Back In The Days of Feudalism...

WorldCom, known to many of us as the company that swallowed MCI long distance, has been in the news for misplacing $7 billion and filing for bankruptcy. This story, by Susan Pullam, Jared Sandberg and Deborah Soloman, details how the former CEO, Bernard J. Ebbers, got a whopper of a good-bye present: a $408 million loan at 2.3 percent interest, plus $1.5 million per year in lifetime salary.


Let me run that by you again: a man who was at the helm of a company that just up and lost $7 billion got a $408 million loan, plus $1.5 million in free cash each year. Let's pretend to spend that money for him:


? $408 million is the equivalent of: 204,000 fancy laptops, enough to give one to roughly one in 10 graduating high school seniors this year, or 2,000 new homes at their roughly $200,000 average price.


? $1.5 million a year equals: 345 average yearly payments of TANF (the post-reform welfare); 100 students' full tuition, board and fees at UCLA.


I hesitate to compare lost corporate cash to real world dollars. While we're more than happy to talk about "welfare queens" and "poverty pimps" (and yes, there are welfare cheats), we don't seem to hear the vast sucking sound of white-collar criminals hoovering out our economy. (Not to mention the estimated $12 billion in legal federal "corporate welfare.")

More here.

Slavery, feudalism, totalitarianism, caste & class systems, etc.....on a good day, I like to feel better about the world and how much progress we've made in these areas. Sure, all of them are still with us but I think that the majority of people on the planet would say that each is inherently a bad thing that we should continue to fight against them. Well, that's something, right? As a life form, that's something to be proud of. I hope that one day, the system of corporate feudalism will be looked at with the same backwards glance of relief. By corporate feudalism, I mean the clearly unjust and primative system of a small number of CEOs and other officers of a given corporation making 100 to 1000 to whatever times the vast multitude of wage slaves that support them on the bottom. Maybe we'll look back and think "barbarians." That would be progress, indeed.

This guy Digby just nails it on the whole President CEO Bush. It's an excellent analysis of Bush's decision making patterns.

Doorknobs? Doorknobs!!!!!!

The Dark Side Of Clowning Around

You knew what you were getting into when you joined that clown fetish chat group. But did you know that Ounchy! the dominating clown can even help lead your next corporate retreat?

Dear Mr. Fleischer
...Q My follow-up is, why does he want to drop bombs on innocent Iraqis?

MR. FLEISCHER: Helen, the question is how to protect Americans, and our allies and friends --

Q They're not attacking you.

MR. FLEISCHER: -- from a country --

Q Have they laid the glove on you or on the United States, the Iraqis, in 11 years?

MR. FLEISCHER: I guess you have forgotten about the Americans who were killed in the first Gulf War as a result of Saddam Hussein's aggression then.

Q Is this revenge, 11 years of revenge?

MR. FLEISCHER: Helen, I think you know very well that the President's position is that he wants to avert war, and that the President has asked the United Nations to go into Iraq to help with the purpose of averting war.

Transcript here.

Mean, Median, or Mode? Seeing The Forest lays it out for us:

Bush's tax cut proposal:

"The White House said the plan will give 92 million taxpayers an average tax cut of $1,083 this year."

Here's how to understand how "you" are going to come out ahead from the Bush tax cut proposals: If you have 1,000 people, and one of them gets $1 million, and the rest get nothing, these people will get an average of $1,000.

Don't spend it all in one place...

CCF

Paying For the War, Military, Etc.

The word "taxes" has been the subject of intense, well-funded, well-crafted, right-wing messaging directed at the public for 30 years. So now there is a negative connotation associated with the word - almost as bad as the dreaded 'L' word, "liberal." So instead of using the 'T' word, let's try a different approach. Think of taxes as paying for the Iraq war and increased military and government services. Who will pay for these things?
The new Bush proposal will ask that people who receive dividends not be asked to pay anything for the war or other government services. (Keep this in mind - they say that this will benefit most Americans because most Americans own stocks. But this is crap - regular people have stocks in a 401K or IRA, and don't pay taxes on dividends NOW, because you don't pay taxes on gains in a 401K or IRA. And if the stocks are in a pension plan you also don't pay taxes on dividends.)

Here's what WILL be taxed:

-Money made from working at a job in an office or at a factory or as a janitor, etc.
-Money made from savings interest.
-Money made if you are a plumber, etc. (even though you are paid by people who already paid taxes on their income, so it will be "taxed twice," which is the justification for no dividend taxation. But that sort of nonsense justification only applies to money made by the really, really rich. Wink, wink, nod, nod.)
-Money you receive as unemployment benefits.
-A big chunk of your income from your job will go into Social Security - but only the first 85,000 is taxed - if you make more than that the tax stops. This is the largest tax most Americans pay. This money is currently going back out to the rich as tax cuts, because the deficit resulting from these tax cuts is also using up the Social Security surplus.

In other words - the money that YOU make.

Here's money that WILL NOT be taxed:

-Money made from inheriting huge fortunes.
-Money made from selling stocks. (Taxed at a much lower rate.) (This benefits primarily the top few % of wealthy.)
-Money made from receiving dividends. (This benefits primarily the top few % of wealthy.)
-Money made from selling a company. (Taxed at a much lower rate.) (Needless to day - this benefits primarily the top few % of wealthy.)
-Money made from stock options received for being an executive at the company that laid you off. (This benefits the top few % of wealthy.)
-Money made by corporations that move intellectual property offshore, then license it back to their U.S. branch. Example, a patent on a drug is "owned" by the Bermuda branch and licensed to the U.S. pharmaceutical company for the entire amount of their U.S. profits, so they pay no U.S. taxes on those profits.
-Money made by corporations who have moved their mailing address offshore. (But these corporations WILL be allowed to continue to receive lucrative government contracts.)
-Money and services received by executives as "expenses."
-Income after the first $85,000 is not taxed for Social Security.

In other words - the money that THE REALLY RICH make.

Remember, your Social Security retirement money was given away to the really rich in the 1980's, through tax cuts. Now the money you currently pay into the Social Security system is also being handed to the rich through even more huge tax cuts. And the portion of the tax money that you pay that goes out as interest on the debt is also being given to the rich in the form of debt interest payments. A lot of the military budget is handed to wealthy corporations. The pension money that you would have received if you worked at a corporation was handed out to the rich in the 1980's in the form of increased stock price when pensions were stopped, and you were instead told to save your own money through an IRA or a 401K account.
You pay. They get. And it's just getting worse.

More at seetheforest.

700 Club linked to Al Qaeda!