Luminous Animal

Luminous Animal's Journal

December 28, 2012

Please but you are wrong. Please see the worksheet below.

The three scenarios presented below include incomes that would all fall into the 25% bracket on ordinary income. None actually pay 25%. The highest in that bracket comes close when adding SS and MED FICA but considering federal income taxes alone, the lowest will end up paying 11% federal income taxes and the highest will end up paying 18% federal income taxes. (The percentage tax computation chart that I used comes from the IRS 1040 handbook.)

This pattern holds true for every bracket. The lowest ordinary income in a bracket will pay a smaller percentage of federal income tax than the highest income in the same bracket.

What skews the percentage for the wealthy is that they rarely take the standard deductions because their mortgage, property tax, and charitable contributions combined will be much huger than the standard. Also, long term capital gains are taxed at 15% and the wealthy can take advantage off off-shore tax shelters. And keep in mind that SS FICA is only assessed on the first $106,000 in income.

That is why people like Mitt Romney and Warren Buffet are able to pay a lower percentage of their income than someone in the 25% tax bracket.

December 12, 2012

The racist fascist father of the 20th century "right to work" movement, Vance Muse...

http://www.nsfwcorp.com/dispatch/right-to-work

You Hate "Right To Work" Laws More Than You Know. Here's Why

Vance Muse was a racist political operative and lobbyist from the state of Texas — the native habitat for all America’s vermin —as Satanically vile as “Turd Blossom” Rove, a racist smear-peddler like Andrew Breitbart, only without Breitbart’s degenerate heart and fondness for blow.

......

Among Vance Muse’s “reactionary enterprises”: He lobbied against women’s suffrage, against the child-labor amendment, against the 8-hour workday, and in 1936, Muse engineered the first split in the South’s Democratic Party by peeling off the segregationists and racists from the New Deal party, a political maneuver that eventually led to Strom Thurmond, George Wallace, and at last a Republican right-wing takeover of the South, and with it, the collapse of the old New Deal coalition. Which worked out fine for Vance Muse, since he was a covert Republican himself, serving “for years” as the Republican Party state treasurer in Texas.

That first attempt at splitting the Democratic party by peeling away the Southern segregationist-fascists took place in 1936, when Georgia’s brutal white supremacist governor, Eugene Talmadge, organized a “grassroots” convention with Vance Muse’s help. To stir up anti-FDR and anti-New Deal hate in the South, Vance Muse used photographs he acquired showing First Lady Eleanor Roosevelt being escorted by two African-American professors at Howard University. Muse used that photo to stir up the white supremacists in Georgia, he leaked it to as many newspapers as he could, and he even brandished it around a Senate hearing he was called before in 1936. Those hearings revealed that the anti-FDR “convention” that Vance Muse put on, through his “Southern Committee to Uphold the Constitution”— which featured guests of honor like Gerald L K Smith, America’s leading anti-Semite and godfather to the modern American Nazi movement — was financed not only by Confederate sponsors like Texan Will Clayton, owner of the world’s largest cotton broker, but also reactionary northeast Republican money: the DuPont brothers, J. Howard Pew of Sun Oil, Alfred Sloan of General Motors... That unholy alliance of Northeastern and Confederate plutocrat money financed the first serious attempt at splitting the Southern Democrats off by exploiting white supremacism, all in order to break labor power and return to the world before the New Deal — and to the open shop.

The article is chocked full of useful information and well worth reading in its entirety.

I'll end this with a quote from Vance Muse the opens the linked article.

“From now on, white women and white men will be forced into organizations with black African apes whom they will have to call ‘brother’ or lose their jobs.”
— Vance Muse, founder of the “right to work” anti-labor campaign

December 7, 2012

Manning: daily reporting from Nathan Fuller.

Day 1: Defense questions Quantico base commander Col. Daniel Choike.

http://www.bradleymanning.org/news/military-feared-independent-reviews-of-bradleys-treatment-notes-from-the-courtroom-112712

When the former Security Battalion Commander in charge of Quantico, Col. Robert G. Oltman, and Col. Choike discussed an independent mental health professional’s impending visit to the Marine brig, the two expressed reservations about what the review would conclude. Col. Choike asked if the visit could be blocked or pushed back, and Col. Oltman assured him that this could be “easily done with an email.”

In emails, Col. Choike attempted to justify this position, saying, “armchair quarterbacks are not welcome,” and that whoever reviewed the confinement would need “expertise” to understand the command structure and why the military needed to keep Bradley on Prevention of Injury watch. When Bradley’s defense brought an Article 138 Complaint (a complaint any member of the Armed Forces can make against his or her commanding officer), the military assigned the Marines’ own Chief Warrant Officer 5 Abel Galaviz to investigate the conditions, despite the fact that Galaviz and his superior officers had already been involved with and approved of Bradley’s confinement status.

Col. Choike testified at length about his specific role in reviewing and maintaining Bradley’s maximum security, the collective refusal to listen to brig psychiatrists’ recommendations for medium security, and just how involved three-star General George Flynn was in directing Bradley’s confinement.

The article also reports that mocked taking away Manning's underwear with a Dr. Seuss-like poem.

November 29, 2012

Bradley Manning testifying today...

From

Ed Pilkington ‏@Edpilkington https://twitter.com/Edpilkington

BRADLEY MANNING on board that kept him on harsh regime: 'It was weighted against me, they were looking to justify decision already made'

BRADLEY MANNING 'The most entertaining thing in my cell was the mirror. You can interact with yourself. I spent a lot of time with it'

BRADLEY MANNING 'I was authorised to have 20 minutes sunshine call' – ie 20 mins outside his cell - in chains - every 24 hours

BRADLEY MANNING: 'I was not allowed to exercise in my cell. So I would practice dance moves as dancing wasn't listed as exercise'

BRADLEY MANNING SPEAKS: 'If I needed toilet paper I would stand to attention and shout: “Detainee Manning requests toilet paper!”'

BRADLEY MANNING: 'You could see the reflection of the reflection of the skylight if you angled your face on the cell door' - Quantico

BRADLEY MANNING: 'If you put your head on cell door & looked through crack you could see reflection of t window' – on Quantico

BRADLEY MANNING: Lawyer draws life-sized Quantico cell on floor of court and soldier stands in it to recreate his conditions #WikiLeaks

BRADLEY MANNING: ' “I didn't think I would set foot on American soil for a long time. It was great to be back on US soil”

BRADLEY MANNING SPEAKS: 'I remember thinking I'm going to die. I thought I was going to die in a cage' – on Kuwait

BRADLEY MANNING SPEAKS: 'The early time frame was a total blur. Nights blended into days, days into nights' – on time in Kuwait

BRADLEY MANNING SPEAKS: 'I had pretty much given up. I thought I was going to die in this 8x8 animal cage' - on Kuwait

November 28, 2012

The history of misandry...

http://unknownmisandry.blogspot.com/2011/02/misandry-word-its-origin.html

It seems that it's use was heavily targeting suffragists and feminists. (Thus, it's current revival.)

I personally feel that the word had to be coined in order to separate it from misanthrope. For many millennia, only men were considered persons or humans so misanthrope worked just fine to describe a hero's or anti-hero's distaste for the company of men. With the rise of the suffragist & feminists movements in the 19th century, certainly a word needed to be coined in order for the status quo to try to make sense of their activism.

"Women want to vote, eh? What's their problem?

- "Well, you see, they hate men."

"Ah, got it."

October 18, 2012

Shaun Bauer in solitary in an Iranian prison for 4 months, looks at U.S. Prisons

http://www.motherjones.com/special-reports/2012/10/solitary-confinement-shane-bauer

California officials frequently cite possession of black literature, left-wing materials, and writing about prisoner rights as evidence of gang affiliation. In the dozens of cases I reviewed, gang investigators have used the term "[BGF] training material" to refer to publications by California Prison Focus, a group that advocates the abolition of the SHUs; Jackson's once best-selling Soledad Brother; a pamphlet said to reference "Revolutionary Black Nationalism, The Black Internationalist Party, Marx, and Lenin"; and a pamphlet titled "The Black People's Prison Survival Guide." This last one advises inmates to read books, keep a dictionary handy, practice yoga, avoid watching too much television, and stay away from "leaders of gangs."

The list goes on. Other materials considered evidence of gang involvement have included writings by Mumia Abu-Jamal; The Black Panther Party: Reconsidered, a collection of academic essays by University of Cincinnati professor Charles Jones; pictures of Assata Shakur, Malcolm X, George Jackson, and Nat Turner; and virtually anything using the term "New Afrikan." At least one validation besides Pennington's referenced handwritten pages of "Afro centric ideology."

As warden of San Quentin Prison in the 1980s, Daniel Vasquez oversaw what was then the country's largest SHU. He's now a corrections consultant and has testified on behalf of inmates seeking to reverse their validations. As we sat in his suburban Bay Area home, he told me it is "very common" for African American prisoners who display leadership qualities or radical political views to end up in the SHU. Similarly, he recalls, "we were told that when an African American inmate identified as being Muslim, we were supposed to watch them carefully and get their names."

And much much more...

It is long and it is heartbreaking.

September 18, 2012

Misconceptions and Realities About Who Pays Taxes

http://www.cbpp.org/cms/index.cfm?fa=view&id=3505

The 51 percent and 46 percent figures are anomalies that reflect the unique circumstances of the past few years, when the economic downturn greatly swelled the number of Americans with low incomes. The figures for 2009 are particularly anomalous; in that year, temporary tax cuts that the 2009 Recovery Act created — including the “Making Work Pay” tax credit and an exclusion from tax of the first $2,400 in unemployment benefits — were in effect and removed millions of Americans from the federal income tax rolls. Both of these temporary tax measures have since expired.

In 2007, before the economy turned down, 40 percent of households did not owe federal income tax. This figure more closely reflects the percentage that do not owe income tax in normal economic times.[4]

These figures cover only the federal income tax and ignore the substantial amounts of other federal taxes — especially the payroll tax — that many of these households pay. As a result, these figures greatly overstate the share of households that do not pay federal taxes. Tax Policy Center data show that only about 17 percent of households did not pay any federal income tax or payroll tax in 2009, despite the high unemployment and temporary tax cuts that marked that year.[5] In 2007, a more typical year, the figure was 14 percent. This percentage would be even lower if it reflected other federal taxes that households pay, including excise taxes on gasoline and other items.

Most of the people who pay neither federal income tax nor payroll taxes are low-income people who are elderly, unable to work due to a serious disability, or students, most of whom subsequently become taxpayers. (In years like the last few, this group also includes a significant number of people who have been unemployed the entire year and cannot find work.)

Moreover, low-income households as a group do, in fact, pay federal taxes. Congressional Budget Office data show that the poorest fifth of households paid an average of 4.0 percent of their incomes in federal taxes in 2007, the latest year for which these data are available — not an insignificant amount given how modest these households’ incomes are; the poorest fifth of households had average income of $18,400 in 2007.[6] The next-to-the bottom fifth — those with incomes between $20,500 and $34,300 in 2007 — paid an average of 10.6 percent of their incomes in federal taxes.

Moreover, even these figures greatly understatelow-income households’ totaltax burden because these households also pay substantial state and local taxes. Data from the Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy show that the poorest fifth of households paid a stunning 12.3 percent of their incomes in state and local taxes in 2011.[7]

When all federal, state, and local taxes are taken into account, the bottom fifth of households pays about 16 percent of their incomes in taxes, on average. The second-poorest fifth pays about 21 percent.[8]

July 20, 2012

ABC News has retracted.

http://www.politico.com/blogs/media/2012/07/abc-news-tea-party-connection-incorrect-129588.html

"An earlier ABC News broadcast report suggested that a Jim Holmes of a Colorado Tea Party organization might be the suspect, but that report was incorrect. Several other local residents with similar names were also contacted via social media by members of the public who mistook them for the suspect".

July 11, 2012

http://www.thisismyabortion.com/

A woman takes pictures of her abortion...

My intention in documenting and sharing my abortion is to demystify the sensationalist images propagated by the religious and political right on this matter. The perverse use of lifeless fetus photographs are a propaganda tool in the prolife/prochoice debate in which women and their bodies are used as pawns to push a cultural, political, and religious agenda in the United States.

At 6 weeks of pregnancy, my abortion looked very different than the images I saw when I entered the clinic that day.

This is my abortion.

To learn more about this project, please read my oped for The Guardian.

http://www.thisismyabortion.com/

July 10, 2012

Not one of those links claims Awlaki's son was with al-Banna and & none cited the Obama admin.

1) The hidden OP was headlined thus: "Obama's Administration Killed a 16-Year-Old American and Didn't Say Anything About It"
All of your links come from Yemeni sources. Do you have a link from the Obama admin

2) There were several strikes that night. One of your links says 5 strikes one of which killed al-Banna but no mention that Awlaki's son was killed in the same strike, one of your links says 27 killed but no mention of the number of strikes and again no mention that Awlaki's son was with al-Banna. In fact, the source cited for al-Banna's death and the source for Alwaki's son's death are two different people. The 1st is a Yemeni "official"; the 2nd a "tribal leader." The 3rd link says 3 strikes and doesn't mention al-Banna at all.

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