The disgusting scapegoating of the ‘lucky duckies’

The released secret recording of Mitt Romney’s remarks to a small group of wealthy supporters provides a revealing look at the mindset of such people. They really do think of themselves as a morally superior class and that those who are poor or struggling as worthless. Matt Taibbi argues that having such delusions is the only way that they can justify to themselves the current state of affairs in which they are engaged in “massive fraud and theft” to benefit themselves at the expense of the rest of us. [Read more…]

Bitcoins suddenly in the news

The internet started buzzing yesterday with the news that someone had broken into the Franklin, Tennessee office of the accounting firm PricewaterhouseCoopers and obtained copies of Mitt Romney’s past tax returns for an unspecified number of years. They claim to have made digital copies of them and mailed flash drives containing encrypted versions to various organizations, saying that if they do not receive $1 million by September 28, they will release the public key that will enable people to unencrypt the files and read the documents. [Read more…]

Cutting through the obfuscation about taxes

As the November election approaches, there will a lot of noise about taxes and the so-called ‘Buffett rule‘, named after Warren Buffett who has been saying that it was wrong that rich people like him should pay taxes at a lower rate than people who earn much less, like his secretary for example. This will intensify as the end of the year approaches and the Bush tax cuts are set to expire. [Read more…]

Voting for an increase in income tax rates

I live in the Cleveland suburb of Shaker Heights. It is a fairly small residential community of about 5 square miles and 30,000 people. It has long been proud of the quality of life and services offered to its residents, and of its public school system which both our daughters attended throughout the K-12 years. In order to maintain this without a significant commercial base means that we have one of the highest tax rates in the state. [Read more…]

Joseph Stiglitz on The Daily Show

The Nobel prize-winning economist talks about how the US economy, if not already broken, is on its way to becoming so because of the rapidly rising inequality that is becoming entrenched and hereditary as the rich put in place laws that preserve their privileges. He dates the beginning of decline to 1980 when the divergence between the very rich and the rest of us began. [Read more…]