From Paul Krugman at the New York Times:

When you hear about the low, low taxes of people like Mr. Romney, what you need to know is that it wasn’t always thus — and the days when the superrich paid much higher taxes weren’t that long ago. Back in 1986, Ronald Reagan — yes, Ronald Reagan — signed a tax reform equalizing top rates on earned income and capital gains at 28 percent. The rate rose further, to more than 29 percent, during Bill Clinton’s first term.

Low capital gains taxes date only from 1997, when Mr. Clinton struck a deal with Republicans in Congress in which he cut taxes on the rich in return for creation of the Children’s Health Insurance Program. And today’s ultralow rates — the lowest since the days of Herbert Hoover — date only from 2003, when former President George W. Bush rammed both a tax cut on capital gains and a tax cut on dividends through Congress, something he achieved by exploiting the illusion of triumph in Iraq.

Correspondingly, the low-tax status of the very rich is also a recent development. During Mr. Clinton’s first term, the top 400 taxpayers paid close to 30 percent of their income in federal taxes, and even after his tax deal they paid substantially more than they have since the 2003 cut.

And here’s more from the same source:

And the economic record certainly doesn’t support the notion that superlow taxes on the superrich are the key to prosperity. During that first Clinton term, when the very rich paid much higher taxes than they do now, the economy added 11.5 million jobs, dwarfing anything achieved even during the good years of the Bush administration.

Read more here.

Visit msnbc.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy

How the war on drugs became a race war, from the Dylan Ratigan Show on MSNBC.

The growth of income inequality has tracked very closely with measures of political polarization, which has been gauged using the average difference between the liberal/conservative scores for Republican and Democratic members of the House.

“The proximity of these trends is uncanny,” according to a 2003 paper by researchers Nolan McCarty, Keith T. Poole and Howard Rosenthal. “Remarkably, the trends of economic inequality and elite political polarization have moved almost in tandem for the past half-century.”

Excellent commentary on this from Eric Byler at Coffee Party USA.

I assume that this is coming from some right-wing source. But you know, the CBO has a web site, and it’s easy to check this; there’s a convenient summary of the estimates here. .And, well, the estimates say that the reform is fully paid for:

Oh, and it’s paid for year by year, too — whatever you may have heard about 10 years of taxes paying for 6 years of coverage, or whatever, they’re basically lies.

More here.

Nearly two weeks after claiming that child labor laws are “truly stupid” and implying that poor children should be put to work as janitors in their schools, he now claims that poor children don’t understand work unless they’re doing something illegal.

Read the entire article. It’s worth it.

From ABC 7 Chicago:

A nun used humor to publicly scold Mayor Rahm Emanuel for ending free water for charities — and using the "s" word.

Sister Rosemary Connelly criticized the mayor’s decision to cut off charities while the two were at a breakfast fundraiser for the non-profit Misericordia, which Emanuel proposed charging for water to help plug the city’s budget gap. Connelly is Misericordia’s executive director.

Chicago’s first Jewish mayor found out what it’s like to be dressed down in public by a Catholic nun. But instead of a ruler, Sister Rosemary spanked the mayor with humor.

If Congress — meaning the Republicans in Congress as Democrats are on board — does not support President Obama’s plan to extend and expand the payroll tax cut, middle class taxes will rise.

Find out how much your taxes will rise here.

I will lose over $1000.  How much will you lose?

Watch and read President Obama’s weekly address here on this crucial issue.

Gotta love Krugman. From the New York Times:

The supercommittee was a superdud — and we should be glad. Nonetheless, at some point we’ll have to rein in budget deficits. And when we do, here’s a thought: How about making increased revenue an important part of the deal?

And I don’t just mean a return to Clinton-era tax rates. Why should 1990s taxes be considered the outer limit of revenue collection? Think about it: The long-run budget outlook has darkened, which means that some hard choices must be made. Why should those choices only involve spending cuts? Why not also push some taxes above their levels in the 1990s?

I hope the President is listening to this man. When I met David Plouffe at a book signing a couple of years ago, I mentioned Paul Krugman. David responded, “He certainly has his opinions.”

Yes, David, he does. But they’re informed opinions and the man has a Nobel Prize in ECONOMICS.

Someone at the White House, someone in Congress, PLEASE! Page Paul Krugman! We need the conscience of a liberal today, not narrow ideologies!

From ENEWSPF:

Shall we deregulate the toaster industry?

Seriously, wouldn’t the toaster industry be far better off if we just let toaster manufacturing companies make toasters without having to pay the extra costs associated with government-mandated “safety” laws and guidelines? Can’t we just trust the toaster industry to make safe toasters, and, if they don’t, and a few toasters actually catch fire or explode in people’s homes, then won’t the free market eventually put those toaster manufacturers out of business?

Read the entire article here.

Thanksgiving.

Enjoy.

According research by Nobel Prize-winning economist Peter Diamond and Emmanuel Saez, the optimal top income tax rate for wealthy earners is about 70 percent, far below today’s top rate of 35 percent. Diamond and Saez argue that the top tax rate should be set at the point where it maximizes revenue, which can then be used to aid lower-income Americans. They also note that “even increasing the average federal income tax rate of the top percentile to 43.5 percent, which would be sufficient to raise revenue by 3 percentage points of GDP, would still leave the after-tax income share of the top percentile more than twice as high as in 1970.” (HT: Americablog)

For how long can we afford to ignore these pesky Nobel Prize winners? You know, like Paul Krugman.

From the National Priorities Project (a wonderful site you should subscribe to):

The average Bush tax cut in 2011 for a taxpayer in the richest one percent is greater than the average income of the other 99 percent ($66,384 compared to $58,506).

Check out the entire page here.

What’s wrong with this picture?

This past week, 48 Senators, including Sen. Mark Kirk, put Big Oil before the American people and helped defeat a bill that would have ended tax breaks for the five biggest oil companies.1

How could anyone vote against a bill that would have kept $21 billion of American taxpayers’ money out of the pockets of cash-rich oil companies?

One big reason is oil money in our political process. A lot of it. Oil and gas companies spent $39.5 million lobbying congress in just the first quarter of this year,2 and have donated tens of millions of dollars directly to the political campaigns of current Senators, including $199,200 to Sen. Mark Kirk.3

Tell Sen. Mark Kirk: Stop putting oil company profits and campaign contributions ahead of the American people. Click here to automatically sign the petition.

In all, three Democrats joined all but two Senate Republicans to protect Big Oil tax breaks that even a former Shell CEO said weren’t needed.4

But make no mistake. Even though we didn’t get the 60 votes required for passage, our pressure to end oil subsidies is already working. More and more legislators are acting defensive about their support of Big Oil over the American people.

In February, similar legislation to repeal some oil subsidies got only 44 votes. This time, we got 52 votes. That comes after CREDO Action members sent more than 225,000 petitions to the Senate and made more than 1,000 calls to 11 key Senators, six of whom flipped their position and voted to end tax breaks to Big Oil.

Senate Majority leader Harry Reid said that despite this defeat, he will continue to push for ending oil subsides as part of negotiations on the budget and to raise the debt ceiling.5

We need to keep the pressure on. And one key to breaking Big Oil’s grasp on our legislators is letting Congress know that we know about the millions of dollars that Big Oil has given them — including the $199,200 to Sen. Mark Kirk.

Let’s make sure that voting to protect oil company profits doesn’t go unanswered by those of us who actually pay the price.

Tell Sen. Mark Kirk: Stop putting oil company profits and campaign contributions ahead of the American people. Click here to automatically sign the petition.

Thank you for taking action.

Elijah Zarlin, Campaign Manager
CREDO Action from Working Assets

P.S. — Want to find out more about the Big Oil money going to our elected officials? Our friends at the Dirty Energy Money campaign have the scoop. Click here to see how much dirty energy money your Senators and other elected officials have taken.

1. "Senate GOP Votes Down Bill To End Big Oil Subsidies," Huffington Post, May 17, 2011
2. "Senators Opposing End of Oil Subsidies Received Five Times More in Big Oil Campaign Cash," Oil Change International, May 17, 2011
3. Dirty Energy Money campaign data
4. "Ex-Shell CEO Says Big Oil Can Live Without Subsidies ," National Journal, February 11, 2011

Why, after all, should we continue to subsidize oil companies that are raking in record profits? And why, pray tell, would any United States senator, let alone one from the great state of Illinois, who claims to be fiscally prudent, stand up for Big Oil over the Illinois Tax Payers???

An article in today’s New York Times reveals so much more, reporting on the bizarre culture Zell and those he has brought in have created at the Chicago Tribune and elsewhere at the Tribune Company.

Clearly, Zell is steering company into the ground.

From the NYTimes:

In January 2008, soon after the venerable Tribune Company was sold for $8.2 billion, Randy Michaels, a new top executive, ran into several other senior colleagues at the InterContinental Hotel next to the Tribune Tower in Chicago.

Mr. Michaels, a former radio executive and disc jockey, had been handpicked by Sam Zell, a billionaire who was the new controlling shareholder, to run much of the media company’s vast collection of properties, including The Chicago Tribune, The Los Angeles Times, WGN America and The Chicago Cubs.

After Mr. Michaels arrived, according to two people at the bar that night, he sat down and said, “watch this,” and offered the waitress $100 to show him her breasts. The group sat dumbfounded.

“Here was this guy, who was responsible for all these people, getting drunk in front of senior people and saying this to a waitress who many of us knew,” said one of the Tribune executives present, who declined to be identified because he had left the company and did not want to be quoted criticizing a former employer. “I have never seen anything like it.”

The report goes downhill from there, where sexual harassment is justified as path to creative thinking, with disclaimers like this in the Tribune’s revised employee handbook:

“Working at Tribune means accepting that you might hear a word that you, personally, might not use,” the new handbook warned. “You might experience an attitude you don’t share. You might hear a joke that you don’t consider funny. That is because a loose, fun, nonlinear atmosphere is important to the creative process.” It then added, “This should be understood, should not be a surprise and not considered harassment.”

My jaw dropped several times reading this article. So sad. I don’t see how the Tribune can be taken seriously any more.