posted February 19, 2011 06:27 PM            

Billionaire Koch brothers efforts to kill public unions

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Feb. 18 2011 - 6:45 pm
By RICK UNGAR
As the nation focuses on the efforts of Governor Scott Walker to take away collective bargaining rights from public employees in Wisconsin, new information is coming to light that reveals what is truly going on here.

Mother Jones is reporting that much of the funding behind the Walker for Governor campaign came from none other than uber-conservatives, the infamous Koch Brothers.

What’s more, the plan to kill the unions is right out of the Koch Brothers play book.

Koch-backed groups like Americans for Prosperity, the Cato Institute, the Competitive Enterprise Institute, and the Reason Foundation have long taken a very antagonistic view toward public-sector unions. Several of these groups have urged the eradication of these unions. The Kochs also invited Mark Mix, president of the National Right to Work Legal Defense Foundation, an anti-union outfit, to a June 2010 confab in Aspen, Colorado;

via Mother Jones

Koch Industries' political action committee has doled out more than $2.6 million to candidates. And one prominent beneficiary of the Koch brothers' largess is Scott Walker.

According to Wisconsin campaign finance filings, Walker's gubernatorial campaign received $43,000 from the Koch Industries PAC during the 2010 election. That donation was his campaign's second-highest, behind $43,125 in contributions from housing and realtor groups in Wisconsin. The Koch's PAC also helped Walker via a familiar and much-used political maneuver designed to allow donors to skirt campaign finance limits. The PAC gave $1 million to the Republican Governors Association, which in turn spent $65,000 on independent expenditures to support Walker. The RGA also spent a whopping $3.4 million on TV ads and mailers attacking Walker's opponent, Milwaukee Mayor Tom Barrett. Walker ended up beating Barrett by 5 points. The Koch money, no doubt, helped greatly.

The Kochs also assisted Walker's current GOP allies in the fight against the public-sector unions. Last year, Republicans took control of the both houses of the Wisconsin state legislature, which has made Walker's assault on these unions possible. And according to data from the Wisconsin Democracy Campaign, the Koch Industries PAC spent $6,500 in support of 16 Wisconsin Republican state legislative candidates, who each won his or her election.

Walker's plan to eviscerate collective bargaining rights for public employees is right out of the Koch brothers' playbook. Koch-backed groups like Americans for Prosperity, the Cato Institute, the Competitive Enterprise Institute, and the Reason Foundation have long taken a very antagonistic view toward public-sector unions. Several of these groups have urged the eradication of these unions. The Kochs also invited (PDF) Mark Mix, president of the National Right to Work Legal Defense Foundation, an anti-union outfit, to a June 2010 confab in Aspen, Colorado; Mix said in a recent interview that he supports Governor Walker's collective-bargaining bill. In Wisconsin, this conservative, anti-union view is being placed into action by lawmakers in sync with the deep-pocketed donors who helped them obtain power. (Walker also opposes the state's Clean Energy Job Act, which would compel the state to increase its use of alternative energy.) At this moment—even with the Wisconsin uprising unresolved—the Koch brothers' investment in Walker appears to be paying off.

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posted February 23, 2011 01:25 PM            

interesting research on where the koch money comes from...why am i not surprised to find yet another family of movers and shakers and moneymakers who - having been shut down by the fat cats of their day in america - offered their services to the enemy who paid them handsomely...?

posted February 23, 2011 01:30 PM            

Stalin’s first Five Year Plan was just kicking into action a nation-wide industrialization effort, and the Soviet planners needed smart, industrious college grads like Fred Koch. The Soviet Union was desperately trying to increase its oil refining capacity, so oil engineers were especially in high demand—and well paid, too.

posted February 23, 2011 02:33 PM            

That's funny!

Old man Koch despised Stalin, the ground he walked on and the communist system.

It's really desperation time on the far radical left.

Lost the House of Representatives, lost their filibuster proof Senate, lost Governorships and state legislatures all across America...and, they're losing the battle to keep state and federal employee unions in control of the federal and state budget process.

In the meantime, Conservatives...Governors, Mayors and State Legislatures are cleaning up the messes of former leftist regimes.

demoscats have fled their states to avoid taking votes to get spending and budgets under control. And, demoscats are losing both the arguments over spending and the approval of voters.

posted February 23, 2011 02:33 PM            

Misdirected focus away from the Global Financial Meltdown.

Toward

Reduction in government, and government spending.

As if the root of the problem were to be found there. It is all over the news and web right now that the Gov debt is reaching WWII levels...with out context! Nor is the public debt that ran amok in the 90's being added to the much needed context.

The bubble is growing again, as predicted, because the Banks and Wall Street were never dealt with in concrete ways.

Some economists, notably L. Randall Wray have offered that the only way to curtail *Keystroke Money is to have a Bank Holiday.Bank Holiday is the best solution for epidemic mortgage fraud

He offers that as early as 1999 the Fed and Washington knew we were headed toward a financial meltdown of epic proportions. That after WWII we had the exact opposite scenario that we have now. Private debt-citizen debt-- was virtually non existent, government debt was 100% of the GDP.

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LRW....
Indeed, the largest financial institutions were run by their management as what my colleague Bill Black calls “control frauds”. That is, the banks used accounting fraud to manufacture fake profits so that they could pay huge bonuses to top management. The latest data out on Wall Street bonuses show that these institutions are still run as control frauds, with another record year of bonuses paid by cooking the books. The fraud continues unabated.

This is the biggest scandal in human history. Indeed, all previous scandals from around the globe combined cannot even touch this one in terms of scale and scope and stench. This is the mother of all frauds and it will be etched into the history books for all time.

Many have called for a national moratorium on foreclosures. Even some of the banks that have been run as control frauds have voluntarily stopped foreclosing. And yet President Obama, ever the centrist, has taken sides with the Securities Industry and Financial Markets Association, which warns that “it would be catastrophic to impose a system-wide moratorium on all foreclosures and such actions could do damage to the housing market and the economy”.

No, it would expose the securities industry, itself, as the chief architect of the biggest scandal in human history.

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• Declare a national bank holiday that would close the biggest financial institutions—say, the top dozen or so. Send in the supervisors to examine their books to uncover fraud. Determine which ones are insolvent and resolve them. While resolving them, net their claims on one another (including derivatives). Do not allow any insolvent institutions to reopen, and do not use the resolution process to merge institutions (we don’t need even bigger “too big to fail” banks). Prosecute the crooks and jail the guilty.
  
• Stop all foreclosures. Investigate and prosecute all institutions that have been selling or buying fake documents to be used in foreclosures. Prosecute the crooks and jail the guilty.
  
• Announce that all homeowners who occupied their homes on October 1, 2010 will be allowed to remain in their homes indefinitely. Create a national mediation board to adjust all mortgage payments to “owner’s equivalent rent”—the fair value of rent for the home. Establish a fund to provide rental assistance to keep low income homeowners in their homes.
  
• Give purported mortgage holders 30 days to produce the original notes; if they cannot find them, hand the homes over to the owner-occupants—free and clear of debt.
  
• Create a process to allow securities holders to sue for recovery of value. This must be national—state courts will not be able to handle the case load.
  
• Direct the GSEs to refinance mortgages at a low fixed rate. Mortgages would be provided against real estate appraised at fair market value to any borrower for a primary residence. The GSEs would pay holders of existing mortgages only current fair market value. Those holding these mortgages can seek redress through the process outlined in step 5. Only in the case of borrower fraud would the homeowner be held responsible for losses attributed to the refinancing.
  
• There will be fall-out from losses. It is better to deal with the collateral damage directly than to prop up the control fraud banks. For example, pension funds hold toxic waste securities as well as equities in the control fraud banks, and by all reasonable accounting the Pension Benefit Guarantee Corporation is already insolvent. But it is better to directly bail-out pensions than to maintain the charade that fraudulently created securities have value.

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That the bogyman stimulus package of 800 million+ (lets just say 1 Trillion) is peanuts compared to the 25 Trillion used to bail the Banks and Wall Street in total. How did they do this? Through the Keystroke. The top 10 banks are traders, they are not real Banks like you and I use.

The current issue of Rolling Stone has an article by my current crush Matt Taibbi--- click for the half hour interview aboutWhy isn't Wall Street in Jail and how this all ties into the power play to disband the Unions and place the boot-on-the-jugular of the middle class more firmly.

Bernie Madoff is small change compared to his peers, yet they continue unabated. The public is sold the "Big Government bad" bad! bad! bad! and they swallow it whole.

Rolling Stone Full Article

We not only are not prosecuting, we are enabling and rewarding....same as it ever was, same as it ever was...

posted February 23, 2011 02:42 PM            

and, jwhop, thank you for pointing out what i have been trying to get across for what seems like ever...he may well have "despised" stalin and communism, but when it comes to MONEY, it does NOT MATTER who the buyer is or whether you are even HELPING THE ENEMY when his money is good, and you can't get a foot in at home.

posted February 23, 2011 03:04 PM            

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....But the Tea Party movement—and Koch family’s obscene wealth—go back more than half a century, all the way to grandpa Fredrick C. Koch, one of the founding members of the far-rightwing John Birch Society which was convinced that evil socialism was taking over America through unions, colored people, Jews, homosexuals, the Kennedys and even Dwight D. Eisenhower.

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I wouldn't call the wealth obscene --but-- I had forgotten the John Birch tie. Some months ago when I was scratching the 'Net about the boyos I read that. I also find it very amusing that the anathema to the Par-tiers are Taxes, yet they were totally behind the unfunded extension of the Bush era Tax Breaks for the Rich. In fact pretty much everything the tea totalers espouse is exactly the opposite to what they are getting....yeah thats some Karma too. Speaking of #3811 Karma that 'roid is poised to follow Chiron into Pisces in a day or two along w/ Mars/ reminds me to do a Karma return chart as mine is @10

posted February 23, 2011 03:10 PM            

and while it might seem karmic justice if they did, it shows NO EVOLUTION whatsoever in their approach to the game. shall we all just strive to be the BIGGEST CAT and hang improving the lot of the whole? or do you believe that sweatshops and slave labour are necessary so that SOME people can be happy living in the lap?

posted February 23, 2011 05:44 PM            

and they are not getting back at those who denied their granpappy, they are getting back at the little guy. on their heads be it!

for the life of me i don't know why we would want to go back to the robber barons. it seems to escape our modern "constitutionalists" and "govt minimalists" that american business was prone to huge monopolies suffocating competition before regulations were enforced.

the "free market" rationale sounds great but so far in history it works only at the cost of much human suffering; for example, thalidomide was knocked off the shelves by consumer outrage, but not until after thousands of innocent people had paid the price.

posted February 23, 2011 06:25 PM            

This should read:

If you do bad business, Guess what? No one does business with you.

Note: I do not mean honest errors, I mean well intentioned bad practice. It is amazing society does not really frown on this.

You go out of business.

That can only be enforced by society.

Some people would revolt just on the notion of the gov. doing that.

But what can society do to society? What are you gonna do when everyone knows your reputation, These days its almost instant on the internet. And who are you gonna be? One person against everyone in your community? Hows that gonna feel everyday, Some people wont even sell you food.

That is the ace.

posted February 23, 2011 08:15 PM            

I know I sure helped....couldn't find a cache that would open either. But we have taped confirmation from the puppets mouth.

posted March 14, 2011 10:38 AM            

“You’re an effing liar! You’re all effing liars,” said the school teacher in the little red Kia as he sped away. All I could do is smile, waive and laugh as he drove off, revealing the Obama/Biden ’08 bumper sticker.

When the young man pulled into the “Recall Wirch” petition “drive through” site on Hwy 50 in Kenosha, Wisconsin Saturday afternoon, I approached his car and said “Hi, how are you doing today?” What followed was a fascinating exchange in which I was told to “get an effing job,” was called an “illiterate moron,” and a “fascist.” When I told my young friend that I did indeed have a job and asked if he did as well, he told me that he was a public school teacher.

Sensing a break in my new pal’s tirade, I asked him if he was aware that the Communist Party was actively supporting the public sector union’s battle against the tax-payers. The dedicated young educator then spewed an expletive laden monologue in wont of reason. While he was further engaged in a flurry of hand signals I asked him to check out www.cpusa.com, the official website of the Communist Party or www.peoplesworld.com. At that juncture our conversation came to an abrupt halt.

Thankfully the young school teacher with the winning personality was one of only three union agitators who assailed our petition “drive through” event during our four hour shift. The question remains, was I really lying about the Communist Party’s support of the union protesters in Wisconsin?

According to Peoples World:

As tens of thousands continue to take to the streets nationwide to stop the ultra-right Republican assault on workers’ rights, democracy, public education, health care and vital social services, the Communist Party is in the mix, say its members.

In fact, Communist Party members are working in coalition with other progressive groups in helping lead many of the local fight back efforts.

Sounding strangely similar to Rahm Emanuel’s “never let a crisis go to waste” philosophy:

Moments like this, say CPUSA leaders, call for a special emphasis on building the people’s movement, the Communist Party and Young Communist League-which is the aim of the “1st Annual CPUSA National Conference,” to be held at the Unity Center in New York, April 16-17.

As the remainder of the shift passed by without incident our small group of volunteers were treated to the well wishes and friendship of a continuing stream of like-minded patriots seeking to recall State Senator (and “fleebagger”) Bob Wirsch. One of the folks who visited at our site was a middle-aged school teacher who drove in from a neighboring town to sign the petition. Sadly this public school teacher didn’t want to risk being seen signing the recall petition in her own community for fear of reprisal.

As the far-left protesters continue to intimidate and threaten those who wish to exercise their First Amendment right “to petition the Government for a redress of grievances,” I am reminded of something that “Dave the Marine” said to me while signing the petition on Saturday, “These damn protesters in Madison remind me of the spoiled college punks who screwed us during Viet Nam, and I can tell you first hand the Viet Cong loved them.” Then as now, the communists love their useful idiots.

posted March 22, 2011 10:56 AM            

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.Rachel Maddow took a whack at the hypocritical Republicans in Wisconsin and the Republican governors across the country who will spare no expense when it comes to taking care of their own -- especially big business and their wealthy campaign donors -- and at the same time are willing to raise taxes on the poor and the middle class.

Case in point, we have Stephen Fitzgerald, the father of Wisconsin State Assembly Speaker Jeff Fitzgerald and State Senate Majority Leader Scott Fitzgerald. The elder Fitzgerald, who after losing his election for Dodge County sheriff by a 2-to-1 margin, somehow got appointed as the head of the State Patrol.

And as Rachel noted, in the midst of the potential recall of a number of Wisconsin Senators, there is "another patronage scandal blossoming today."

Senator's girlfriend had help getting job:

Even though the state is supposedly broke, top officials in Gov. Scott Walker's team were able to scrape together enough money to give a state job to the woman identified as Sen. Randy Hopper's girlfriend.

Anything for a political ally.

Valerie Cass, a former Republican legislative staffer, was hired Feb. 7 as a communications specialist with the state Department of Regulation and Licensing. She is being paid $20.35 per hour. The job is considered a temporary post.

Cass previously had worked in the state Senate and for the GOP campaign consulting firm Persuasion Partners in Madison. She also was paid for campaign work for the state Republican Party and U.S. Rep. Jim Sensenbrenner before that.

"Ms. Cass' name was among many forwarded to DRL by the Governor's Transition Team as potential candidates for positions with the department," said David Carlson, the agency's spokesman. Read on...

Rachel summed this up rather nicely.

MADDOW: But apart from the awkwardness for the State Senator here, there's also the awkwardness of whether or not Wisconsin state government is so broke because of all those greedy state employees, right? I mean for the Senator already facing the likely prospect of recall, this is not a positive development. But is also really handy as a reminder about the whole nature of this fight in Wisconsin, and why it is resonating nationally.

The Republican justification for the union stripping business in Wisconsin is that it was all about the budget, right? But then something like this comes along and we're all reminded that if it were all about the budget, people hired by the state would not be getting $12,000 raises, whether or not they were State Senators' girlfriends.

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She wrapped it up with letting her viewers know about some of Think Progress' Wonk Room reporting on the GOP governors out there and their willingness to raise taxes on the working class while giving their wealthy campaign donors a break -- REPORT: In 12 States, GOP Plans To Slash Corporate Taxes While Increasing Burden on Working Families:

ThinkProgress has been documenting conservative efforts to shift the burden of record budget shortfalls onto middle-class Americans, while simultaneously doling out tax cuts to corporations. While progressive governors have proposed raising revenue from those who can afford it, alongside painful cuts to programs, Republican governors have unveiled budgets that cut taxes for corporations and raise them on the middle-class and working poor. In this report, ThinkProgress evaluates the priorities conservatives have set in twelve states:

NEW JERSEY: Last year, Gov. Chris Christie’s (R) budget raised taxes on the working poor and middle-class by cutting the state’s Earned Income Tax Credit and homestead rebates — yet still found money for lucrative corporate tax cuts. This year, Christie’s budget calls for $200 million in business tax cuts, while cutting mental health services, $540 million from Medicaid, and witholding property tax rebates for seniors until public workers give up many of their health and pension benefits. Many New Jerseyans have said they prefer a tax on millionaires to Christie’s draconian cuts.

MICHIGAN: Gov. Rick Snyder’s (R) budget would make Michigan’s already regressive tax system even more unfair for the state’s poorest residents. The plan cuts taxes on business by more than 86 percent while slashing $1.2 billion in funding for “schools, universities, local governments and other areas.” Snyder also wants to raise personal taxes by 30 percent — an increase that will fall disproportionately on Michigan’s lowest income residents.

GEORGIA: Last week, the Georgia House passed an austerity budget that will increase health insurance costs by more than 20 percent for state workers, teachers and retirees and cut funding for state universities by $75 million. The House has already gutted the state’s HOPE scholarship program, and is now considering implementing a regressive new tax system that would lower income taxes for the rich while raising the sales tax on basic necessities. House Majority Leader Larry O’Neal (R), meanwhile, has introduced a bill that would implement a flat income tax rate and cut corporate taxes by 33 percent.

FLORIDA: At a Tea Party rally last month, Gov. Rick Scott (R) unveiled his budget, telling supporters he would make the state the most “fiscally conservative” in the nation. The budget would slash corporate income and property taxes, lay off 6,700 state employees, cut education funding by $4.8 billion, and cut Medicaid by almost $4 billion.

OHIO: Gov. John Kasich (R) has proposed cutting 25 percent of schools’ budgets, $1 million from food banks, $12 million from children’s hospitals, and $15.9 million from an adoption program for children with special needs. A Kasich staffer revealed yesterday that these cuts are more about politics then budget-balancing, telling the Cincinnati Dispatch that “even if there weren’t an $8 billion deficit, we’d probably be proposing many of the same things.” The plan includes tax cuts for oil companies, a repeal of the estate tax and an income tax cut for the rich that former Gov. Ted Strickland (D) halted last year because of the state’s fiscal crisis.

IOWA: Gov. Tom Branstad (R) began this year proposing a budget that included a $200 million tax cut on commercial property taxes and corporate income but would freeze spending on schools, cut $42 million to state universities and lay off “hundreds” of state workers. Since then, the Governor has already begun laying off state nursing home workers and frozen funding for mental health services. The budget is now moving through the politically divided legislature, where Republican-controlled House committees have gone even further, approving tax refunds for upper-income Iowans while cancelling infrastructure investments, eliminating preschool for 4-year-olds, closing Iowa workforce development offices, and making even deeper cuts to public universities.

PENNSYLVANIA: Gov. Tom Corbett (R) presented a budget last week that would cut taxes for corporations, while freezing teacher salaries, cutting dental care for Medicaid recipients, and eliminating more than half of the state’s universities. Yet the state has lots of revenue potential in northern Pennsylvania, where out-of-state energy companies’ “fracking” of natural gas has reaped them hundreds of millions of dollars in profits. Corbett has refused to tax these companies, many of which helped fund his gubernatorial campaign, and has instead opted to lay of more than 1,500 state workers.

MAINE: Despite calling for “shared sacrifice” Tea Party Gov. Paul LePage’s (R) budget would cut income taxes for Maine’s wealthiest one percent, while actually raising property taxes for the state’s middle class. This so-called “jobs budget” freezes healthcare funding for working parents, cuts money for schools and infrastructure and raises the retirement age for public workers. Yet LePage was still able to find more than $200 million in tax cuts for large estates, business and the rich.

WISCONSIN: The tax cuts Gov. Scott Walker (R) signed earlier this year worsened his state’s fiscal condition, so now Walker is planning to raise taxes on the poor, eliminate $26 million in tax credits for seniors and single mothers and cancel property tax rebates for low-income Wisconsinites making less than $24,000 a year.

SOUTH CAROLINA: Gov. Nikki Haley (R) has proposed ending the state’s corporate income tax, even while she calls for cutting physical education, K-12 schools, and Medicaid. Haley has received pushback from Republican colleagues: last week the legislature rejected her plan to force state employees to pay more for health insurance.

KANSAS: Facing a $493 million budget shortfall, Gov. Sam Brownback (R) has called for eliminating the corporate income tax while proposing a $50 million cut to education. With majorities in both Houses, Republicans have proposed a cut to the federal Earned Income Tax Credit that would push 6,500 families below the poverty line.

ARIZONA: Last October, as she ignored 26 other possible funding solutions, Gov. Jan Brewer (R) implemented painful cuts to the state’s Medicaid program, which resulted in 2 deaths and left 98 Arizonians waiting for transplant funding. After months of protests, Brewer finally agreed to set aside $151 million in an “uncompensated-care pool to pay health-care providers for ‘life-saving’ procedures, including transplants.” However, House Republicans refused to restore funding for organ transplants because, as House Appropriations Committee chair Jon Kavanagh (R) said, “not enough lives would be saved to warrant restoring millions in budget cuts.” Then, while peoples’ lives were in danger, Brewer eagerly signed tax cuts for businesses that will cost the state $538 million.

As they noted, I'm not sure how that's anyone's idea of "shared sacrifice" when the only ones being asked to sacrifice are the working class.

If anyone here is a regular reader of Think Progress' site, and you don't check into the research being done at their sister site, The Wonk Room, you''re missing a whole lot of great information that their site posts daily and that doesn't always get front paged.

posted March 22, 2011 11:00 AM            

do these guys read upside down or are they really just "redistributing the wealth" to the TOP sector and taking it from the poor and middle class? what is beneficial about this to the 99%??? do we prefer living in little kingdoms now?

what makes anyone think that these guys who have got away with little to no taxes for the last decade are going to start "producing" jobs NOW? what incentive do they have, after all?

posted March 23, 2011 09:10 AM            

Last December, the federal government set the precedent for estate tax cuts when the bi-partisan tax deal signed by President Obama cut the estate tax rate to its second lowest level since 1931. Billions of dollars are being `lost`.

The Three States?

• MAINE: Tea Party Gov. Paul LePage’s (I) tax reform package would raise the state’s estate tax exemption from $1 million to $2 million — allowing four hundred of the state’s wealthiest estates to escape taxation. At the same time, the tax plan would raise property taxes on middle class Mainers while freezing healthcare funding for working parents, cutting money for schools, and raising the retirement age for public workers. Republican legislators want to go even further, and are currently considering eliminating the estate tax altogether.

• OHIO: In January, House Speaker William Batchelder (R) called Gov. John Kasich’s (R) proposal to completely eliminate the estate tax one of the Republican-controlled legislature’s “top priorities.” But already the bill has garnered strong opposition from local governments, who depend on estate tax revenue and are already concerned state spending cuts. Even while finding room for estate tax reductions, Kasich’s proposed budget cuts 25 percent of funding for local schools, $427 million for nursing homes, $1 million for food banks, $12 million from children’s hospitals, and $15.9 million from an adoption program for children with special needs.

• NEW JERSEY: In his 2011 budget proposal, Gov. Chris Christie called for raising the state’s estate tax exemption from $675,000 to $1 million even while proposing cuts to the state’s Earned Income Tax Credit and homestead rebates for working poor families. And last year Christie vetoed a bill passed by the Legislature that would have raised taxes on the state’s millionaires to help fund property tax relief for Main Street.

posted March 23, 2011 11:26 AM            

Utter crap!

This never works. Franklin Roosevelt followed this advice from his Socialist economic advisers and prolonged the depression by 7 years.

John Kennedy CUT TAXES and touched off an economic boom.

Ronald Reagan CUT TAXES and touched off an economic boom which lasted into the 1990s.

George W Bush CUT TAXES and touched off an economic boom which lasted 6 years up until the time Nancy Pee-Lousy and Harry Reid took control of Congress in January 2007.

Bush even fired the guy...Sec Treasury who campaigned for raising taxes at the beginning of the Bush Administration.

Now, we see the effects of raising taxes, talking about raising taxes, increasing spending by government, growing spending by government by about 25% and increasing the size, scope and power of government in only 2 years by Barack Hussein O'Bomber.

Economic Disaster Ensued!

There are some hard core lefties who just can't get it through their heads that governors..by law..have to balance their budgets. These addled ones believe that those who pay no state income taxes and pay no federal income taxes are nevertheless due a rebate...of the taxes they never paid in the first place....through a misnamed program
called the "Earned Income Tax Credit". Apparently, you "Earn" this rebate by having children you can't afford.

What is clear...to everyone except the hard core lefties...is that lowering taxes for the jobs creating set...businesses...attracts businesses to the state(s), increases employment in the state(s), takes people off the unemployed rolls and broadens and increases the tax base from which state(s) draw their operating revenues.

Now, if state Governors are also smart enough to understand they must also control state spending by reforming state contracts for state employees, doing away with useless, feel good state spending programs and march straight forward to get the states fiscal house in order, THEN, they are well on their way to restoring the economic prosperity of their state(s).

posted March 23, 2011 02:30 PM            

Let's start with the gipper:

10 Things Conservatives try to forget about Reagan

1. Reagan was a serial tax raiser. As governor of California, Reagan signed into law the largest tax increase in the history of any state up till then. Meanwhile, state spending nearly doubled. As president, Reagan raised taxes in seven of his eight years in office, including four times in just two years. As former GOP Senator Alan Simpson, who called Reagan a dear friend, told NPR, Ronald Reagan raised taxes 11 times in his administration I was there. Reagan was never afraid to raise taxes, said historian Douglas Brinkley, who edited Reagan's memoir. Reagan the anti-tax zealot is false mythology, Brinkley said.

2. Reagan nearly tripled the federal budget deficit. During the Reagan years, the debt increased to nearly $3 trillion, roughly three times as much as the first 80 years of the century had done altogether. Reagan enacted a major tax cut his first year in office and government revenue dropped off precipitously. Despite the conservative myth that tax cuts somehow increase revenue, the government went deeper into debt and Reagan had to raise taxes just a year after he enacted his tax cut. Despite ten more tax hikes on everything from gasoline to corporate income, Reagan was never able to get the deficit under control.

3. Unemployment soared after Reagan¡¯s 1981 tax cuts. Unemployment jumped to 10.8 percent after Reagan enacted his much-touted tax cut, and it took years for the rate to get back down to its previous level. Meanwhile, income inequality exploded. Despite the myth that Reagan presided over an era of unmatched economic boom for all Americans, Reagan disproportionately taxed the poor and middle class, but the economic growth of the 1980 äs did little help them. Since 1980, median household income has risen only 30 percent, adjusted for inflation, while average incomes at the top have tripled or quadrupled, the New York Times David Leonhardt noted.

4. Reagan grew the size of the federal government tremendously. Reagan promised to move boldly, decisively, and quickly to control the runaway growth of federal spending, but federal spending ballooned under Reagan. He bailed out Social Security in 1983 after attempting to privatize it, and set up a progressive taxation system to keep it funded into the future. He promised to cut government agencies like the Department of Energy and Education but ended up adding one of the largest the Department of Veterans¡¯ Affairs, which today has a budget of nearly $90 billion and close to 300,000 employees. He also hiked defense spending by over $100 billion a year to a level not seen since the height of the Vietnam war.

5. Reagan did little to fight a woman's right to chose. As governor of California in 1967, Reagan signed a bill to liberalize the states abortion laws that resulted in more than a million abortions. When Reagan ran for president, he advocated a constitutional amendment that would have prohibited all abortions except when necessary to save the life of the mother, but once in office, he never seriously pursued curbing choice.

6. Reagan was a bellicose peacenik.¡± He wrote in his memoirs that my dream ­became a world free of nuclear weapons.This vision stemmed from the president's belief that the biblical account of Armageddon prophesied nuclear war and that apocalypse could be averted if everyone, especially the Soviets, eliminated nuclear weapons, the Washington Monthly noted. And Reagan's military buildup was meant to crush the Soviet Union, but also to put the United States in a stronger position from which to establish effective arms control for the the entire world a vision acted out by Reagan's vice president, George H.W. Bush, when he became president.

7. Reagan gave amnesty to 3 million undocumented immigrants. Reagan signed into law a bill that made any immigrant who had entered the country before 1982 eligible for amnesty. The bill was sold as a crackdown, but its tough sanctions on employers who hired undocumented immigrants were removed before final passage. The bill helped 3 million people and millions more family members gain American residency. It has since become a source of major embarrassment for conservatives.

8. Reagan illegally funneled weapons to Iran. Reagan and other senior U.S. officials secretly sold arms to officials in Iran, which was subject to a an arms embargo at the time, in exchange for American hostages. Some funds from the illegal arms sales also went to fund anti-Communist rebels in Nicaragua something Congress had already prohibited the administration from doing. When the deals went public, the Iran-Contra Affair, as it came to be known, was an enormous political scandal that forced several senior administration officials to resign.

9. Reagan vetoed a comprehensive anti-Apartheid act. which placed sanctions on South Africa and cut off all American trade with the country. Reagans veto was overridden by the Republican-controlled Senate. Reagan responded by saying I deeply regret that Congress has seen fit to override my veto,¡± saying that the law will not solve the serious problems that plague that country.

10. Reagan helped create the Taliban and Osama Bin Laden. Reagan fought a proxy war with the Soviet Union by training, arming, equipping, and funding Islamist mujahidin fighters in Afghanistan. Reagan funneled billions of dollars, along with top-secret intelligence and sophisticated weaponry to these fighters through the Pakistani intelligence service. The Talbian and Osama Bin Laden a prominent mujahidin commander emerged from these mujahidin groups Reagan helped create, and U.S. policy towards Pakistan remains strained because of the intelligence services close relations to these fighters. In fact, Reagans decision to continue the proxy war after the Soviets were willing to retreat played a direct role in Bin Ladens ascendency.

More: http://thinkprogress.org/2011/02/05/reagan-centenn...