People Are Now Second Class Citizens of Our Great Country

It's stuff like this that just makes me want to say, &%^&*^#%^^$!!!!!

Again, a single corporation is able to pump as much water it wants out of the areas aquifer, affecting more than a hundred thousand people for the next few years, for the grand sum of $230?!! Why didn't they meter it? It'd been a sweet source of revenue for the county. All this is happening in the midst of drought conditions. Quite a privileged deal for the corporation, far greater than I think any citizen could expect.

So the company basically gets all the water it wants for free, while the actual living breathing human beings are charged? Are there water restrictions in effect for the citizens? Are we are so programmed so as to complacently step back and don't even bother our minds about this outrageous injustice? Why does this corporation have such a privileged status compared to the citizens of the area? Do you know Nestle is not an American company? It's Swiss. So a foreign corporation is given privileged status over American citizens.

Nestle makes millions a year selling Madison's water. Madison should at least get a cut of that. Else Nestle is totally disrespecting the citizens of Madison. No doubt Nestle thinks you're just a bunch of stupid hicks and rubes.

We need a complete overhaul of taxation.

It seems those that benefit the most from our country and economy, should have the greatest responsibility to support the system.

1) A Security Transaction Excise Tax:

We pay sales taxes on everything else from food to cars to property, why not on securities purchases? It can be a little as a quarter to a half cent on the dollar.

2) Capital Gains Tax:

At present the capital gains tax is something like five to fifteen percent, which is far less than someone pays on income derived from their labor, which can be thirty nine percent.

There seems to be two different kinds of capital gains. One is dividends, i.e., the profits of a corporation are dispensed to the shareholders. Thus we have individuals that make their money sitting by the pool drinking their martinis waiting for their checks to arrive. These people expect to make money on that which they bestow no labor. Talk about lazy!  

The other type of capital gain is the buying and selling of securities, and the profit made on the transactions. Now I understand the meaning of "investment," that is floating capital to a corporation in return for a cut of the profits. Consider this:

At the end of World War II, the average holding period for a stock was four years. By 2000, it was eight months. By 2008, it was two months. And by 2011, it was 22 seconds, at least according to one professor’s estimate. Scott Patterson, Dark Pools

You can't say you're investing in a company when you hold the stock for a mere twenty two seconds! You're just gaming the system. This is where High Frequency Trading comes in. It's entirely parasitical in nature, and distorts the market.

I'm thinking a fifty to ninety nine percent tax dependent on how long you hold the security, with a decent deduction for retirement accounts.

3) Income Tax, or Tax on Labor:

This still needs to be progressive in nature, but I think we could bring it down to a top rate of twenty five to thirty percent.

4) Tariffs:

I know these are anathema to the globalists out there, but I'm not one of them. The outsourcing of manufacturing to places like China for the last thirty years have decimated the great middle class of our country. Just look at my hometown, Detroit, to see what this has done to America. Detroit was the greatest industrial city in the world when I was growing up there in the fifties and sixties. It's now a picture of what the one percent have wrought with their class warfare of the past thirty or forty years.

5) Corporate Income Tax:

I confess I'm a little ambivalent because these are passed on to consumers. However, as late as the sixties, the corporate income tax accounted for thirty percent of receipts. I see no reason why profitable corporations should get a free pass, or even additional funds from the Treasury. They are wanting something for nothing. They don't give that to their workers, so why should we give it to them?

I think one percent off the top is a good place to start.

Corporate Power Comes Home - LTE to VDT 3.10.11

How is it that one foreign corporation, that has just come into existence to do this project, can have greater power than all of the thousands of citizens affected, and their elected governments?

No, I'm not talking about the Keystone XL pipeline, but the issues are the same. This one wants to run a thirty six inch gas pipeline through a number of states and counties, including Lowndes, affecting thousands of landowners. It's known as Sabal Trail Transmission, LLC, and is the unholy offspring of Spectra Corp. and NextEra Energy. 

How can one foreign corporation (they're from out of state), have so much power vis-a-vis the thousands of landowners and citizens of Lowndes County, that the citizens must give up a hundred foot wide swath of their land, along with the depreciation of their property values, not to mention their personal safety, and allow this pipeline to come through? The gas is not even for use in Lowndes County, or even the state of Georgia. However, the general feeling is we have to give in to the corporation's demands. County Commission Chairman Slaughter, is quoted as saying, "There's nothing we can do."

Does anyone else see the problem here? Why must we, the citizens and landowners of Lowndes County, Georgia, have to give up our land and security to a foreign corporation of absolutely no benefit to the citizens and landowners of Lowndes County, Georgia? How is this corporation given a privileged status greater than the thousands of people who live here?

They edited out my last paragraph.

Chairman Slaughter, you were elected to represent the citizens of Lowndes County, not roll over and play dead in the face of some out of state corporation. If you don't think you can represent your constituents, if you're not up to the task, then perhaps you should resign your position and let us elect someone who can. 

Rand Paul: Shilling for the Frackers

"I would immediately get every obstacle out of the way for our export on oil and gas. And I would begin drilling in every possible conceivable place within our territories in order to have production that we can supply Europe with if it's interrupted from Ukraine," he said on "Fox News Sunday" when asked how he would approach the crisis in Ukraine.

Since Rand Paul doesn't seem to be some Vice President of Marketing for the American Petroleum Institute, or the NGSA, I must assume he's been hired on in some fashion, considering the way he's shilling for the gas industry.

Natural gas has become the next hot commodity. The fossil fuel industry and their groupies, are touting it as America's "energy independence," and more especially, look to export said natural gas. Europe is in a precarious position with it's dependence on Russian gas, with numerous pipelines running across the Ukraine. The glut of natural gas in the US is due to the glut of fracking going on everywhere they can. If fracking was a clean industry, I wouldn't care, but it's extremely poisonous, and a fossil fuel industry that contributes substantially to greenhouse gasses leading to climate change and global warming that will have severe consequences on my children and grandchildren.

The US has the capacity to get all its energy needs through renewable sources. We no longer need fossil fuels and could systematically phase them out. Thus, I do not trust anyone who would tout such a throwback and poisonous source of energy.

Pipeline Corporate Power Comes Home in Georgia

How is it that one foreign corporation, that has just come into existence to do this project, can have greater power than all of the thousands of citizens affected, and their elected governments?

No, I'm not talking about the Keystone XL pipeline, but the issues are the same. This one wants to run a thirty six inch gas pipeline through a number of states and counties, including mine, affecting thousands of landowners. It's known as Sabal Trail Transmission, LLC, and is the unholy offspring of Spectra Corp. and NextEra Energy. This is a great primer on the issue, and here's the excellent site of the folks fighting this pipeline.

I get back to my question, how can one foreign corporation (they're from out of state), have so much power vis-a-vis the thousands of landowners and citizens, that the citizens must give up a hundred foot wide swath of their land, along with the depreciation of their property values, not to mention their personal safety, and allow this pipeline to come through? The gas is not even for use in the state of Georgia or the county where I live. However, the general feeling is we have to give in the the corporation's demands. My own County Commission Chairman is quoted as saying, "There's nothing we can do."

Does anyone else see the problem here? Why must we, the citizens and landowners of Lowndes County, Georgia, have to give up our land and security to a foreign corporation of absolutely no benefit to the citizens and landowners of Lowndes County, Georgia? How is this corporation given a privileged status greater than the thousands of people who live here?

We Must Begin Anew

We are in a difficult predicament. For most of the people I know, life is a struggle, accompanied by gnawing, grinding stress. It's the result of an economic system that has become terribly brutal in my lifetime, and continues to get worse. The present dominant paradigm would have us believe there is something called the Free Market, through which we can obtain all our needs and wants. The new conservatives assert it's the Government that's messing things up, and needs to step aside and then all will be utopia. I've heard them and read their stuff. I'm not buying what they're selling.

We've been doing this type of economics for going on forty years. Ever since Reagan we've been deregulating and cutting taxes, with the promise being a vibrant economic activity benefiting all. It has not worked out that way no matter how many iterations we have to go through. It has not been good for hard working people. Since the election of Ronald Reagan, and the ascendance of the modern conservative movement, average working people's income has lost a couple of thousand dollars adjusted for inflation. Working people are still in the throes of the Crash of '08, the Great Recession, the ultimate consequence of conservative economic policy, with unemployment officially just shy of seven percent. You and I know it's at lest twice that. Even low-paying jobs are hard to come by, let alone anything that has a decent wage and future.

At the same time, American worker productivity has gone through the roof over the last forty years. Up until 1980, worker income rose parallel to productivity. Yet while worker productivity continued to sky rocket, they did not reap the benefits of their increased productivity. Where did these profits go? To the executives and shareholders, especially when the shareholders became capital funds, hedge funds, and investment banks. How did they get the profits? Aren't they the ones deciding how the booty gets split up? Yep.

The opposition to this rapaciousness were the unions, the only thing the working man ever had going for him to bargain with his employer, and was the only method workers ever had of getting a better shake. These were decimated in the War on Unions, which began when Reagan declared war on PATCO and fired the air traffic controllers. It is still being waged today against teachers and other government workers, not to mention Republican political interference in the UAW vote at the VW plant in Chattanooga.

This is what is happening on a national scale. The power at that level is tremendous. That's why I think the solution lies in building a new structure from the bottom up. Their are a myriad of ideas out their of people and communities attempting to take back their independence in the economic realm. It has to begin at the local level (city and county) and up from there. That's why I say, we must begin anew.

A Georgia Democrat not Enamored by Michelle Nunn

Listening to major media, one would think Michelle Nunn, daughter of former US Senator, Sam Nunn  (1972-1996), is the only Democratic candidate for retiring senator Saxby Chambliss's seat. There are several other candidates in the field, although it is true none of them has the nepotistic pedigree of Michelle.

I've now lived in south Georgia for fifteen years. Along with seven years in the Atlanta area, I've lived in Georgia longer than the state I grew up, Michigan.It has long been a truism in Georgia that counties outside the Atlanta metro area get the short end of the stick when it comes to state politics and I can attest to that fact.

I am active in my local Democratic Party. Recently, we had the pleasure of two other candidates making the trek down here to present their case to the local party and citizens as to why they should be US Senator, Steen Miles and Dr Branko Radulovachi. I'm not holding my breath that Michelle Nunn will grace us with her presence.

At this moment, I will vote for Steen Miles as the best Democratic candidate for Georgia US Senator.

However, if Michelle Nunn wins the primary, you better believe I will vote for her over Jack Kingston, whom I expect to win the Republican nomination, and happens to be. my former congressman before the 2012 redistricting.