| Number 478 | May 2, 2011 |
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This Week: A Stroll Through the News with Nygaard |
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Greetings, More strolling through the news this week. I'm just going to keep doing this for a while, since it's fun, and I have a lot of interesting clippings that need comment, and it's spring and time to clean out the files. I hope you enjoy these Strolls Through the News With Nygaard as much as I do! Happy May! Nygaard |
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From the opinion page of my local newspaper the Star Tribune comes this week's "Quote" of the Week. We've all heard the statement that "the rich pay most of the taxes." As the Associated Press reported in an April 18th story, "More than half of the nation's tax revenue came from the top 10 percent of earners in 2007." This seems "wrong" to many people. For those of you who have heard, or will hear, this statistic or one like it, there's a terribly simple response. I can't say it any better than St. Cloud State economist Andrew Larkin said it in an April 26th Commentary, also in the Star Tribune, entitled, "Making the Case for Progressive Taxation." He said: "Imagine a society of 10 people, where one has an income of $1 million and the other nine have incomes of $50,000. Now imagine a flat tax rate of 10 percent on all incomes. The government would receive revenues of $100,000 from the millionaire and $5,000 each from the other nine. "The government's total revenue would be $145,000, and the top 10 percent of earners would have contributed more than half. But the statement is only useful for showing the inequality of distribution in the society. Such statements show that a high degree of inequality pushes the tax burden onto a few at the top. They do not show that the tax burden on the rich ought to be lowered. Instead, tax burdens ought to be adjusted because of the inequality. The amount of tax burden is not the question; the question is how much is left over after taxes are paid. "The most important principle is that no one should be left with insufficient after-tax income to pay for an ordinary life." |
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I'm not sure everybody understands the idea of "progressive taxation." Basically, a tax is progressive when people with more income pay a higher percentage of that income in tax than do those with less income. If poor people pay a higher percentage, then a tax is regressive. On the front page of the "Metro" section of my local paper the Star Tribune on March 17th was an article on this subject, headlined "Who's Hit Hardest by Taxes?" The occasion was the release of a biennial report from the Minnesota Department of Revenue called the "Minnesota Tax Incidence Study," the name of which was, oddly, never mentioned in the news article. Minnesota is one of eight or nine states that publish tax incidence studies. That is, studies of who pays what when it comes to taxes. In the case of Minnesota, the article quotes the state Revenue Commissioner saying that "Minnesota's tax system is more regressive than it was a decade ago," and "the system remains notably more regressive than the historical average since 1991." (In case you didn't know, the man who was governor of Minnesota for most of the time of increasing regressivity (2003-2010) is Tim Pawlenty, who is a very serious candidate for President of the United States in 2012. Wouldn't you think that even the corporate media might be interested in what happened to tax policy in Minnesota during his tenure? Apparently they're not.) This business about Minnesota taxes being regressive is not an opinion, it's a fact. As the article reports, "The study found that 90 percent of the state's earners paid an average of 12.3 percent of their income in state and local taxes in 2008. The wealthiest 10 percent of households earning more than $130,000 paid an average of 10.3 percent." That's the definition of "regressive": when low-income people pay a higher percentage than high-income people. The report was a long one—160 pages—and deserving of better coverage than it got in the Star Trib. For instance, the report is packed with information about something called the "Suits Index," which is never mentioned in the article. The Suits Index is a numerical score that indicates the extent to which a tax is progressive or regressive. That's a pretty handy thing to know about, especially when every state in the union is debating tax policy at such high volume. The 2011 Minnesota Tax Incidence Study is too long for me to summarize here, but you can find it online HERE. That's only one report, so I'll offer a few resources to go to for general information on taxes in 2011. If you read some of this stuff you'll be able to hold your own when your legislator starts talking about how we need to be "adults" and make "courageous decisions" on how to radically cut spending. Maybe you can even go to the next "town hall forum" where this nonsense is promoted, and make your voice heard. In January of this year the liberal think tank Minnesota 2020 released a big study on tax fairness. Called "Minnesota's Tax Fairness Retreat: A 50-State Study," it was completely ignored by the corporate media in this state, but you can see it online HERE. If you don't have much time just read page 6. So much for Minnesota. The other states that I know of that do tax incidence studies are: Texas, Wisconsin, Colorado, Vermont, Kansas, Maine, and Oregon. If you live there you can get a copy from your state government, I'm sure. Or online. The national group called the Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy (ITEP) breaks down the taxation numbers for each state, including yours (except for those of you who live outside the U.S.) Just go HERE and click on your state.
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In a page-nine New York Times story of December 11th, the Times reported on some diplomatic cables leaked to them by Wikileaks. This batch had to do with communications between the Vatican and the U.S. diplomatic establishment. A lot of it was about sex abuse lawsuits and Vatican sovereignty, but what caught my eye were two comments, one in the second paragraph and one in the fourteenth. Here are the two paragraphs: "The cables were obtained by WikiLeaks and made available to The New York Times and other news organizations. They do not appear to contain any bombshells about the Vatican, but they provide a telling glimpse of how American diplomats often rely on the Roman Catholic Church's worldwide network of prelates for intelligence." "Other cables show the Catholic Church to be deeply involved in local politics worldwide and a useful source of information for American diplomats, especially in places like Cuba and Venezuela. One cable from 2006 said that a Venezuelan clergyman might be a good source on President Hugo Chavez." I don't know what the NY Times considers a "bombshell," but if the Times is using language correctly, this seems like a bombshell to me. The word "prelate" typically refers to high-ranking church officials, people like bishops and archbishops. The de facto government of the Catholic Church (The Holy See) maintains formal diplomatic relations with 178 nations, including some with which the U.S. does not, such as Iran and Cuba. So, the Times is reporting that bishops in a religious organization with worldwide reach are spying for The World's Only Superpower, and not only does it fail to make headlines, it almost fails to be noticed at all. In fact, I couldn't find any references in the U.S. media on this bombshell outside of this story. So maybe I shouldn't be criticizing the Times. At least they mentioned it. The next time you see or hear a story about how one of the official enemies of the United States is abridging "religious freedom" or "persecuting" religious leaders, consider the possibility that the problem may not be their religion, but their service to the Empire. |
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Speaking of bombshells, I found a live one buried on page 2 of the Business Section of the December 11th NY Times. The innocuous headline read: "Secret Cable Discusses Pfizer's Actions in Nigeria Case." Pfizer's "actions" were that they "hired investigators to unearth evidence of corruption against the Nigerian attorney general in order to persuade him [sic] to drop legal action over a controversial drug trial involving children with meningitis." That's according to the London Guardian, which broke the story. That "controversial drug trial" was summarized by Amy Goodman on the Democracy Now! news program on December 17th: "In 1996, Pfizer's researchers selected 200 children at an epidemic hospital in Nigeria for an experimental drug trial. About a hundred of the kids were given an untested oral version of the antibiotic Trovan. Researchers did not obtain signed consent forms, and medical personnel said Pfizer did not tell their parents their children were getting the experimental drug. Eleven children died. Others suffered disabling injuries including deafness, muteness, paralysis, brain damage, loss of sight, slurred speech." The Guardian says that Pfizer wanted to "persuade" the AG to drop the charges. Most people would call this "blackmail." And it seems to have worked. Musikilu Mojeed, a Nigerian journalist, told Democracy Now! that "a $6 billion federal suit against Pfizer disappeared secretly [and] the attorney general ... went into a secret deal with Pfizer and a few Nigerian lawyers without anybody knowing about it." The story was barely reported in the U.S. press. In the one story in the New York Times, the first person quoted is a Pfizer spokesman who says that the charges are "simply preposterous." Well, something is simply preposterous here, and it has to do with corporate power. Reporter Joe Stephens, who wrote about the drug trials in 2000 for the Washington Post, points out the part of the story that should really concern people in the U.S. Stephens said, "obviously, the allegations that something that sounds dangerously close to blackmail is being discussed, that's shocking. But also shocking is that Pfizer felt comfortable telling this to a State Department official, and it went back to Washington in a cable from the ambassador. And there's nothing critical in this report, which makes you wonder what the official U.S. government position was on these activities that were taking place." It does, indeed, make you wonder. |
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There is a simple way to tell if someone really believes in a principle, or only talks about a principle. If someone believes in something on principled grounds, then they believe in it all the time. If they are only talking about it, then they believe in it sometimes, but sometimes not. It depends, that is, on something that may be important, but it's not principle. Take U.S. support for democracy, for example. A principle? I don't think so. The April 2nd New York Times had this front-page headline: "Radicals' Turn To Democracy Alarms Egypt." Here are the opening paragraphs: "Abboud al-Zomor—the former intelligence officer who supplied the bullets that killed President Anwar el-Sadat and is Egypt's most notorious newly released prisoner—waxes enthusiastic about ending the violent jihad he once led. "'The ballot boxes will decide who will win at the end of the day,' Mr. Zomor said during an interview in his large family compound in this hamlet on Cairo's western edge. 'There is no longer any need for me to use violence against those who gave us our freedom and allowed us to be part of political life.'" The Times adds that "his Islamic Group and other groups like it... are now leaping aboard the democracy bandwagon, alarming those who believe that religious radicals are seeking to put in place strict Islamic law through ballots." The headline on this piece says that something "alarms Egypt." But if the majority of "Egypt" voted to do something, would that not be "democracy"? And, if so, should the U.S. not support it? Who, exactly, is "alarmed," and are they the minority in Egypt? If so, how can we say that "Egypt" is alarmed? Clearly there is something else going on here. I don't think there's a single political activist who hasn't dealt with the dilemma that is implied here. The phrase that comes to mind is "tyranny of the majority." That is, in a pure "majority rules" form of democracy, the people in the minority are at the mercy of the majority, and what's to stop them from imposing their will on the helpless minority? This is tricky territory, and I don't think the answer is obvious. For example, some people believe that the United States is a "Christian nation," and seek to impose what they might consider Christian law on the rest of us "through ballots." Would it be accurate to run a headline like the one in the April 2nd Times? "Radicals' Turn To Democracy Alarms U.S." A couple of issues ago (NN #475: http://www.nygaardnotes.org/issues/nn0475.html ) I went on and on about Hilary Clinton and "The Kind of Democracy That We Want to See." This story illustrates what I was talking about. The headline may read, "Radicals' Turn To Democracy Alarms Egypt," but it's apparent that the people who are really alarmed about this "turn to democracy" are some very powerful people who live far from Egypt. They are the ones, after all, whose ideas get transformed into headlines every day. |
