billions

Warren Buffett has a great op-ed in today's Times, in which he says it is time for Washington to extend the "shared sacrifice" we hear so much about to the rich, including himself:

OUR leaders have asked for “shared sacrifice.” But when they did the asking, they spared me. I checked with my mega-rich friends to learn what pain they were expecting. They, too, were left untouched.

While the poor and middle class fight for us in Afghanistan, and while most Americans struggle to make ends meet, we mega-rich continue to get our extraordinary tax breaks. Some of us are investment managers who earn billions from our daily labors but are allowed to classify our income as “carried interest,” thereby getting a bargain 15 percent tax rate. Others own stock index futures for 10 minutes and have 60 percent of their gain taxed at 15 percent, as if they’d been long-term investors.

These and other blessings are showered upon us by legislators in Washington who feel compelled to protect us, much as if we were spotted owls or some other endangered species. It’s nice to have friends in high places.

Buffett doesn't hide anything either. He breaks out the raw numbers. Last year Buffett paid 17.4% in federal taxes, while the employees in his office paid an average 36%.

Stop and think about that for a moment. The tax burden for the richest people in this country is more than 1/2 of what the bottom 99% of this country carries. Not only that, but we have a big name in the top 1% here saying that it isn't fair to the rest of us and must be changed.

The Economic Policy Institute has released a chart showing the average overall tax rates in 1979, 1992 and 2007. The picture isn’t pretty.

While the tax rate for you, me and the other 99% of this country has remained pretty much the same over the years, the tax rate for the top 1% has seen a nice decrease in their tax burden and the top 400 households have seen a reduction that leaves them paying less a share than the rest of the country.

How is this fair?

To answer that question, we must throw out everything we know about math and enter the world of GOP economics. You constantly hear the GOP say that these poor rich people have to pay the most in taxes. Of course they do because they also earn the biggest chunk of the money in this country. But for things to be fair, we mustn’t look at total amounts, but rather shares. You and me haven’t thrived off the American dream, but we are paying a bigger share than those who have. The people who need the money the most and would be more out to spend any extra money, which would boost our economy, see a bigger percentage of their earnings go to taxes than the ultra-rich.

Perhaps a good place to start looking at government waste is in the military contracts, specifically those tied to the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan:

A new report from a bipartisan commission set up to scrutinize the unprecedented use of contractors in Iraq and Afghanistan concludes that the United States has wasted tens of billions of the nearly $177 billion that has been spent on those contracts and grants since 2002.

The report, titled "At What Risk? Correcting Over-reliance on Contractors in Contingency Operations," said its estimate may even understate the problem because it may not take into full account ill-conceived projects, poor planning and oversight by the U.S. government, as well as criminal behavior and blatant corruption by both government and contractor employees.

"For many years," the report says, "the government has abdicated its contracting responsibilities - too often using contractors as the default mechanism ... without consideration for the resources needed to manage them."

And I’m sure the number is higher. I wonder if they even considered the $9 billion that went missing in Iraq in 2003-2004? You know, that money, which whenever Democrats brought up the Republicans didn’t want to hear about it.

How can we even begin to talk about “financial responsibility” when this gross lack of oversight/accounting can continue to go on in our government without any talks of reform?

It’s been three years since Viacom went after YouTube for the Viacom videos being on the site. Today a judge threw out the lawsuit:

Today, the court granted our motion for summary judgment in Viacom’s lawsuit with YouTube. This means that the court has decided that YouTube is protected by the safe harbor of the Digital Millenium Copyright Act (DMCA) against claims of copyright infringement. The decision follows established judicial consensus that online services like YouTube are protected when they work cooperatively with copyright holders to help them manage their rights online.

This is an important victory not just for us, but also for the billions of people around the world who use the web to communicate and share experiences with each other. We’re excited about this decision and look forward to renewing our focus on supporting the incredible variety of ideas and expression that billions of people post and watch on YouTube every day around the world.

In a nutshell the Judge said that there is a legal route for copyright owners to file their complaints with websites they feel are infringing upon their property and that they must follow that route. It doesn’t mean you can go and upload a Daily Show clip to YouTube. It means that if you do, then Viacom must send a takedown notice to YouTube and YouTube must investigate and comply.

For those interested in the full decision, here it is:

Msj Decision

Stories like his always make me think of how much we are screwing with Mother Nature and how much she fights back:

But farmers sprayed so much Roundup that weeds quickly evolved to survive it. “What we’re talking about here is Darwinian evolution in fast-forward,” Mike Owen, a weed scientist at Iowa State University, said.

Now, Roundup-resistant weeds like horseweed and giant ragweed are forcing farmers to go back to more expensive techniques that they had long ago abandoned.

I read stories like this and wonder if Monsanto, the company that created Round Up, didn’t have this in mind? They could make billions off their product and by the time the patents open up and competition starts forming, then the weeds will no longer be susceptible to the killer and Monsanto can create a new, more expensive weed killer.

In the end I don’t think Monsanto will win this war however. In my mind Mother Nature will go nuclear and kick Monsanto’s ass, perhaps with some Little Shop of Horrors style plants.

Now that the American people have bailed out the banking system and our leaders are looking at ways to recoup the hundreds of billions of tax dollars we have spent, Wall Street is starting to look at ways to get out of paying us back.

According to an article in today’s New York Times, the Securities Industry and Financial Markets Association, which is the main lobbying arm of Wall Street, sent a e-mail to the heads of Wall Street’s legal departments last week saying that the tax may be unconstitutional since it would single out big banks. They have also hired Carter G. Phillips of Sidley Austin, an attorney who is no stranger to the Supreme Court, to review the proposal and determine if it could be considered unconstitutional.

When introducing this proposal last week, President Obama sent a warning shot to Wall Street, saying: “Instead of sending a phalanx of lobbyists to fight this proposal or employing an army of lawyers and accountants to help evade the fee, I suggest you might want to consider simply meeting your responsibilities.” Now it seems like Wall Street isn’t intent on doing that and instead wants to fight their responsibilities.

This becomes another gloomy chapter in corporate America’s milking of the people. They stood with their hands out when is was time to pass out money from the stimulus, but now that the government wants to take action to recoup costs and maybe prevent further failures, Wall Street is turning their noses at us. You can just hear Gordon Gecko muttering those famous words: “greed is good.”

Anyone shocked by this?

Even as drug makers promise to support Washington’s health care overhaul by shaving $8 billion a year off the nation’s drug costs after the legislation takes effect, the industry has been raising its prices at the fastest rate in years.

In the last year, the industry has raised the wholesale prices of brand-name prescription drugs by about 9 percent, according to industry analysts. That will add more than $10 billion to the nation’s drug bill, which is on track to exceed $300 billion this year. By at least one analysis, it is the highest annual rate of inflation for drug prices since 1992.

So the drug companies promised Obama to cut costs by $8 billion, but first will raise those costs by $10 billion. I’m not a math whiz or anything, but that sure seems like a nice $2 billion boost for big Pharma.

I was thinking about drug prices yesterday while football was on. During one game there was the halftime report, and it was sponsored by Lipitor. I wonder how much that costs Pfizer? How about all those commercials for drugs and medical devices, like a common one for cardiac stents?

Drug companies spend billions a year in advertising for products that shouldn’t have to be sold to the public. To make this statistic even worse, they spend more in advertising than they do research. Why should Joe citizen need to be sold on Lipitor? One would think that would be the job of his doctor. If Joe has high cholesterol, then Joe’s doctor says “hey take this pill”.  The money pharma spends on advertising is a total waste that does nothing but drive up the costs of our medications.

The right is up in arms (no pun intended) over President Obama’s plan to scrap the Bush missile defense system. He hasn’t totally given up on it, instead working towards making a more mobile and cost effective system. The right just doesn’t like that.

The main idea of this missile defense system has been for protection of Europe from Iranian missiles, with a little added protection for the U.S. maybe.

So why is it the right is all for spending billions to defend Europe, yet they don’t want to spend a dime to defend U.S. citizens from a much more threatening killer – disease and illness? When you think about it along these terms, you quickly realize seriously misplaced priorities of the right.