tax


Alternate Current Radio Presents: Boiler Room – Uninterruptible Talk Radio

Charges of rigging fill the air in today’s America. Elections, the economy, college admissions, the list seems endless. Whatever the truth in other cases, our tax collection system is undeniably rigged. It’s been so from the beginning, rigged against the vast majority of workers.

Oxford researchers said on November 7 that taxing meat could help off-set healthcare costs and save hundreds of thousands of lives. Additionally, taxing red and processed meat could allow hundreds of billions of dollars to be put toward healthcare costs each year, they suggest. [1]
Click for larger version.
Click for larger version.

The term “stepped-up basis” is shorthand for a tax loophole that lines the pockets of the haves while it picks the pockets of the Treasury. According to the Congressional Budget Office, the cost over ten years could reach $644 billion.
Let’s see how the well-off get handed hundreds of billions that should be going toward the good of all Americans.

Trump’s hyper-nationalist propaganda strikes a cultural chord steeped in the myth that capitalism is the economic bulwark of freedom. Yet reality is not as malleable as myth. In fact, capitalism has led to unsustainable economic and social inequalities as well as the degradation of ecosystems and global warming. Faced with these crises, the U.S. two-party system is politically bankrupt, its instability marked by raw political nerves, belligerence and elected office-holding obsession by Washington’s power brokers.

The Obama administration created a regulation requiring states to pay an unconstitutional fee that is styled as a tax on the states.  Texas sued in federal court and was joined by Indiana, Nebraska, Kansas, and Louisiana- the states were awarded a total of $839 million.  [...]

The Internal Revenue Service says it is enforcing a law allowing authorities to revoke and deny passports to those owing over $51,000 in unpaid taxes.  Some 362,000 people may fall under the scope of the 2015 law, known as the Fixing America's Surface Transportation (FAST) Act, as early as the end of this year.  [...]

Is ours a government of the people, by the people, for the people, or a kakistocracy rather, for the benefit of knaves at the cost of fools?
— James Russell Lowell, 19th century American poet/critic/editor/diplomat, in a 1876 letter to Joel Benton.

Jerusalem: Christian leaders closed the Church of the Holy Sepulchre, built where it is believed that Jesus was buried. The closing was in protest over new taxes by the Israeli government. The municipal government of Jerusalem issued an order for the seizure of church assets, including property and bank accounts, for new taxes in the amount of $186 million, that they say are owed to the government. Church officials say this is an attempt to weaken the presence of Christians in Jerusalem.

Not since 1953, when the U.S. and the Soviets exploded thermonuclear bombs, has the world been such a powder keg!
Only recently, the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists moved the Doomsday Clock forward 30 seconds. It now registers two minutes to midnight. Verily, it’s lights out when the clock strikes 12:00 midnight. Ka-boom, it’s over!
What’s going on?