OWS

Generally an unmoderated forum for discussion of pretty much any topic. The focus however, is usually politics.
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Vrede too
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Re: OWS

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Petition to House and Senate Democratic leaders:

"Unite against Trump Republicans’ assault on financial sector reforms, including the Financial Choice 2.0 Act, and refuse to lend bipartisan cover to any giveaways to Wall Street."
Elizabeth Warren calls out Obama and Democrats for losing way on economy

... “I think President Obama, like many others in both parties, talk about a set of big national statistics that look shiny and great but increasingly have giant blind spots,” she told the Guardian. “That GDP, unemployment, no longer reflect the lived experiences of most Americans.

“And the lived experiences of most Americans is that they are being left behind in this economy. Worse than being left behind, they’re getting kicked in the teeth.”

The senator went on take a swipe at members of her own party while describing the collapse of old distinctions between left and right. “I think there are real differences between the Republicans and the Democrats here in the United States,” she said. “The Republicans have clearly thrown their lot in with the rich and the powerful, but so have a lot of Democrats.”

... “I think what Donald Trump did was he said, ‘The system is rigged and I will be out there for working people every single day; that is my first priority,’” she said. “He got elected and did a 180-degree turn, headed in the exactly the opposite direction.

“He put millionaires and billionaires in charge of his government; he has signed off on one law after another to make it easier for government contractors to steal people’s wages, to make it easier for corporations to hide it when they kill or maim their employees, to make it easier for investment advisers to cheat retirees.”

The prime example, she said, was Trump’s attempt to repeal and replace Obama’s signature healthcare legislation, the Affordable Care Act.

“It was like in a microcosm,” she said. “If you want one emblematic what does he really stand for, who does he really work for? It was take away healthcare coverage for 24 million people, raise costs for a lot of working families. Why? So that he could produce tax cuts for a handful of millionaires and billionaires.”
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Vrede too
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Re: OWS

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Always be yourself! Unless you can be a goat, then always be a goat.
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rstrong
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Re: OWS

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Aw, c'mon. It's basic trickle-down economics, just like Ronald Reagan told us about. His permanent tax holiday for the wealthy should be reaching the middle class Any Day Now.

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Vrede too
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Re: OWS

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It's like Trump is working from a Ronald Reagan Failures manual.

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Fuck nostalgia.
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Vrede too
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Re: OWS

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It’s time for corporations to pay their fair share of taxes

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To help most American families, corporate tax proposals should focus on increasing, not decreasing, the taxes paid by corporations. The corporate tax system is so riddled with loopholes that it raises far too little revenue and doesn’t contribute enough to the need of the federal government to honor existing commitments to social insurance, income support, and public investment. If policymakers are going to push corporate “tax reform,” they should focus on requiring corporations to pay their fair share of taxes.

For more on how cutting corporate taxes will hurt American families, read EPI’s recent research.
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Vrede too
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Re: OWS

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Always be yourself! Unless you can be a goat, then always be a goat.
-- the interweb, paraphrased
1312. ETTD.

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Vrede too
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Re: OWS

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Always be yourself! Unless you can be a goat, then always be a goat.
-- the interweb, paraphrased
1312. ETTD.

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Re: OWS

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The Wrong CHOICE Act is the “major elimination” of Wall Street reform that Trump promised his banker buddies.

Petition to Congress:
The so-called CHOICE Act (H.R. 10) would gut the Consumer Bureau, Dodd-Frank and many of the banking regulations that were put in place to prevent another economic crisis like the 2008 Great Recession. As a member of Congress, you should be strengthening rules to protect consumers and the economy from the abuses of Wall Street greed, not pushing deregulatory giveaways to enrich bankers. I am calling on you to strongly oppose the “Wrong CHOICE Act.”
Always be yourself! Unless you can be a goat, then always be a goat.
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Vrede too
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Re: OWS

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Petition to Senate Finance Committee Chair Orrin Hatch and all members of Congress:

"Oppose the current Trump Republican tax plan to give huge tax breaks to millionaires and wealthy corporations, paid for by cutting Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, education, medical research, Meals on Wheels and road repairs. We need real tax reform to make sure the wealthy and big corporations pay their fair share."
Edit:
Americans for Tax Fairness Action Fund and our partners just submitted an overwhelming number of comments to Senate Finance Committee Chairman Orrin Hatch. More than 390,000 to be exact―telling him, Donald Trump and Paul Ryan that we want a fairer tax system where the rich and big corporations pay their fair share.

Your activism overwhelmed the Senate’s email system to the point where we received the following error message much of yesterday: “The recipient's mailbox is full and can't accept messages now.” (Don’t worry, we got around that roadblock by delivering your comments directly to Orrin Hatch’s staff.)

Do you think they heard us? I sure do!

And your comments did not just go to Republicans. We also delivered them to all Senate Democrats so they understand that working Americans and grassroots activists want a brand new tax system that works for everyone, not just the wealthy few. We don’t want any bipartisan deal-cutting that keeps tax loopholes, carve-outs and subsidies that benefit elites and big corporations at the expense of the rest of us....
Always be yourself! Unless you can be a goat, then always be a goat.
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Vrede too
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Re: OWS

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It turns out that Republicans don't need their mean-spirited healthcare bill to give huge tax cuts to the rich and big corporations.

While the Senate is still grappling with a Trumpcare bill that would kick 22 million people off of their healthcare, Paul Ryan and House Republicans are advancing a cruel budget that cuts Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, education and other critical services for working people and older Americans....

The House GOP budget, passed late last night out of committee, is the first step to implementing Donald Trump’s disastrous tax and budget plans. It would eliminate the Alternative Minimum Tax (AMT)―handing $400 billion in tax cuts to the wealthiest Americans. The AMT prevents rich people like Trump from using loopholes to sharply reduce or even eliminate their federal income taxes.

The GOP budget also sets the stage for deep corporate tax cuts―further padding the pockets of wealthy investors and corporate CEOs. It even calls for letting U.S. corporations off the hook for paying taxes on their offshore profits. That would give Pfizer, General Electric, Apple, Wall Street banks and other giant multinationals even more incentives than they have now to send jobs and profits offshore to dodge their fair share of taxes.

These tax cuts, which will cost trillions, would mostly be paid for by cutting more than $5 trillion from critical services all of us depend on. $500 billion from Medicare—gone! $1.5 trillion from Medicaid and other health programs—gone! A whopping $2.4 trillion from Pell grants, food stamps and other vital services for struggling families—gone! And $1.3 trillion from hundreds of other public investments, ranging from schools to highways to medical research and environmental protection—gone!

Congressman John Yarmuth (D-KY), Senior Democrat on the House Budget Committee, had this to say about the House Republican budget in answer to the question, Why are they doing this?:

“The answer is as simple as it is disgraceful. So that millionaires, billionaires, and wealthy corporations can get a tax cut. They have made the choice to give everyone in the top one percent a $240,000 tax cut while taking breakfast and lunch away from hungry school children. They have made the choice to give everyone in the top one-tenth-of-one percent of income a $1.4 million tax cut while cutting health care for seniors in nursing homes, low-income children, and the disabled.”

While we continue to beat back Trumpcare in the Senate, we need to stop this budget in the House! ...

Thank you for all that you do to create an economy and a tax system that works for everyone, not just the wealthy few.

Frank Clemente
Executive Director
Americans for Tax Fairness
Always be yourself! Unless you can be a goat, then always be a goat.
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Vrede too
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Re: OWS

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Petition to Senate Democrats:

"Block and resist Trump Republicans’ assault on the Dodd-Frank Wall Street reforms, including the Financial Choice 2.0 Act, and refuse to lend bipartisan cover to any giveaways to the financial sector."
Petition to U.S. Department of Justice:

Please block the AT&T-Time Warner merger. A merger between one of the largest cable companies and largest content providers would lead to reduced choice, higher prices, threaten net neutrality by making AT&T a gatekeeper of the internet, and represent a dangerous concentration of economic and political power.
Always be yourself! Unless you can be a goat, then always be a goat.
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Vrede too
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Re: OWS

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CEO pay remains high relative to the pay of typical workers and high-wage earners

... in 2016 CEOs in America’s largest firms made an average of $15.6 million in compensation, or 271 times the annual average pay of the typical worker. While the 2016 CEO-to-worker compensation ratio of 271-to-1 is down from 299-to-1 in 2014 and 286-to-1 in 2015, it is still light years beyond the 20-to-1 ratio in 1965 and the 59-to-1 ratio in 1989. The average CEO in a large firm now earns 5.33 times the annual earnings of the average very-high-wage earner (earner in the top 0.1 percent).

... CEO compensation is very high relative to the compensation of a typical worker or even that of an earner in the top 0.1 percent, and it has grown far faster than stock prices or corporate profits....

How we can solve the problem: Over the last several decades CEO pay has grown a lot faster than profits, than the pay of the top 0.1 percent of wage earners, and than the wages of college graduates. This means that CEOs are getting more because of their power to set pay, not because they are more productive or have special talent or have more education. If CEOs earned less or were taxed more, there would be no adverse impact on output or employment. Policy solutions that would limit and reduce incentives for CEOs to extract economic concessions without hurting the economy include:

Reinstate higher marginal income tax rates at the very top.
Remove the tax break for executive performance pay.
Set corporate tax rates higher for firms that have higher ratios of CEO-to-worker compensation.
Allow greater use of “say on pay,” which allows a firm’s shareholders to vote on top executives’ compensation.

...
Always be yourself! Unless you can be a goat, then always be a goat.
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Vrede too
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Re: OWS

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Tell the Treasury Department: Crack down on offshore tax-dodging

Last year, in the final year of the Obama presidency, we had a major victory when the Treasury Department implemented new rules that stopped tax cheats like the drug company Pfizer from merging with a foreign corporation and dodging their taxes here at home. But now the Trump administration is trying to undermine the progress that we’ve made.

In a blatant attempt to roll back one of these rules, the Treasury Department has opened up a public comment period, which closes Monday, August 7. We need your help today to demand that big corporations pay their fair share of taxes....
Always be yourself! Unless you can be a goat, then always be a goat.
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Vrede too
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Re: OWS

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The petition to the Department of Justice reads:

"Stop the merger of AT&T and Time Warner, which would hurt consumers, decrease competition and drastically increase market concentration."
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Vrede too
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Re: OWS

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Petition to the U.S. Senate:

"Oppose and resist pro-monopoly Makan Delrahim’s nomination to run the Department of Justice Antitrust division."
Always be yourself! Unless you can be a goat, then always be a goat.
-- the interweb, paraphrased
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Vrede too
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Re: OWS

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Latest Trump Tweet:

With Irma and Harvey devastation, Tax Cuts and Tax Reform is needed more than ever before. Go Congress, go!
Funny, I would think that the contribution to the devastation of poor energy, development and agricultural policy choices, along with the need for massive disaster spending might lead to the opposite conclusion. Then, I might suggest that it's in poor taste for a POTUS to exploit hurricane victims for such unrelated and controversial partisan ends, but what do I know?
Always be yourself! Unless you can be a goat, then always be a goat.
-- the interweb, paraphrased
1312. ETTD.

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Vrede too
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Re: OWS

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Petition to Congress:

"Oppose Trump-Republican tax plans that give huge tax breaks to millionaires and wealthy corporations, paid for by cutting Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, education, medical research, Meals on Wheels and road repairs. We need real tax reform to make sure the wealthy and big corporations pay their fair share."
Always be yourself! Unless you can be a goat, then always be a goat.
-- the interweb, paraphrased
1312. ETTD.

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Vrede too
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Re: OWS

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Stand with Sen. Warren: Remove the Wells Fargo board

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Petition to the Federal Reserve Board of Governors:

"Remove the entire Wells Fargo corporate board responsible for repeated wrongdoing and protect the continued safety and soundness of one of the country's largest banks."
Always be yourself! Unless you can be a goat, then always be a goat.
-- the interweb, paraphrased
1312. ETTD.

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Vrede too
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Re: OWS

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They have no shame:
Trump wants career corporate merger lawyer and lobbyist, Makan Delrahim, to lead the DOJ’s Antitrust Division.

Petition to the US Senate:

Trump’s pick to lead the DOJ’s Antitrust division is a career corporate merger lawyer who has lobbied in favor of corporate mergers that create de facto monopolies and squeeze consumers while fattening the pockets of corporate shareholders. Vote NO on Makan Delrahim’s nomination.
Always be yourself! Unless you can be a goat, then always be a goat.
-- the interweb, paraphrased
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Vrede too
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Re: OWS

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Sign now: Kill the Sinclair-Tribune Merger!

Petition to Department of Justice:

Millions of Americans rely on their local TV stations for important news and information. If allowed to proceed, the Sinclair–Tribune merger would give Sinclair Broadcasting Group a veritable monopoly on local news. Sinclair is known to force its local stations to provide slanted coverage of politics and world events, and muscle out local coverage in favor of “must-run” segments that reflect the political leanings of its ownership. Americans have a right to unbiased news and diverse points of view. Please block the Sinclair–Tribune merger.
Always be yourself! Unless you can be a goat, then always be a goat.
-- the interweb, paraphrased
1312. ETTD.

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