyndon Johnson would sign into law legislation that dropped the nation’s top tax rate from 91 to 70 percent.

Johnson would evince no further interest in cutting tax rates. LBJ, unlike Kennedy, had cut his political eyeteeth in New Deal Washington. He had grander dreams, a “Great Society,” a “war on poverty.” But these echoes of the New Deal were now reverberating in a fundamentally different political context.

“A generation ago,” an aging Walter Lippmann would note in 1964, “it would have been taken for granted that a war on poverty meant taxing money away from the haves.” But America’s current elected leaders had rejected that idea. They believed, Lippman observed, that social and economic progress no longer required high taxes on wealthy people, that the “size of the pie can be increased by invention, organization, capital investment, and fiscal policy.”

Or, as President Kennedy had famously put it, “A rising tide lifts all boats.”

A political generation later, in 1981, President Ronald Reagan would follow the Kennedy script. Top tax rates, under Reagan, would fall to 28 percent, and Bill Clinton would eventually inherit, in 1993, a 31 percent top rate.

As President, Clinton would almost immediately get that top rate jacked up to 39.6 percent. But he never positioned that increase as any sort of move to trim the wealthy down to a more democratic size. He spoke instead about deficit reduction. Grand fortune would never trouble Clinton.

“We are not a people who object to others being successful,” he would note.

That attitude would remain the dominant ideological strain in Democratic Party circles throughout the George W. Bush years. In a sense, President Obama’s willingness to extend tax cuts to the wealthy, without a fight, merely reflects this decades-old indifference, among top Democrats, to wealth’s concentration.

Reputable and respected pundits and policy makers with mainstream platforms — Nobel laureates like Joseph Stiglitz, former top officials like Robert Reich — have been rigorously linking our current hard times to what Yale political scientist Jacob Hacker calls our “economic hyperconcentration at the top.”

Last week, by challenging the White House tax cut deal, significant numbers of Democratic Party lawmakers served notice that they’re now worrying about that hyperconcentration, too.

In a sense, a desperately needed battle — over the Democratic Party's attitude toward grand concentrations of private wealth — has at long last been joined. Will Democrats in positions of power continue to wink at the wealthy who have wrecked the economy — or dare to curb their wealth amassing?

That will depend, in large part, on how this new battle plays out.

But the political landscape, amid our Great Recession, has changed. The dangers we as a society invite when we turn a blind eye to the wild chase after grand fortune now stand out more vividly than at any time since the Great Depression.

Embedded Links
http://toomuchonline.org/tmweekly.html

[StephanieVanbryce]

Some Welcome Hope for the Holiday Season

Jay Walljasper, All That We Share: A Field Guide to the Commons.



Having trouble this year summoning up that old holiday cheer? A bit depressed by politics as usual — and an economy still wallowing in the pits? Expecting more of the same in the year ahead?

Then you need to get this book. Or give it. This new offering invites us all to hope again — not in a hero, but in ourselves, in what we can accomplish when we work together on behalf of what we share.

And we share, this upbeat collection explains, a great deal. We share the “commons,” a “dimension of property” that covers all the aspects of life that no single individuals — or corporations — can ever with a straight face claim as only their own.

The commons, environmentist Bill McKibben notes in the book's intro, “can be gifts of nature” or “products of social ingenuity,” everything from fresh water and the airwaves to the Internet and language. A commons, suitably nurtured, can enrich us. But a commons can be exploited, too, and create wealth only for a few.

Over recent years, warns All That We Share editor Jay Walljasper, that exploitation has shifted into overdrive. Ecosystems, scientific knowledge, the cultural traditions of childhood are all “slipping through our hands and into the pockets of the rich and powerful.”

All That We Share offers a guide to emptying those pockets — and reclaiming the commons. We meet in these pages people and communities creating neighborhoods and nations where everyone, not just a wealthy few, can enjoy the resources — and opportunities — that by right and reason belong to us all.

These “commoners” come from all over the world, from locales exotic and familiar. A publicly owned brewery in Germany's Baden-Württemberg. A shopping mall outside Seattle reborn into a community center that features a “giant-size chessboard” where kids push around bishops “almost as big as they are.”

An inner-city Cleveland church turned public square that encourages anyone to stop by to browse, pray, and “check their e-mail on the cathedral’s Wi-Fi.” An Indiana library that teaches belly dancing. A street in the Netherlands reclaimed by neighbors who plopped old couches on the roadway to slow speeding traffic.

The visionaries we meet here think both small and big. They're redefining property rights to protect the commons, leveraging “public trusts” to maintain national assets that ought to be benefiting everyone, not just enriching the few.

Add in the book’s imaginative appendices, everything from a list of 51 “(mostly) simple ways to spark a commons revolution” to a rundown on “the best movies, novels, music, and art that evoke a spirit of sharing,” and you have a real winner here, a cheery antidote to the holiday blahs.

http://toomuchonline.org/tmweekly.html

“People everywhere,” editor Jay Walljasper notes at one point, “are yearning for a world that is safer, saner, more sustainable, and satisfying.”

All That We Share makes that world seem achievable. In a troubled holiday season, what better message could we possibly pass on?


http://toomuchonline.org/tmweekly.html

[arizona1]

The president's promise to fight
by Kaili Joy Gray
Sun Dec 12, 2010 at 10:02:04 AM PST

I think it’s tempting not to negotiate with hostage-takers, unless the hostage gets harmed. Then people will question the wisdom of that strategy. In this case, the hostage was the American people and I was not willing to see them get harmed.

President Obama's press conference
December 7, 2010

With those words, the president explained his deal with Republicans to give tax cuts to the rich by raising taxes on the poor. That's not how he put it, of course, though it is the result of the president's negotiations. He had no choice, though; that he made clear. The American people were taken hostage by the Republican Party, and the president had to save the hostages, even at the expense of endorsing the very policies against which he ran as a candidate for the office he now holds.

He assured the country, though, that this fight is not over. He is "itching for a fight on a whole range of issues," he said. He is "happy to have that battle." He is "happy to be tested over the next several months about our ability to negotiate with Republicans." He's "looking forward to seeing them on the field of competition over the next two years."

Those are strong words for a president who admitted, in the same speech, to surrendering to the demands of hostage-takers.

Even following that admission, the White House was quick to claim that it was, in fact, the Republicans who had lost the negotiations. Colored charts were released to prove that Obama got more from the deal than Republicans did. The White House Press Office released dozens of names of various politicians -- and the mayor of St. Louis, whose name apparently did not merit mention -- who supported the deal. Even though the president had already said he had agreed to concessions he believed were not in the best interest of the country, the message nonetheless was that somehow, he had won this round, and Republicans had lost.

That's been pretty hard to sell, though, even to Democrats who support the deal. And the president's support from Democrats and liberals has dropped; the independents, who supported him in 2008, are long gone. The president says he looks forward to being judged for his negotiations; perhaps he does not realize that the judgment has already begun.

With his first piece of major legislation, the stimulus bill, Americans watched the president negotiate with Republicans. Many concessions were made, all so the new president could demonstrate for the nation how his lofty ideals of bipartisanship and cooperation would function in today's hyperpartisan environment.

And the Republicans still voted no.

Infuriating though it was to watch so much traded away for absolutely nothing, a valuable lesson was learned -- or should have been learned. The Republicans' strategy was clear: oppose everything to ensure, as their de facto leader, Rush Limbaugh, hoped, that the president would fail.

It seemed, then, that the president had done his due diligence to extend a cooperative hand to Republicans. And Republicans had answered with a resounding "Hell no!" Next time, perhaps the president would be less generous, less patient. The president had a majority in the House and a supermajority in the Senate. He would be justified, now, in aggressively pursuing the progressive agenda for which he had been elected, without making such an effort to win the support of the Republicans. In truth, he didn't need it.

But the health care negotiations were no different. Even as they accused him of wanting to kill grandmothers across America, the president reached out his hand to those who publicly and proudly hoped this would be his Waterloo.

As with the stimulus bill, the president's concessions to Republicans bought him nothing. Not a single vote.

For two years, the president has steadily built the case that despite his efforts at bipartisanship, Republicans have consistently operated in bad faith. The president need not call any more witnesses, offer any more evidence; Americans know Republicans will not cooperate. It is time, at last, for the president to stop building his case and deliver his closing argument.

Instead, the president delivered yet more concessions to a party devoted to his failure. He had no choice, he said, because Republicans are "unwilling to budge." They have been unwilling to budge since Obama took office. They have promised further unwillingness in the next session of Congress.

For Republicans, the president said, tax cuts for the rich is "the single most important thing that they have to fight for as a party." That isn't true, though, and the president knows it. The whole country knows it. Their number one priority, as Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell has said, is to make Obama a one-term president. (Apparently, further restricting women's reproductive rights runs a close second, though.)

What if, instead of conceding to the demands of the hostage-takers, the president had taken a different tactic? What if he had instead turned to the American people before he had cut a deal to save the hostages?

"The Republicans are taking you hostage," the president could have said to the American people. "They have put the livelihood of millions, and our chances of economic recovery, at risk, all so they can give tax cuts to the rich. But I will not let them do it. This is my line in the sand, and I will not surrender to the demands of hostage takers."

He could have said that. He acknowledged, on Tuesday, that the American people are with him. That's what the polls say. Had they known that the president was dealing with such a dire hostage situation, perhaps they could have been moved to put greater pressure on Republicans to cooperate with the president. Maybe it would have worked, maybe not. We'll never know. The president surrendered to the hostage-takers before we had a chance to find out.

When the president speaks of fights and battles in the next two years, it's hard to believe that he means it. After all, he has already made it clear that Republicans need only prove their "unwillingness to budge" for him to concede to their demands.

On Tuesday, the president was asked if he had "telegraphed" to Republicans that in the future, they need only take the American people hostage in order to force him to give in to their demands, however reckless. No, the president said, this was a "very unique circumstance."

One wonders how many "very unique circumstances" Republicans will create in the next two years. One wonders what the president will be willing to sacrifice in those "very unique circumstances," in the belief that by making such concessions, he is saving the American people from a worse fate.

Will he fight, as he has promised? When is the time for fighting, if not now? Does the president truly believe that there will be any fight, in the next two years, in which Republicans will be willing to budge? Deficit reduction, Social Security, immigration reform, funding of the newly enacted health care reform, repealing Don't Ask, Don't Tell -- Republicans have already signaled their "unwillingness to budge" on these issues. Does that mean the president will acquiesce to their demands?

It seems absurdly superfluous to have to point out that Republicans need only take the American people hostage again in order to score further victories against this president. After all, they know his breaking point now.

Will it happen again? It certainly seems so. The burden of proof falls squarely on the president's shoulders, and now, half way into his first and perhaps only term, the evidence is mounting that the president, regardless of his assurances, has neither the stomach nor the will for a fight.

Except, perhaps, with the very people who fought so hard to elect him in the first place. He reserves his greatest moments of frustration for them, the people he and his administration have called the "sanctimonious" "purist" "fucking retarded" "professional left." For them, he has no patience, no interest in succumbing to their demands. As he said on Tuesday, if he were to engage in a principled fight, "then let’s face it, we will never get anything done."

Such an admission is a far, far cry from the idealism he invoked and inspired as a candidate.

We know the battle ahead will be long. But always remember that, no matter what obstacles stand in our way, nothing can stand in the way of the power of millions of voices calling for change.

We have been told we cannot do this by a chorus of cynics. And they will only grow louder and more dissonant in the weeks and months to come.

We've been asked to pause for a reality check. We've been warned against offering the people of this nation false hope. But in the unlikely story that is America, there has never been anything false about hope.

For when we have faced down impossible odds, when we've been told we're not ready or that we shouldn't try or that we can't, generations of Americans have responded with a simple creed that sums up the spirit of a people: Yes, we can. Yes, we can. Yes, we can.

Barack Obama’s New Hampshire Primary Speech
January 8, 2008

Do those words ring any less true? Do they seem, now, sanctimonious? Fucking retarded? Unrealistically pure?

Perhaps it is unfair to hold President Obama up to the words of Candidate Obama. Campaign rhetoric, no matter how beautiful, may be just that. Perhaps such lofty dreams of change have no place in the cold, harsh light of governing.

Except that Candidate Obama assured his supporters that they were not "just words." His campaign was about more than rhetoric; it was about a fundamental change, it was about having the courage of one's convictions, it was about a belief that anything is possible if enough people want it. There was no footnote to Candidate Obama's words that anything was possible -- unless Republicans were unwilling to budge.

Yes we can -- unless Republicans say we can't? It is hard to imagine that campaign slogan will lead to the president's re-election two years from now. Republicans know this; indeed, as they have said time and again, that is their whole point.

How will he sell himself to the American people two years from now? The accomplishments of his first two years were not enough to preserve the Democratic majority in the House in the midterm elections. No matter how many times he talks about the good legislation he has signed into law, no matter how many times he insists that he steered the country clear of the impending economic collapse, those talking points fell on deaf ears last November, and will no doubt have even less impact in the next two years.

And yet, even though the president has signaled that he will give in to Republicans if they are unwilling to budge, it is not too late. Two years is a long time in politics. The president could change his tactics. He could announce, in his State of the Union next month, that the time for giving in to the hostage-takers is over. The president has spent the first half of his term trying, again and again, to cooperate with Republicans in the interests of the American people, even at the expense of his own principles. No more. Enough.

The president could turn to his base, instead of the rapidly departing middle, for support. His base is eager for the fight, eager to support him, eager to do whatever he asks in order to pursue the vision he articulated as a candidate -- as long as it truly is about pursuing that vision. It is his base who will, in 2012, raise the money, make the calls, knock on the doors, and fight for his re-election. Independents likely will not; the Republicans never will.

He could do more of the same. He could continue to reach out to the party that has announced its official policy is to derail his presidency. He could continue to chastise those who elected him. He could continue to insist that now is not the time for a fight. That way, it seems, lies defeat.

Whom now will the president choose to fight? The left, who wants him to succeed, or the right, who wants him to fail?

It is a decision the president will have to make. And while it may not yet be too late, he doesn't have a minute to lose.
http://www.dailykos.com/storyonly/2010/12/12/928215/-The-presidents-promise-to-fight

[StephanieVanbryce]

Stat of the Week

The White House tax cut agreement, Oregon senator Jeff Merkley and seven of his colleagues noted in a statement last week, “would require American taxpayers to borrow over $50 billion in order to give, on average, $100,000 in additional annual tax cuts to people earning over $1 million per year.” These “bonus” tax cuts sit “on top of the $43,000 per year that millionaires will receive in tax cuts on their first million dollars of income.”

http://www.thenation.com/blog/157038/sanders-filibusters-tax-deal-key-senate-democrats-join-revolt

[StephanieVanbryce]

Quote of the Week

“We should be embarrassed that we are for one second talking about a proposal that gives tax breaks to
billionaires while we are ignoring the needs of working families, low-income people, and the middle class.”

U.S. Senator Bernie Sanders (I-Vermont), during his eight-and-a-half address against the White House tax cut deal, December 10, 2010

http://www.cbsnews.com/8301-503544_162-20025382-503544.html

[StephanieVanbryce]

Rich are rich enough; help the middle class

In an article entitled "Can You, Too, Join Royal Ranks?" The Wall Street Journal suggested the class divide in the U.S. might be becoming more pronounced than in British society where a prince is about to wed a commoner. In this country, the net worth of the richest Americans on the Forbes 400 list rose 8 percent this year, to $1.37 trillion. The top 20 percent of Americans now own more than 85 percent of the wealth. And, when you consider the debt they carry, the bottom 40 percent of Americans own almost nothing, making this the widest gap since the Depression of the 1930s.

The Great Recession may be over — but it sure doesn't feel like it. And recent actions by Washington are going to make those of us still working feel worse — and poorer.
Republicans had been blocking an extension of unemployment benefits for 2 million working-class Americans out of work due to no fault of their own, including the 6.4 percent of Hawaii workers who are unemployed.

The Deficit Commission is calling for squeezing Social Security benefits and getting rid of the mortgage interest tax deduction. And President Barack Obama has decided that the wages of federal workers should be frozen, which amounts to a cut because of rising benefit costs.

Federal workers are being asked to take a haircut while millionaires and billionaires are getting off without a scratch. It's not "shared sacrifice" when:

>> Politicians in Washington are working overtime for the super-rich, calling for an extension of tax cuts for the wealthy — at a price tag of $830 billion over the next 10 years.

>> Corporate profits set a new record of $1.7 trillion in the third quarter — but little if any of that money is going to hire new workers or to invest in America.

>> Wall Street financiers, after wrecking the global economy, are back to their old tricks, planning to give themselves a 5 percent pay increase this year.

A pay freeze for federal employees is not only unfair — it's unwise. Uncle Sam is our nation's largest employer, with more than 2.5 million full-time workers. Wal-Mart is a distant second. Lots of Hawaii people work for the federal government: My union, the International Federation of Professional and Technical Engineers (IFPTE) alone represents 600 highly skilled technicians, engineers and architects employed at Pearl Harbor; other IFPTE members work in Honolulu as Social Security and Immigration judges. These are the folks who will take the hit; these are your friends and neighbors.

Consumer spending accounts for 70 percent of U.S. gross domestic product — but consumers can't spend what they don't have. If the private sector follows the president's lead and also cuts back on payrolls, other Hawaii families will be in the same predicament. A race to the bottom, with pay freezes and pay cuts, will mean less consumer spending. That means lower sales, fewer jobs — and lower tax revenues, which could drive the deficit even higher.

What we need is a comprehensive plan that requires wealthy Americans to pay their fair share, encourages corporations to invest profits at home instead of abroad, and puts permanent restraint on Wall Street's endless capacity for greed.

Let's get serious about shared sacrifice and not just hit the middle class. This is a war we can win.

http://www.staradvertiser.com/editorials/Rich_are_rich_enough_help_the_middle_class.html