ocrow

Just gonna post this here for reference: John Garamendi's campaign donations: http://www.opensecrets.org/politicians/summary.php?cid=N00030856&cycle=2010

OK, it's not just a choice between what we have and socialism, right? There are a lot of policies which affect the distribution of wealth. Many of those policies were tilted during the Bush years towards the very affluent. We need to tilt them back a bit.

Closing loopholes on corporate tax -- most corporations pay a tiny fraction of the tax that they otherwise ought to. The top tax rate could be higher. Inheritance tax is another huge one. To understand why these are necessary you have to think about how life works for very rich people. If you have loads of money, you invest almost all of it. Those investments start to pay dividends, and you re-invest the dividends. You make your money grow. For poor people, that's not how life works, obviously. Poor people spend almost all of their income. So, the government taxes rich and poor people at the same rate, the rich will get richer because they invest, and the poor will get poorer because more of the wealth is tied up with the rich people.

That's where inheritance tax comes in ... by taking a big slice out of an estate when someone dies and putting it into the general fund you forestall the accumulation of property in the hands of a tiny minority and put it back into service of the society as a whole by spending it on programs with general social benefit. Same with the top tax rate ... that affects a tiny minority of the population, but those people control a massive, massive proportion of the county's wealth.

We can't let these changes stick, or else we're dooming ourselves to poverty. We have to tilt the table back a bit.

http://www.colbertnation.com/the-colbert-report-videos/221843/march-16-2009/neil-gaiman

Holy shit. Colbert just busts out the Tom Bombadil song from memory. Damn yo. Geek ups.

Thanks for your work against the pipeline and to protect the land from pollution.

As someone who believes that climate change is a serious threat, I see any infrastructure which significantly reduces the cost of further developing the dirtiest fossil fuels as worthy of opposition.

What is one thing that you wish was more widely appreciated about your tribe/nation?