Corporate executive pay tarnishes the meaning of Labor Day

Compliments Kheel Center, Cornell University

Today is Labor Day, a day that was launched in 1882 by the Central Labor Union of New York to celebrate the economic and social contributions of American workers.  It is also the end of summer and the kids are back in school.  It’s a time for backyard barbecues and general get-togethers to eat and drink to the accomplishments of the labor movement. 

But there’s a fly in the ointment that sours the efforts of the working man and woman.  It is that corporate executive pay outpaces any increases the labor force has experienced recently and promises to continue on a path for the future that is literally obscene.  Just look at the facts below.

According to a study reported by David Kocieniewski of The New York Times, “At least 25 top United States companies paid more to their chief executives in 2010 than they did to the federal government in taxes.”  Companies like eBay, Boeing, General Electric and Verizon.  The Institute for Policy Studies report found that CEOs for those companies were paid an average of $16 million annually.  If ever there was a case for sharing the wealth, this is it.

The study concludes that in the regulatory filings of 100 companies with the best paid chief executives, current U.S. policy rewards tax avoidance rather than innovation.  There was “ample evidence” that suggests company heads are prioritizing avoiding taxes now more than ever.  That means the working person ends up paying more taxes to compensate for the shortfall from corporations.  Less pay, more taxes; sounds like the perfect environment for a Social Democracy.   

Business leaders complain of the top corporate statutory tax rate of 35 percent.  However, the report found that many of the country’s largest companies paid far less than this 35 percent figure.  On the other hand, 18 of the 25 corporations had offshore subsidiaries where income can be sheltered.  One author of the study concludes, “corporations are rewarding C.E.O.’s for aggressive tax avoidance.”

by DonkeyHotey

So as we celebrate another Labor Day, think of the GOP conservatives out there in Washington that champion big business and couldn’t give a crap about the workforce that has supported and promoted progress in this country for years.  Elections are right around the corner and maybe the time has come to consider throwing every incumbent out of office and starting over.

Another shooting death in Arizona…So what the hell

I am almost convinced that no matter how many deaths are caused by guns, nothing will be done about it.  I say almost because I still believe in those people who talk about reasonable gun control, and just the one-in-a-million chance they will eventually get the right gun legislation in place.  The laws that are currently on the books obviously don’t work.  A 30-year-old Mesa, AZ, man was gunned down recently.  He got into a fight in a convenience store parking lot and was shot by his opponent.  If nothing else, the public has a right to know:

1. If the gun was registered, did the assailant have a concealed-carry permit?
2. Did the gun come from a gun show where anyone can make a purchase?
3. Did the killer obtain the gun in Arizona?

Based on the ridiculously lax weapons laws in Arizona, these three questions could provide significant input into how to fix the gun laws.

In February of this year a truckleft New York City with a billboard of the running tally of Americans killed by gun violence since the January 2011, Tucson, AZ, massacre by Jared Loughner, which severely injured U.S. Rep. Gabby Giffords and killed 6.  As the billboard left Times Square for a 2-month swing through 25 states, the tally of gun violence deaths was 1,300, with 24 more added shortly thereafter.  The driver was Omar Sheeha, whose sister was killed in the April 2007 massacre at Virginia Tech.

 Since Arizona’sgun-death rate is among the worst in the country, the feds should start by analyzing this state’s extremely lax gun laws and pass federal legislation to correct the problem throughout the U.S.  Among those factors to consider are concealed carry, required gun education, background checks, and where firearms can be taken, like bars and schools.  The momentum seems to be building and maybe, just maybe, we could all be surprised

The Tea Party reminds me of the Mafia

When I read the recent Assoc. Press article, “As tea Party reshapes GOP, some cheer, some worry,” by Charles Babington on MSNBC, there was something in the back of my mind that reminded me of a similar gang.  Prodding on I went to the Tea Party site and found they were still bellowing over the same hogwash that we hear from their supporters on a daily basis. 

Stuff like the TP’s ridiculous Cap and Trade bill that went nowhere, getting rid of Obama’s health care reform, and promoting racist, anti-immigration laws like Arizona’s SB-1070.  But what really caught my eye was their “Voter’sGuide,” which I clicked on.  And I found out that these people are organized, providing a complete list of the candidates who ran in the 2010 election with the issues they supported.

Returning to the above article, I learned from a CBS/New York Times poll that “…only 20 percent of Americans and 41 percent of Republicans have a favorable view of the Tea Party…”  And “…just 18 percent of Americans now view themselves as Tea Party supporters…”  This latter figure was 31 percent following the 2010 election.  So how does this group of wackos wield so much power?

I’ll tell you.  The “Family” the Tea Party reminds me of is the Mafia, also known as La Cosa Nostra, the mob.  No organization I can remember had the discipline of these guys, and the same perseverance is prevalent in TP members.  Something—and the only thing—you have to admire them for. 

They even call themselves “patriots” which is hard to stomach when the TPers in the recent debt ceiling fiasco exclaimed they would rather see the USA default than compromise their “principles.”   The mob also never gave ground, and destroyed anyone and anything that stood in their way. 

Just how far will this madness go?

AZ State Sen. Russell Pearce’s version of the Ku Klux Klan

The Ku Klux Klan was a far-right extremist organization that advocated white supremacy and anti-immigration.  I grew up in the South of the 1940s and 1950s where the Klan was in full bloom and remember the attempts to scare Blacks into complete servitude in order to keep them in line.  It wasn’t a pretty picture, and I wondered then as a young man, just what had these people done to deserve this? 

Although the KKK movement wasn’t designed to run the Blacks out of the South like State Sen. Russell Pearce’s actions to force illegal Hispanic immigrants out of Arizona, it did succeed in a relocation of many Blacks to the North and West.  Southern racists actually preferred to keep the Blacks where they were and maintain an atmosphere of slavery and bondage even though it was illegal.  It would go on like this for years, and still does to some extent today.

Dee Dee Garcia, a conservative Latina activist wrotea letter to the Mormon Church re. the persecution of illegal immigrants in Arizona and how State Sen. Candidate Jerry Lewis is more in tune with the church’s Prophet, Thomas S. Monson, than his opponent Russell Pearce.  She quoted a Mormon canon of scripture as a reference to the humanism of this issue, Pearce in particular:

“We have learned by sad experience that it is the nature and disposition of almost all men, as soon as they get a little authority, as they suppose, they will immediately begin to exercise unrighteous dominion.”  §121:39.

Garcia draws a parallel between Arizona’s anti-immigration fight with the Extermination Order signed by the Missouri Governor of 1838 to drive the Mormons out of his state or be exterminated.  In this case, Joseph Smith, LDS Prophet at the time, surrendered to the Missouri militia, which resulted in the forcible removal from Missouri of virtually all members of the Church.  Precisely what State Sen. Russell Pearce had in mind for Hispanics when passing SB-1070.

The Ku Klux Klan has no stronghold in Arizona but with Pearce’s past association with J.T. Ready, confirmed racist and former neo-Nazi, and the State Senator’s relentless efforts to run all Hispanics from Arizona, he has created his own modern-day version.

It’s time to take the power from the 2-party political system

In Democrat or Republican party partisan primaries, you vote and the top vote-getter from each primary wins, going on to the general election.  In Arizona, as in most states, that is the way it is done today.  But in the Sunshine State, extremist politics slant the system toward candidates that may not actually be the choice of the people.  There is a movement on to correct this with the recent surge of Independent voters.

The Open Government Coalition ofArizona is proposing a single-primary system open to all voters where the two top vote-getters, even if they are from the same party, would advance to the general election.  This primary would completely eliminate party selection as a prerequisite for voting.  The coalition feels it will bring more Independent voters into the fold, thus, making it a more popular vote than the current system.  In Arizona, Independents number 32.5 percent of voters.

As it stands now, an Independent voting in the primary must pick one party’s ballot and go with it all the way. 

The Open Government Coalition is run by Arizona Democrat and Republican business leaders which tells us that the higher-ups are just as fed up with the state’s political extremists as the average person.  The movement started this past spring with organizers’ aversion to state politics moving to the far right.  It is this conservative right wing political manipulation that has “kept us on the front pages,” says former Phoenix Mayor, Paul Johnson.

The coalition plans to start collecting signatures this month to get the issue on the 2012 ballot.

Is it just a ploy to move Arizona politics further to the left?  Now that’s not a bad idea either.

Read more here.

It’s time to dump the Tea Party overboard

In a recent NBC News/Wall StreetJournal poll, most Americans said they want the President and Congress to compromise rather than take the hard partisan party approach.  A strong majority of Independents want compromises by Democrats but almost 70 percent want Republicans to find a middle ground.  Nearly 60 percent favor Obama’s $4 trillion proposal whereas only one-third prefer the Republican’s lower figure of $2.5 trillion.

But then the Tea Party introduced a laughable bill called “Cut, Cap and Balance” that “demands deep spending reductions and congressional approval of a balanced budget amendment to the Constitution in exchange for raising the nation's debt limit,” according to the Associated Press.  Obama calls it “duck, dodge and dismantle, and vows he will veto it if it comes to his desk. 

As an example, in Arizona, Tea Party backed Republicans voted for the House bill.  They are Trent Franks, Jeff Flake, David Schweikert and Ben Quayle.  These four supposed congressional leaders wasted precious time to meet the Aug. 2, deadline because of the pressure from Tea Party wackos.  The bill passed the House 234 to 190.

The most important finding in the NBC News/WSJ poll is the fact that Americans are more favorable toward raising taxes on corporations and the wealthy to balance the budget than cutting Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid.  Some 52 percent oppose the latter.  Considering the major thrust of the GOP is to protect corporations and the wealthy, isn’t it safe to assume the grand old party has completely lost touch with its American constituency?

Conservative talk-radio stinks

First off, there’s Glenn Beck’s continuous ranting that everything even slightly liberal is a Socialistic plot to overthrow the American government.  Like most conservative talk crackpots, he never gets anything right.  It’s too bad Beck can’t be recalled from broadcasting like politicians from their seat in Congress.  Beck was caught in a big lie recently over Arizona’s Mexican border and Americans’ guns. 

Now he has compared the murdered victims of Norway’s massacre by Anders Behring Breivik to the Nazi youth movement.  Beck said:  "There was a shooting at a political camp, which sounds a little like the Hitler Youth, or whatever.”  Then later, “I mean, who does a camp for kids that's all about politics?  Disturbing.”  It is beyond me how anyone could follow this maniac after a statement like that.  It only proves the low mentality of his radio audience.  He was kicked off TV.

Glenn Beck is broadcast by KTAR radio in Phoenix, which I never listen to except for the news.  But recently I decided to see what the other side was talking about early AM on my way to take my car in for maintenance.  Two ignoramuses were congratulating President Obama on his birthday, while exclaiming he had done nothing since elected in 2008.  After considering the source, I decided to research Obama’s accomplishments since taking office.

Following are a few, but you can see the complete list of 90 here: Appointed two moderate Supreme Court judges, both female, one Hispanic; moved us closer to Universal Healthcare to cover all Americans; Financial industry reform; Pulled us from the brink of another Great Depression orchestrated by George W. Bush and his band of conservatives; Finally winding down the war in Iraq; environmental legislation. 

The list was compiled by 3ChicsPolitico and there are many more of the President’s feats, but that’s probably all the two KTAR baboons can handle for now.  Sorry, the monkey family didn’t deserve that.

Wacko newspaper relentless in pursuit of Obama birther issue

The Sonoran News, published in cowboy town, Cave Creek, AZ, has been on a harebrained tirade over whether Barack Obama is an American citizen; intimating that he isn’t and not qualified to be President of the United States.  Even another conservative wacko running for Obama’s job, Michele Bachmann, says his birth certificate settles the issue. 

But in a Sonoran News article byLinda Bentley on July 20, the birther thing raises its ugly head again in the form of a Summit on this controversy in March of 2012.  I guess someone has to vent this crap, and it is fortunate that it is in a neighborhood rag tucked away in the Northeast section of Phoenix that has a limited readership.  I’m all for the 1^st Amendment but this comes off like a vendetta.

Some deluded crackpot by the name of Dean Haskins has organized the Birther Summit scheduled to take place in Washington, DC, on March 28-30, in 2012.  He says “Barack Obama’s ineligibility” (to be in the Whitehouse) is the Summit’s “line in the sand.”  Apparently Haskins has spent too many days in the desert talking to too many saguaros that no doubt flipped him off as cuckoo.

Haskins questions Obama as a person and said to the Sonoran News, “Allowing this nefarious band of reprobates to continue refusing to properly resolve this constitutional catastrophe they created will be the death knell of America. Their next assault on our Constitution and heritage will be that much harder, if not impossible, to stop.”  Unfortunately, it’s too far from Christmas to offer this fruitcake as a gift…to the epitome of kooks, the Tea Party.

Read more here.

Enough is enough. It’s time to challenge the 2nd Amendment

How did we ever allow gun rights advocates to amass such power? For years we’ve given in to the gun nuts who scream they have unlimited rights for their weapons under the 2nd Amendment. There are 27 Amendments to the U.S. constitution but the one we hear the most about is the 2nd. And it is also the one that we can thank for the gun violence that is reported on a daily basis in the media. Even though it’s improving, gun killings are still a daily event.

The latest two mass murders by shooting are in Arizona and Texas, and I’m not even talking about the one in Tucson, AZ, last January involving Rep. Gabby Giffords. Three bikers were shot and killed at Mormon Lake last Friday night at a motorcycle rally. The victims were reported to be from the Phoenix area, according to the Tucson Daily Sun. Another woman was shot six times and is just “clinging to life.” The rally, which took place about 35 miles southeast of Flagstaff, had 2,000 attendees.

In Grand Prairie, Texas, six people were shot dead by a gunman at a roller rink this past Saturday. Four others were wounded with their conditions unknown at area hospitals, according to the Chicago Tribune. It was a private birthday party but at least no children were involved in the shooting. The gunman ended up shooting himself and is included in the six dead. Participants say a man drew a pistol during a fight between a husband and his wife. The relation between the gunman and his victims was not clear.

Neither of these killers would have had the firepower necessary to carry out these massacres had it not been for the lax gun laws in Arizona and Texas, made possible by the 2nd Amendment. Has the time finally come to reevaluate the 2nd Amendment and make radical changes to the gun laws throughout the U.S.?

Read more here and here.

Obama vague on medical marijuana but so is Constitution

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According to the Tenth Amendment Center, the Constitution doesn’t really give the feds the right to control marijuana in states.  It is the interpretation from a “group of activist judges that one blogger described as nine unelected and unaccountable bureaucratic central planners who detest the limits of the Constitution,” they claim.  The Tenth Amendment says: “The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people.”

Based on commerce laws, the Center states, “the federal government has no genuine constitutional authority to regulate marijuana, medical or otherwise, that is never transported across state lines for commercial purposes.”  As an example, if the plant is grown in and stays in the state of Arizona, it should be regulated by state law.  Is this what Arizona Gov. Jan Brewer and AG Tom Horne are going for in their lawsuit?  I doubt it; as opponents of the new law, they just want to stop it.

In November 2010, voters passed the Arizona Medical Marijuana Act, a citizen initiative, Proposition 203.  It made the use of medical marijuana legal in the state of Arizona and was to begin processing user authorizations in April of 2011.  Instead, Arizona’s boneheaded Gov. and AG filed a lawsuit to challenge the legality of the will of the people.

The infrastructure is all set and ready to go, but the bobbsey twins decided to take it to court and prevent those in Arizona who really need the marijuana for medicinal purposes to get it.  In the meantime the feds have confirmed a lack of interest in prosecution.

Read more here.

Nasty Jack launches new blog for progressive critical commentary

Critical commentary is necessary to keep daily living in perspective, particularly when it comes to politics.  But there is also education, healthcare, government and religion, to name a few major areas.  They all have their issues, and I plan to cover each and every one of them in this blog. 

To criticize is to find fault with, judge, and/or discuss the merits or shortcomings of a matter of importance.  Subjects that are crucial to all of us happen on an hourly basis and need attention to help in rooting out the problems in the system.  The latter is the daily environment in which we live and participate on an individual basis in our attempt to survive.

My intent is to point out these concerns and raise red flags, even create controversies when I think the system is wrong and needs fixing.  You as a reader can agree or disagree, but I will always welcome your comments regardless of where you stand on the issue.  Join me in making Nasty Jack a fixture in progressive thinking.