Keeping 'em Honest

2015-01-26T11:37:00.001-08:00

2014-10-30T21:00:00.001-07:00

32 states now have #MarriageEquality. Let's make it 50... http://t.co/ubsI8lVp4b pic.twitter.com/KeactRKKnx
— Royal Standard (@RoyalStandardG) October 31, 2014

Royal Standard's Xmas Special

2013-12-10T16:55:00.002-08:00

THE AVERAGE AMERICAN FAMILY $6K / YEAR IN SUBSIDIES TO BIG BUSINESS

2013-09-25T13:01:00.002-07:00

By Paul Bucheit

The Average American Family Pays $6,000 a Year in Subsidies to Big Business.

The average American family pays $6,000 a year in subsidies to big business. That's over and above our payments to the big companies for energy and food and housing and health care and all our tech devices. It's $6,000 that no family would have to pay if we truly lived in a competitive but well-regulated free-market economy.

The $6,000 figure is an average, which means that low-income families are paying less. But it also means that families (households) making over $72,000 are paying more than $6,000 to the corporations.

1. $870 for Direct Subsidies and Grants to Companies

The Cato Institute estimates that the U.S. federal government spends $100 billion a year on corporate welfare. That's an average of $870 for each one of America's 115 million families. Cato notes that this includes "cash payments to farmers and research funds to high-tech companies, as well as indirect subsidies, such as funding for overseas promotion of specific U.S. products and industries...It does not include tax preferences or trade restrictions."

It does include payments to 374 individuals on the plush Upper East Side of New York City, and others who own farms, including Bruce Springsteen, Bon Jovi, and Ted Turner. Wealthy heir Mark Rockefeller received $342,000 to NOT farm, to allow his Idaho land to return to its natural state.

It also includes fossil fuel subsidies, which could be anywhere from $10 billion to $41 billion per year for research and development. Yet this may be substantially underestimated. The IMF reports U.S. fossil fuel subsidies of $502 billion, which would be almost $4,400 per U.S. family by taking into account "the effects of energy consumption on global warming [and] on public health through the adverse effects on local pollution." According to Grist, even this is an underestimate.

2. $696 for Business Incentives at the State, County, and City Levels

The subsidies mentioned above are federal subsidies. A New York Times investigation found that states, counties and cities give up over $80 billion each year to companies, with beneficiaries coming from "virtually every corner of the corporate world, encompassing oil and coal conglomerates, technology and entertainment companies, banks and big-box retail chains."

$80 billion a year is $696 for every U.S. family. But the Times notes that "The cost of the awards is certainly far higher."

3. $722 for Interest Rate Subsidies for Banks

According to the Huffington Post, the "U.S. Government Essentially Gives The Banks 3 Cents Of Every Tax Dollar."They cite research that calculates a nearly 1 percent benefit to banks when they borrow, through bonds and customer deposits and other liabilities. This amounts to a taxpayer subsidy of $83 billion, or about $722 from every American family.

The wealthiest five banks -- JPMorgan, Bank of America Corp., Citigroup Inc., Wells Fargo & Co. and Goldman Sachs -- account for three-quarters of the total subsidy. The Huffington Post article notes that without the taxpayer subsidy, those banks would not make a profit. In other words, "the profits they report are essentially transfers from taxpayers to their shareholders."

4. $350 for Retirement Fund Bank Fees

This was a tough one to calculate. Demos reports that over a lifetime, bank fees can "cost a median-income two-earner family nearly $155,000 and consume nearly one-third of their investment returns." Fees are well over one percent a year.

However, the Economic Policy Institute notes that the average middle-quintile retirement account is $34,981. A conservative one percent annual management fee translates to about $350 per family. This, again, is an average; many families have no retirement account. But many families pay much more than 1% in annual fees.

5. $1,268 for Overpriced Medications

According to Dean Baker, "government granted patent monopolies raise the price of prescription drugs by close to $270 billion a year compared to the free market price." This represents an astonishing annual cost of over $2,000 to an average American family.

OECD figures on pharmaceutical expenditures reveal that Americans spend almost twice the OECD average on drugs, an additional $460 per capita. This translates to $1,268 per household.

6. $870 for Corporate Tax Subsidies

We've heard a lot about tax avoidance and tax breaks for the super-rich. With regard to corporations alone, the Tax Foundation has concluded that their "special tax provisions" cost taxpayers over $100 billion per year, or $870 per family. Corporate benefits include items such as Graduated Corporate Income, Inventory Property Sales, Research and Experimentation Tax Credit, Accelerated Depreciation, and Deferred taxes.

Once again, it may be even worse. Citizens for Tax Justice cite a Government Accountability Office report that calculated a loss to the Treasury of $181 billion from corporate tax expenditures. That would be almost $1,600 per family.

7. $1,231 for Revenue Losses from Corporate Tax Havens

U.S. PIRG recently reported that the average 2012 taxpayer paid an extra $1,026 in taxes to make up for the revenue lost from offshore tax havens by corporations and wealthy individuals. With 138 million taxpayers (1.2 per household), that comes to $1,231 per household.

Much More Than an Insult

Overall, American families are paying an annual $6,000 subsidy to corporations that have doubled their profits and cut their taxes in half in ten years while cutting 2.9 million jobs in the U.S. and adding almost as many jobs overseas.

This is more than an insult. It's a devastating attack on the livelihoods of tens of millions of American families. And Congress just lets it happen. That's more than an insult—it's an attack.

Foreshadowing of Robo-Cop

2013-06-18T17:14:00.001-07:00

How can you believe the leadership of a party that says it supports the middle class or that it represents working class Americans when it is and has been conservative policy that has eroded the middle class almost to complete destruction for over thirty years? How are they able to claiming that they are trying to make a better America or stronger America by increasing jobs when the bills conservatives draft are designed (not as indirect consequence) but designed to not only reduce but intentionally dissuade college attendance? Conservative policy is the reason half the kids in the country have to move back in with their parents after graduating from a four year university. Conservative policy is the reason why only three quarters of the kids that graduate from four year universities barely get the jobs they do and why those jobs don’t pay as much from your union busting dick-ish-ness. Conservatives are responsible for the tremendous surge in tuition and college loan debt. Conservative policy has effectively transferred the control and issuance of education loans to of private banks, which have steadily raised interest rates and saddled kids in their early twenties with lifelong debt. Just another example of how conservative policy delivers guaranteed customers (victims) to private self-serving institutions with no ethic allegiance to the public welfare.

As I’ve mentioned before liberalism is based in ethics. Liberalism is based in what is right, what is good, and what is true. The argument for publicly funded services that protect are most basic rights of Life, Liberty, and the pursuit of happiness, as declared by Locke, and demanded by Jefferson, is the ethical argument. The argument for publicly funded services is the argument for what is good, what is right, and what is true. Organizations tasked with the protection and care of the public can never be focused on the what’s best for public welfare because as a private corporation they ‘re focused on their bottom line. Would we accept this standard of behavior from our police, firemen, or even military? Then why do we allow it in our ambulance services that are trusted with saving lives and assisting the injured… that’s the same thing we trust firemen for, they just have cooler uniforms. Why do we allow patient negligence and abuse in hospitals, doctors, and nurses who are hesitant to help patients that don’t have insurance? Sixty two percent of all bankruptcy is due to medical debt. How much better off would America be if our Healthcare reflected the rest of the free world and used a public option? That’s easy, it would be sixty two percent better.

There are those that use the horribly construed and inaccurate book Atlas Shrugged to defend the notion that corporations are people and should be in control of matters that affect the public good. To them I offer the literary equivalent counter argument of "Robo-Cop".

Now I know what you’re thinking, Robo-Cop is only a two hour movie, and although it’s far better written than anything by Ayn Rand, Atlas Shrugged is four thousand pages. It’s like comparing a Chinese restaurant menu to the Bible… again not being discriminatory as to which is better written.

That is why I am including all three original Robo-Cop films into my counter argument, but not the TV series or the cartoon… as I want this to be taken seriously. I’m not asking anyone to ignore the graphic violence and gratuitous nudity in the beginning of the movie. I think it’s important to take note of these occurrences because in many appropriate ways they accurately reflect the complacent acceptance of sex and violence in present day American society.

But in looking beyond the obvious similarities to our modern world at the beginning of the movie it is exceedingly clear that Robo-Cop is a cautionary tale of our potential future and the consequences of Right-Wing Fascist policy. And what better place to stage this anti-corporatism masterpiece than in the once industrious blue collar metropolis of Detroit, a city that is currently poised to collapse from over exposure to outsourcing and the flight of manufacturing firms.

The similarities between today’s Detroit and the Detroit of the film go from striking to frightening, when you consider that recently several “developers” have publicly announced intentions to privatize much of Detroit’s infrastructure and public spaces. One such firm is trying to turn Detroit’s central park into a gated city-state, that you must buy citizenship to live in, the proposed city state will house the headquarters for factories and mills that will be on the outside in "Old Detroit" and operated by the peasants on the other side of the private city’s walls (seriously… no bullshit!).

How the Stars were Made

2013-06-11T12:45:00.004-07:00

How the Stars were Made is designed to help children of cross-cultural language backgrounds fully understand the story whether it’s read in the classroom, or in a home that predominantly speaks either language.

There is a growing need for bi-lingual education resources to facilitate an expanding English/Spanish-speaking population. In the U.S. for example, 28% of children under the age of 5 are Hispanic. Census data and cultural trends show the necessity for adjustment as our population becomes more diverse.

Despite recent awareness in government and media, the fact remains that there are too few enough options for parents & teachers that offer cross-cultural understanding in education.

Available @ Amazon & iBookstore

WHY WE SHOULD RAISE MINIMUM WAGE NOW

2013-03-14T09:45:00.001-07:00

Arkansas Passes Most Restrictive Abortion Law in U.S.

2013-03-07T08:59:00.000-08:00

Arkansas Passes Most Restrictive Abortion Law in U.S.

"In the sharpest challenge yet to Roe v. Wade, Arkansas adopted Wednesday what is by far the country's most restrictive ban on abortion, at 12 weeks of pregnancy, around the time that a fetal heartbeat can be detected by abdominal ultrasound," the New York Times reports.

"The law was passed by the newly Republican-controlled legislature over the veto of Gov. Mike Beebe, a Democrat, who called it 'blatantly unconstitutional.' On Tuesday the state Senate voted to override his veto by a vote of 20 to 14; on Wednesday the House enacted the bill into law by a vote of 55 to 33, with several Democrats joining the Republican majority."

"Plan B" is Plan BS

2012-12-26T12:29:00.002-08:00

Speaker of the House John Boehner (R-OH) released the Republican “Plan B” yesterday. This plan is already dead in the water, as the President has promised to veto it if it were to pass both houses, but the republicans like to waste tax payer funded time, energy, & money by voting on it anyway.

"Plan B" is the supposed fair "Net Neutral" proposal from the Right...
which is total bullshit, and here's why:

GOP Claim:
Does not raise taxes. It is a net tax cut that prevents a $4.6 trillion tax hike on January 1.

Reality:
In fact, by allowing several key tax credits to expire –including the expanded Child Tax Credit and a credit that helps with higher education tuition — Plan B would raise taxes on 20 million families. Also, allowing the current payroll tax cut to expire will affect every working American. As the Tax Policy Center noted, “Most low income and middle income families with children will see their taxes rise.”

GOP Claim:
Permanently extends income tax rate cuts for Americans making less than $1 million, which protects 99.81 percent of all taxpayers.

Reality:
This plan would raise just 15 percent of the revenue of Obama’s campaign proposal to allow the Bush tax cuts to expire on income in excess of $250,000. As Citizens for Tax Justice noted, “millionaires get 50 percent of the additional tax breaks from moving the threshold to $1 million.”

GOP Claim:
Permanently extends the current estate and gift tax ($5 million at 35 percent and indexed for inflation)

Reality:
Keeping the estate tax at this level means that a miniscule 0.2 percent of estates will face the tax, costing the government billions in revenue every year. All of the benefit goes to the very wealthiest Americans.

GOP Claim:
Permanently extends parity for capital gains and dividend taxes, preventing dividend taxes from being taxed at the highest rates.

Reality:
Similar to the voter-rejected Romney tax plan, this would be another handout to the wealthy. President Obama has proposed allowing the Bush tax cut on dividends to expire for high-income earners.

GOP Claim:
Does not include anything on the debt limit or other non-tax policy items.

Reality:
This means that federal unemployment benefits will expire for two million workers, and gives the Republicans the opportunity to hold the debt limit hostage when it needs to be raised in a few months.

Electoral College Explained...

2012-11-06T12:53:00.000-08:00

I'm Republican... and voting for Obama

2012-11-05T22:33:00.005-08:00

Will Ferrell wants you to vote...

2012-11-05T11:09:00.002-08:00

$4.99 on iBooks & Kindle

Mr. Burns Endorses Mitt Romney

2012-11-02T09:45:00.001-07:00

Biggest Mitt Romney endorsement yet.

The Racist Right...

2012-11-01T12:27:00.001-07:00

It borders on inexplicable. How is it that, seemingly from top to bottom, the oft-vaunted "conservative Republican base" speaks collectively with roughly all of the forethought and eloquence of Michael Scott?

In the very same weekend that former GOP presidential candidate Rick Santorum told the Washington, D.C. Values Voter Summit that "We will never have the elite smart people on our side, because they believe they should have the power to tell you what to do," a California rodeo announcer somehow found a way he could come across so much worse, Jezebel reported Monday.

Comedian Ed Kutz was presiding over a San Louis Obispo rodeo and decided to crack wise that Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney's wife Ann was offered $250,000 to doff her duds for Playboy. On the other hand, First Lady Michelle Obama was given a paltry $50 offer....

"To appear in National Geographic."

Making the joke that a black woman was offered $50 to appear in a magazine known for its candid, natural depictions of semi-nude tribeswomen? What could possibly go wrong?

Jezebel suggests that the funny was supposed to be found in that it's basically a magazine devoted to hairy animals. See? Context!

There's taking a quote out of context. There's misquoting someone. There's even making sound bites up entirely. Then there's "exceptionally unfunny at best, overtly racist at worst."

$4.99 on iBooks & Kindle

Romney / Ryan = Dirty Liars

2012-10-31T07:56:00.001-07:00

Romney is doubling down on a known and proven lie to try to persuade Ohio voters. Greg Sargent reports the Mitt Romney campaign has now put a version of his controversial television ad on the radio in Toledo, Ohio… the site of a Jeep plant.

"The move seems to confirm that the Romney campaign is making the Jeep-to-China falsehood central to its final push to turn things around in the state. The Romney campaign has explicitly said in the past that it will not let fact checking constrain its messaging, so perhaps it's not surprising that it appears to be expanding an ad campaign based on a claim that has been widely pilloried by fact checkers."

The Romney ad falsely claims Obama “took GM and Chrysler into bankruptcy and sold Chrysler to Italians, who are going to build Jeeps in China.”

Multiple independent analysts have found Romney’s ad grossly misleading. Obama directed the two car companies into a brief bankruptcy but it was part of a restructuring financed by the federal government in order to reorganize the companies and keep them alive.

As to selling Chrysler “to the Italians,” industry expert David Kiley of AOL Autos gave the missing context: “Italian automaker Fiat was the only company that stepped up to make an offer for Chrysler, which badly needed another car company with which to partner. Fiat's intervention has kept the company in one piece, saved Chrysler from dissolution, increased the quality ratings of the company's products, raised its market share and profit, and resulted in a huge recovery of jobs in Michigan and Ohio.”

$4.99 on iBooks & Kindle

Who's gonna win?

2012-10-30T07:10:00.004-07:00

With one week until Election Day, Obama has a lead of 280 projected Electoral Votes to Romney's 235

For those who remember the 2000 travesty of an election, there is a slight (less than 10%) chance Romney could win the popular vote but Obama would still take the Electoral College. Pretty much the opposite of Bush v. Gore. Even though this would spark all sorts of outrage and attention, Obama would still be declared president of these United States.

Follow me on Twitter, and check me out on Facebook.

Best Obama Ad Ever

2012-10-29T14:09:00.003-07:00

America... not still racist, but more racist.

2012-10-29T13:53:00.006-07:00

A new AP Poll finds racial attitudes have not improved in the four years since President Obama's election "as a slight majority of Americans now express prejudice toward blacks whether they recognize those feelings or not."

"In all, 51 percent of Americans now express explicit anti-black attitudes, compared with 48 percent in a similar 2008 survey. When measured by an implicit racial attitudes test, the number of Americans with anti-black sentiments jumped to 56 percent, up from 49 percent during the last presidential election. In both tests, the share of Americans expressing pro-black attitudes fell."

Andrew Sullivan: "Close to 80 percent of Republican voters expressed 'explicit racism.' Maybe that's why they are comfortable with a candidate from a church whose theology remains based on white supremacy and that barred African-Americans from full membership as recently as 1978."

$4.99 on iBooks & Kindle

Follow me on Twitter, and like me on Facebook

The secrets of Mitt Romney

2012-10-25T15:45:00.004-07:00

This is a rather lengthy video, but the first several minutes exposes the many flip flops of Mitt Romney, the closet thing to a wind sock to ever run for office...

Colin Powell Endorses President Obama

2012-10-25T07:25:00.002-07:00

Like my page of Facebook and follow me on Twitter.

2012-10-24T18:46:00.004-07:00

For a limited time,

"Crazy Sh*t Republicans Say"

Is only $11.99 at Amazon.com

Still only $4.99 on iBooks & Kindle

Jobs Creation Slam!

2012-10-24T14:04:00.005-07:00

Republicans and their political windsock of a candidate Mitt Romney have been rallying for the last two years around the completely untrue battle-cry of "Government does not create jobs!"

The problem with this statement, other than the fact that it's untrue, is that now Republicans are attempting to appease their weapons / defense industry employers -- I mean campaign contributors -- and still remain credible as the "deficit hawks" that they falsely claim to be. The military industrial complex has long been the controlling hand that guides our policy making decisions (especially when that decision is to go to war). Beyond the hypocrisy in the GOP's latest spin for the need to increase military spending (production) lies the irony that the weapons / defense industry is a perfect example of how the government does not only create jobs, but floats an entire industry with inflated budget spending. The question is why did Obama not point out this slam dunk of a correlation between two Romney fallacies that in fact disprove one another. During the final minutes of the last debate Romney asserted both the need for increased military production and the "government does not create jobs" line. I think this is because the average american doesn't understand where our weapons come from. The U.S. has extensive and sometimes exclusive production contracts with private companies they call "defense contractors." But I'm not trying to use this occasion to discuss war mongering, greedy, crony capitalist, or the U.S. military industrial complex. I just want to point out that, other than the hundreds of examples of how and why government investment creates jobs, the one industry that Romney is scrambling to invent reasons to increase spending for, exist and sustains thousands of private employees off nothing more than the government itself.

- Dunbar Merrill

Like my page of Facebook and follow me on Twitter.

Read excerpts from my book, "Crazy Sh*t Republicans Say" here.

Inside a mind of Mitt

2012-10-23T12:18:00.002-07:00

A mind of Mitt...

"The multiculturalism movement must be unmasked for the fraud it is. There are superior cultures, and ours is one of them."

-- Mitt Romney, March 4th, 2010

An ancillary irony of this statement, is that Romney is a Mormon. A religious institution so steeped in confusing, counter intuitive superstition, that even the fascist leaders of the Religious Right consider it a cult. The most celebrated and award winning Broadway comedy ever, is little more than a musical explanation of what Mormons actually believe. I'm not saying it's right to persecute anyone on the basis of their religious beliefs, I'm just saying "The Book of Mormon" killed it at the Tony Awards for a reason. Knowing that, you would think that Romney would embrace diversity and multiculturalism, not insult it. After all Mitt, those who live in glass houses...

- Dunbar Merrill

Like my page on Facebook and follow me on Twitter

Obama = Rain Maker

2012-10-22T12:43:00.001-07:00

As reported by the New York Times:

"Through Friday, since Mr. Obama's inauguration -- his first 1,368 days in office -- the Dow Jones industrial average has gained 67.9 percent. That's an extremely strong performance -- the fifth best for an equivalent period among all American presidents since 1900."

Worst GOP National convention mantra ever:

Are you better off than you were 4 years ago?

Fact for entire nation:

Resounding yes!

$4.99 on iBooks & Kindle

Utah's Salt Lake Tribune endorses Obama.

2012-10-20T11:24:00.002-07:00

The Salt Lake Tribune endorses President Obama over Mitt Romney, the candidate "we knew, or thought we knew, as one of us."

"Sadly, it is not the only Romney, as his campaign for the White House has made abundantly clear, first in his servile courtship of the tea party in order to win the nomination, and now as the party's shape-shifting nominee. From his embrace of the party's radical right wing, to subsequent portrayals of himself as a moderate champion of the middle class, Romney has raised the most frequently asked question of the campaign: 'Who is this guy, really, and what in the world does he truly believe?'"

$4.99 on iBooks & Kindle