Breakdown of polling results from The New York Times

More than half – 55 percent – think upper income Americans pay less than their fairshare of taxes. Only a quarter says higher income people pay the right amount in taxes.

When Americans talk about folks like me paying my fair share of taxes, it’s not because they envy the rich. It’s because they understand that when I get tax breaks I don’t need and the country can’t afford, it either adds to the deficit, or somebody else has to make up the difference – like a senior on a fixed income; or a student trying to get through school; or a family trying to make ends meet. That’s not right. Americans know it’s not right.

Vulture capitalism is the practice of opportunistically feeding off of the struggling middle class, prioritizing making profits for shareholders of big corporations over the creation of good jobs for working families.

The label has been used on Mitt Romney to describe his business practices of prioritizing making big profits for himself and his CEO friends ahead of actually creating good jobs. Here are a couple of analyses from Mike Papantanio discussing the issue with Ed Schultz and from Sam Seder on the Thom Hartman show:

Independently of how accurate the claims are that Mitt Romney is a ‘vulture capitalist’, his questionable business practices are only the tip of the iceberg. Vulture capitalism has been a growing symptom of corporate greed having destructive effects on our economy and the economies of other countries, consequently being also behind our ”immigration problems”.

First Lady Michelle Obama greets children during her visit to a school, Escuela Siete de Enero, in Mexico City, Mexico, April 14, 2010. (Official White House Photo by Samantha Appleton)

The book reveals friction on a number of issues between First Lady Michell Obama and former White House Chief of Staff Rham Emanuel, including immigration. Via The Huffington Post:

That revelation is one of the more explosive included in “The Obamas,” a new book by Jodi Kantor of The New York Times about the first few years of the Obama administration and the strains that it produced on the president’s marriage — strains that were ultimately overcome.

[...]

According to Kantor, in the lead-up to the 2010 midterm elections Emanuel and Michelle Obama were at odds over whether the president should give an address on the need for comprehensive immigration reform. The president wanted to do it. The chief of staff saw no point in pushing for legislation that had no chance of passage. The first lady, who had just been confronted by a second-grader in a Maryland elementary school whose mother didn’t have immigration papers, felt that ignoring the issue was fundamentally at odds with her husband’s own political story.

The Obamas won out. The president ended up writing portions of the speech himself but it ended poorly.

“His impassioned remarks faded almost as soon as he gave them,” writes Kantor. “The media and others were puzzled — why this, why now? … Obama became quietly furious at his team for not giving the address more support, for not delivering the one he had wanted in the first place or talking it up more in the press. The first lady fumed, too: she took it as more proof that her husband’s advisers were poorly serving him. … The speech incident confirmed her worst fears, and by that point, several aides said, Michelle was bluntly telling her husband that he needed a new team.”

The Huffington Post also has this interesting bit: apparently Hillary Clinton had also had confrontations with Rham Emanuel when she was a first lady herself:

“Michelle and Rahm Emanuel had almost no bond; their relationship was distant and awkward from the beginning. She had been skeptical of him when he was selected, and now he returned the favor; he was uneasy about first ladies in general, several aides close to him said, based on clashes with Hillary Clinton in the 1990s that became so severe that she had tried to fire him from her husband’s administration,” writes Kantor. “Now Emanuel was chief of staff, a position that almost never included an easy relationship with the first lady. They were the president’s two spouses, in a sense, one public and official and one private and informal.”

This seems to validate the criticisms that many immigrant rights activists across the country have been voicing for months now. The criticism being that whoever had been advising President Obama on immigration policy had been doing a poor job at it, evidenced by the wrong headed focus on escalation of deportations instead of more executive orders to provide administrative relief to immigrants. We have seen some shift on this but the jury is still out on whether new prosecutorial discretion rules (known as the “Morton Memo“) are even being followed by ICE, paricularly with DREAM Act eligible cases. However, the hope is that the President will continue to realize that he must exercise more of his executive powers to break the gridlock on much needed action to keep families together instead of deporting them. There are some encouraging signs, like the proposal just announced by the Obama administration for a new process allowing spouses and children of US citizens to file for visas while remaining in the country instead of forcing them to leave in order to do so. One thing is to propose and announce a new policy, of course, and another is the actual application of it … so we’ll be monitoring just how much change actually takes place.

Here’s the analysis of the immigration speech President Obama gave that the book references.

Here’s also what Project Economic Refugee wrote on the person that eventually replaced Rham Emanuel, Mr. William Daley.

Read more on the new ‘The Obamas’ book on MSNBC.

Update: so far I’ve read that the new proposed waiver would allow children and spouses of U.S. citizens stay in the country while they process their visas but what about PARENTS of U.S. citizens? Woud this new waiver also apply to parents? Does anyone know?

Update # 2: Also check out the video of First Lady’s remarks during her visit to Mexico City pointing out how Mexico is home to more U.S. citizens than any other country:

As we celebrate the beginning of 2012, I am reflecting on where we were last year in terms of the immigration debate here in the U.S.  Last year, Project Economic Refugee wished for a radical change in the way we framed our national conversation on immigration, particularly in light of the DREAM Act being rejected back then in the U.S. Senate by a measly five votes. We’ve seen some progress on humanizing our debate, in large part because of the tireless energy that immigrant rights activists across the nation continue to dedicate towards this effort.

The other promising factor that we have seen is the rise of the Occupy Wall Street movement. We saw some promising signs coming from the Occupy movement that could accelerate a re-think of how we tackle our immigration problems. That was certainly the premise of the Voto Latino piece I wrote for The Huffington Post. The premise being that we must start recognizing that the corporate greed of the 1% is at the root of the humanitarian crisis we currently have at our border with Mexico.

Prior to the rise of the Occupy Wall Street movement most people simply did not trace back our broken state of affairs to the root cause of the problem: corporate greed. Part of the reason is that we simply lacked the language to communicate these connections within larger and easy-to-understand frames. The Occupy Wall Street movement and its city-by-city and country-by-country incarnations gave us a simple but powerful meta-brand to build upon. Occupy was everywhere, including Mexico City, which followed a rich tradition of uprisings against poverty for Mexican people in particular. It gave us the “we are the 99%” call to end our rampant social inequalities. As the movement evolves beyond occupied space, it is critical that activists seize on the opportunity to integrate more immigration issues into the fabric of Occupy Wall Street.

From the beginning, immigrant rights activists have been involved in the Occupy movement and have injected into it much needed credibility. In the early days of the occupations that sprouted across American cities, the encampments were not seen as having the necessary level of organization for the general public to take them seriously. It was not until the NYPD launched violent crackdowns on the protesters that the traditional media started to pay attention. Thereafter, it was not until more established groups like labor unions, immigrant rights groups, and others started to get involved in the Occupy rallies that the movement boosted its credibility as a force to reckon with.

View pictures from the Occupy ICE event in Los Angeles by clicking on this picture.

These other more organized groups grew and diversified the face of the Occupiers. No longer were the Occupiers primarily young and white. These groups also brought along with them their supporters, which in turn made the Occupy movement more relatable to a wider and multi-lingual audience. Thus the movement started to include more people of color of all ages and walks of life. No longer was the face of the Occupier just a rebellious white youth wearing a scary mask. The faces became more personable: average working moms, unemployed  husbands, families facing foreclosure, etc. The movement then became truly viral and open sourced.

There is certainly no shortage of immediate targets that tie right into the message of anti-corporate greed that have an immigration angle. For example, just recently Occupy Birmingham carried out an action against a detention center for immigrants. Occupy Birmingham understood that, outside of immigrant rights circles, it is not as widely known that the prison industrial complex is deliberately profiting from putting immigrants in detention centers for months on end. In essence, these detention centers are the work of the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC), a powerful lobby comprised of transnational corporations and powerful right-wing politicians. This is just but one example of many opportunities to work together against the transnational exploitation of workers.

As I have said it before, we need to grow together beyond just immigrant rights marches, beyond just tents, and beyond just General Assemblies. We need to advocate for better jobs here in the U.S. and everywhere else, regardless of creed, color, sexual orientation, or immigration status. The greed of the 1% has been turning many of us into economic refugees for quite some time now. Some just happen to be undocumented.

Photo by Peter Bennett of GreenStockPhotos.com

Latino groups applaud the Obama Administration’s important new standard to control and curb mercury and other toxic air pollution from power plants.

December 21, 2011 (WASHINGTON): EPA announced the adoption of historic safeguards against mercury and other toxic air pollution which will help to protect our children from increased risk of brain damage, cerebral palsy and other neuro-developmental problems. The Mercury and Air Toxics standard, or MATR is a major new measure to protect kids and families from mercury, toxics and other pollution from power plants.

 
These new health safeguards will reduce mercury emissions from power plants up to 90 percent, and vastly reduce levels of the toxic soup of other emissions that also lead to numerous health problems. Among the most dangerous of these pollutants is mercury, a neurotoxin that damages the developing brains and nervous systems of fetuses and young children. Mercury exposure can lead to delayed developmental milestones, delayed speech and other language problems, reduced IQ, problems with motor skills, and a laundry list of other health issues.
This rule protects our health while also creating thousands of jobs from the manufacturing, engineering, installation and maintenance of pollution controls to meet these standards, potentially including 46,000 short-term construction jobs and 8,000 long-term utility jobs.

 
This rule and these cost-savings are especially important to the Latino community because according to the Centers for Disease Control (CDC), Latino children have higher levels of mercury in their bodies compared with non-Hispanic white children. With 39 percent of Latinos living within 30 miles of a power plant, emissions controls are a critically needed and welcome safeguard.

Numerous Latino groups nationwide have joined together to thank the Obama administration for taking this important step towards protecting communities nationwide. Several signers to the letter remarked on the importance of this action:
Rafael Fantauzzi, President of the National Puerto Rican Coalition, Inc. (NPRC) and Chair of the National Latino Coalition on Climate Change (NLCCC) said:

 
“Today President Obama has taken an important step towards ensuring a safer, healthier future for our children by announcing a new strong standard for mercury and air toxics. NLCCC member organizations represent many Latino families who live near power plants that spew dangerous toxics into the air we breathe. Mercury is one of the leading causes of preventable birth defects in children like brain damage, cerebral palsy and other developmental problems. We are calling on our leaders in Congress to let this important protection stay in place to protect our children.”

 
Brent Wilkes, Executive Director of the League of United Latin American Citizens (LULAC) added:

 
“We support the new mercury and toxic air pollution rule announced today because it means that the health of our communities and families everywhere across the U.S. will face decreased risks for serious diseases associated with these pollutants. One of the most harmful effects of mercury pollution are birth defects and other developmental issues and with 39 percent of Latinos living near a power plant, we could not be happier to have this important new protection in place. The increased health costs and other expenses associated with these pollutants is also too heavy a burden to ask future generations to bear. These safeguards should be implemented immediately and without question by Congress.”

 
Roberto Carmona of Voces Verdes applauded the rule, adding:

 
“Voces Verdes applauds the Obama Administration’s important new standard to control and curb mercury and other toxic air pollution from power plants. This historic rule will benefit our nation as a whole and Latino families everywhere preventing the harmful effects of these pollutants, such as respiratory diseases, developmental problems and heart attacks in our communities. This rule protects our health while also creating thousands of jobs from the manufacturing, engineering, installation and maintenance of pollution controls to meet these standards, potentially including 46,000 short-term construction jobs and 8,000 long-term utility jobs. This is an important move to protect the public health while ensuring a brighter future for our communities.”

 
Other signers to the letter include:

 
Dr. Elena Rios, National Hispanic Medical Association; Mark Magana, National Latino Coalition on Climate Change, Rafael Fantauzzi, National Puerto Rican Coalition; Mildred Real, Common Ground for Conservation – America Verde; Juan Parras, Texas Environmental Justice Advocacy Services (TEJAS); Antonio Gonzalez, William C. Velasquez Institute; Raquelle Seda, Latino Family Services; Irma Munoz, Mujeres de La Tierra; Luis Olmedo, Centro Cívico del Valle; Refugio Mata, Project Economic Refugee.
Read the letter at Voces Verdes.

For more background on this, read A Long Awaited Victory for Children, Families, and Our Future on The Huffington Post by Adrianna Quintero, Director of Voces Verdes, La Onda Verde of NRDC. Also on the Los Angeles Times: EPA issues strong limits on mercury emissions from smokestacks.

Check out the Inequality Dragon in this graph:

Corporate profits have not only recovered their post-recession highs, they’ve surpassed it. Yet workers' wages are reaching new lows.

If you recall, the data that was presented in this graph illustrated how corporate profits are reaching record highs while workers’ compensations (paychecks) are reaching new lows. Via the Christian Science Monitor:

As you can see, corporate profits have not only recovered their post-recession highs, they’ve surpassed it. And compensation as a share of the economy is far lower. You can also compare how different these patterns look compared to last recession in 2001, when the income shifts were not nearly so sharp.

It’s truly a picture of two very different economies, one for those who depend on their paychecks and one for those who depend on their portfolios.

Here’s the original graph that was released by the Bureau of Economic Analysis before the doodles that revealed the now famous ‘Inequality Dragon’ that broke down the compensation vs. corporate profits per Gross Domestic Product (GDP):

This would be funny except this is NOT a fairy tale. This is one real dragon that does exist and needs to be slayed or it will eat us all.

Update: here’s the runner-up graph. It breaks down the “We’re Broke” lie.

The 1%- Wall Street banks, big corporations, and the super wealthy would rather see us divided, fighting among each other. Occupy ICE presented a united front against corporate exploitation of workers.

A movement that began primarily as a protest against corporate greed and corruption has become a nationwide phenomenon that has sprouted hundreds of groups in California alone, according to a new study released [...]. The latest incarnation debuted in downtown Los Angeles [...] as “Occupy ICE”… -CBS Los Angeles.

[...] the 1% profits from the exploitation of workers, immigrant or otherwise. But we, the 99%, are not going to be fooled anymore. We know that ICE targeting hard working immigrant families is a distraction. When we, the 99%, stand up for all hard working families, everyone benefits.

LAPD may have evicted the camp, but the 99% Movement has evolved beyond just tents.

NATIONAL DAY OF ACTION: Occupy the Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) Agecy. Thursday, December 15 at 11:00 AM.

RSVP on Facebook here. Calendar announcement on Occupy LA’s website here.

[...] waged labor is key to having access to income and the basic rights of citizenship, a relationship that has long functioned poorly for those outside the regular labor market, including the poor, the unemployed, unwaged female workers, immigrants, and others, but today all forms of labor are ever more precarious and insecure. Labor continues to be the source of wealth in capitalist society, of course, but increasingly outside the relationship with capital and often outside the stable wage relation. As a result, our social constitution continues to require waged labor for full rights and access in a society where such labor is less and less available. -AdBusters.

Hundreds will gather at the Olvera Street Main Plaza and head over to the Federal Building at 300 N. Los Angeles Street.

We will demand that ICE stops tearing hard working families apart.

We are a better country than that. We, the 99%, know that we can do better.

The 1%- Wall Street banks, big corporations, and the super wealthy would rather see us divided, fighting among each other.

The 1% would rather attack immigrant families to distract us from all the reckless corporate greed that crashed our economy.

Meanwhile, the 1% profits from the exploitation of workers, immigrant or otherwise.

But we, the 99%, are not going to be fooled anymore.

We know that ICE targeting hard working immigrant families is a distraction.

When we, the 99%, stand up for all hard working families, everyone benefits.

Instead of attacking working families, we should be focusing our energies on creating good jobs for everyone.

We should be focusing our energies on holding big corporations accountable to improve working conditions.

We should be focusing on passing comprehensive immigration reform to stop the exploitation of workers.

That is we will call on ICE to stop doing the dirty work of the 1% and instead stand with the 99% of us.

We believe that in our country everyone should have the chance to prosper. And we believe that this right to prosper should not be exclusive to the few in the 1%.

Occupy LA was front page news all day and night. TwitPic photo by @OccupyFreedomLA

Last night thousands of Angelenos showed up to resist the eviction of Occupy LA. I was there last night and witnessed an encampment and surrounding areas packed with supporters of the movement. Some argue that it was such an overwhelming turnout of supporters that made the Los Angeles Police Deparment back off from launching a full raid that night. Today the standoff with the LAPD continues:

Visit msnbc.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy

Suffice to say: I think we are all exhausted from last night but that will not deter us from continuing to fight to reclaim the American Dream for the 99%. Here’s some video from last night:

Occupy LA protestors refuse to leave City Hall until their list of 10 demands are addressed at the very least.

Update: a testament of the movement’s endurance? The first edition of the Occupied Los Angeles Times is fresh off the presses. Also, Occupy LA has put out this Emergency Communique.

Photo by www.humanbannersf.com

UPDATE: with Occupy Wall Street getting evicted in New York, is November 17 taking even more of a significance with the “We Are the 99%” movement roaring back even stronger and more influential in our national politics?

UPDATE 2: are eviction raids on Occupy Wall Street being coordinated across cities? That’s what some are speculating, as apparently leaders from more than 18 US cities are in communication. More information here.

UPDATE 3: The Guardian reports on how the NYPD enforced a media blackout of the eviction:

New York police attempted to impose a media blackout as they cleared Occupy Wall Street protesters from Zuccotti Park late last night.

As police swooped on the park in the early hours of Tuesday, the city closed airspace in lower Manhattan to prevent news helicopters taking aerial shots of the scene. Vans were used to obscure views of the park and a police cordon effectively blocked accredited media from reaching the site. Some of those members of the press who were in the park or were able to get there say they were arrested, pepper sprayed or treated aggressively.

Is the 1% using its police power to silence the 99%’s message of “taxing the rich”? The super rich and powerful may try to evict Occupy Wall Street from encampments, but they will never be able to evict the ideas of a movement that has captured the imagination of the American public.

This coming November 17 will be a big national day of action. It will be a continuation of the 99% rejecting Congress’ stubborn refusal to make the super wealthy reponsible for the very same economy their big corporations broke. Not only have conservative politicians refused to tax millionaires to fund job creation programs, but now there’s plans to stick it to the 99% even further under the guise of “reducing the deficit”. The “Super Committee” is due to come out with recommendations on “reducing the deficit” on November 23rd. They’ll probably propose budget cuts to social programs instead of making millionaires and big corporations pay their fair share of taxes at a time when corporate profits are at an all-time high. In other words, they’ll want to “reduce the deficit” by making the 99% of us pay instead of asking the 1% to pitch in to help.

In anticipation of this, November 17 will be a big day of action to highlight what “the 99%” is demanding of the Super Committee. As Greg Sargent of The Washington Post comments on the results of a new poll that just came out:

* The public opposes the supercommittee “making hundreds of millions of dollars in spending cuts to Medicare and Medicare through increasing beneficiary costs,” 76-19. A majority, 52 percent, strongly opposes these cuts.

* The public supports the supercommittee “increasing taxes on wealthy Americans and corporations,” 66-31. A majority, 52 percent, strongly support these tax increases.

Democrats have agreed to the entitlements cuts, even though a majority of Americans strongly opposes them, on the condition that Republicans agree to the tax increases on the rich and corporations. Republicans have not agreed to those tax increases, even though a majority strongly supports them. There you have it.

The Indypendent reports:

The National Day of Action is the latest in a series of alliance-building actions that have attracted new supporters to the Occupy movement while also educating the public about corporate greed and the need for democracy. The announcement of the Nov. 17 action came on the heels of the beginning of a march from New York City to Washington, D.C. Dubbed “Occupy the Highway,” the march, which began Nov. 9, is scheduled to arrive in the nation’s capital on Nov. 23 — just in time for the Congressional “super-committee” deadline to announce a deficit-reduction plan.

Here’s also a promo video for the event:

In Los Angeles, the action starts at 7:00 am in Downtown at the corner of 3rd and Hope Street (click here for more details). Is your city planning to participate on this day? Can’t wait for November 17 and want to take action now? Contact Republicans (click here) and Democrats (click here) and tell them “tax the 1% instead of punishing the 99% of us with more budget cuts”.