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Lost your job, your house, your dignity.
There is good news.
According to Forbes, the IRS has released this data on the top 400 wealthiest earner of America.
The difference between now and the Clinton years, was $13 billion of potential uncollected taxes. The difference between now and the year after 9/11, was $6.3 billion of potential uncollected taxes.
Obviously those top 400 will use any media event to tout the benefit of cutting taxes…
After seeing how much they made… who can blame them… As for the rest of us, we see that uncollected money as being 260,000 new jobs at $50,000 a piece …”that could’a been….”
Taxing them at 92%, which was historically our highest rate ever, gives us a difference of $79 billion, or by the formula above, or 1.58 million jobs. Now can you see how high taxes shift the economy into overdrive?
Of course those top 400 wealthiest, and their bankrolled Wall Street Journal will never let on to that…
Again, who can blame them.
Despite the collapse of the financial system, the shuttering of several major firms and the elimination of thousands of jobs, the securities industry managed to scratch together about $18 BILLION of shareholder and investor cash to pay bonuses in 2008, according to New York state comptroller Thomas DiNapoli.
“The decline is the largest on record in absolute dollars and the largest percentage decline in more than 30 years, but the size of the bonus pool is still the sixth largest on record,” DiNapoli said in a press release.
The chart above makes it obvious as to when the height of irresponsibility began, and on whose watch.
More than the other statistic, this chart alone shows why we are in today’s mess.
Because of last year’s Leap Year, the date is two days behind, but a memorable event took place this weekend last year…
Up until then, it was an event “unheard of” in Delaware…
Here is one account.
And here is another…
And here is a third….
My, how far we have come.
We were used to the tall turbines spinning off Rehoboth. But since last summer, revolutionary technologies have come forward that can improve efficiencies of transferring wind power into something electrical that can power our refrigerator.
Using the concept found on jet engine turbines, one company has devised this turbine that accomplishes the same generation capacity as those turbines attached to three large blades . Furthermore, this new design can operate at speeds of high wind speeds far more safely than can the tall turbines which get shut down once winds reach an unsafe wind speed…
Third, these new turbines could be built here at either Newark or Boxwood and shipped downstate without a problem… The entire turbine can fit in one truck.
Four, since these are smaller, requiring less wind area to generate their capacity, more can be built closer together than was previously thought possible.. They also are friendlier to any species of bird that strays too close..
It is something new.. And something that can get Delaware excited again over its potential to supply the PJM grid with much of the East Coast’s renewable energy needs…. For now instead of just a 600 MWh farm eventually being built, we can now put an 2000 MWh farm on just the same area…
This clip stumbled across my plate recently. I want to thank David Florien for putting it out there. I wanted to save it where I could retrieve it, being that it borders on the edge of how our interpretation of cosmology has structured our concept of our universe..
Its speaker, Michio Kaku who is frequently quoted in these works, introduced me to string theory ten years ago. His explanation of the theory intrigued me because its mathematics finally tie the four forces together if one assumes there are eleven dimensions…
Those among you who are mathematically and scientifically inclined, would be well advised to view this round up of where we are, where we’ve come from, and where we are going with our own vision of our universe.
Reassuringly it is based on data.
Tired of looking at CNN’s Larry Kings’s big old head, I switched to MSNBC just in time to hear this exchange…
Reporter: “I’m at the Delaware- Pennsylvania Inaugural Ball and there is no one here… After Obama stopped by everyone packed up and went home… These guy’s in Delaware (and Pennsylvania) don’t know how to party….I’m the only female in the room.”
Desk Host: “Hey someone just walked behind you pushing a broom… See if they will party with you”…. (laugh, laugh)…
We are then lamely entertained by having the host ask the custodian if he will dance with her… Obviously aware of the nagging he would receive once home… the custodian wisely said “no”….
We are then entertained by a panel who has never been to either a Blue Hen’s tailgate party, a Point to Point, or a previous century’s visit to the Stone Balloon…. Peppered with comments about the prissiness of Delaware’s citizens… and as an aside Pennsylvania is mentioned as well, I’m sure they failed to consider that two of last weeks championship football games were played by hard partying Pennsylvania teams, and that they have never been to an Eagle’s or Steeler’s Tailgate party… I’m sure they have never even heard of Penn State’s Nittany Lions….
How stupid can they get? Are they really that daft?
Being nosy main-stream news media employees they probably were unaware that the real partying takes place …. outside the venue… Contrary to what was being publicly portrayed, Delaware/ Pennsylvania was not calling it a wrap and hitting the sack… They were getting the real party started elsewhere….
Their poor reporter… just didn’t make the cut…..
Pundits discussing the speech were asked to describe a take away in one line sort of similar to JFK’s “ask not what your country can do for you….”
They were lost.. They struggled around completely missing the obvious… Which is why they are on mainstream TV and do not blog…. Bloggers get torn up for crap like that…
The theme of Obama’s speech is “For On This Day….”
For on this day these things begin to change…
Apathy, stalemate, ethics, nay saying, giving up, bullying to get our way…..
Those of you who go to bed way too early, may be reading this for the first time… But between inaugural balls, the Obama administration announced that all Gitmo prosecutions were on hold for a stay of at least 120 days…
“On This Day…..”
Then too, being a sleepyhead, you may have missed the announcement of the directive made by Ron Emanuel, Obama’s chief of staff, that all Bush executive orders were suspended awaiting review by the current president and his staff..
“On This Day…..”
You may have also missed that tomorrow on Wednesday, Obama will be meeting with the joint chiefs of staff to discuss his options of leaving Iraq…..
“On This Day…..”
This is not a political presidency… one who announces an action and milks it for all it is worth…. until an election is over and then that topic is never heard from again…. This one does the walk that goes with the talk…
This one is aware that America’s reputation has been tarnished; this one realizes that giving a great speech on the capital steps yet keeping the old policies in effect, does nothing to enhance our bargaining power oversees against our fearful enemies and with our wavering allies…
It is nice to see that things have changed.
They did so ” … on this day….”
We’ve all seen the movies… those ones like Close Encounters, where average people are inexplicably drawn to Devils Tower in the heart of Wyoming’s northeastern wilderness…. driven by mysterious forces they don’t understand….
We’ve all read of John The Baptist, and the arduous journey made into the wilderness by average people of his civilization, to hear his words of change about to come…..
Finally I understood them…..
1 1/2 to 2 million people… That is .5 to .7 of one percent of the entire population of the United States of America… Right there on the mall… Almost one hundredth of the entire country.
Boy, what a journey… 3 am wake up calls, 3:30 bus boarding, 5:45 unloading into the freezing cold, 6:15 security check, 7:05 second security check, 7:37 staking out one’s space, and then 4 hours of sub freezing, broken only by the choice of whether to squeeze in ones territorial claim or not… as more, and more, and more, and more people poured in…. The sun was beautiful.. Quite a few comments about “a new day dawning”.
Jumbo trons lined the left side of the mall. The speech sounded like it emanated from that loud speaker truck in Casablanca….
But boy, what a speech it was..
Being on the edge of hypothermia, just phrases came through…
I can remember thinking several times: that’s exactly what I would say…. I said “alright” out loud when he invoked Washington’s icy crossing of the Delaware. That’s exactly where we are right now… I thought……
And then… just like that it was over… and then the parade. The new limo looks nice. It was a cold parade.
But the biggest take away was the humanity. Just the number of tears that must have flowed during 18 frozen minutes. Just the awesome amount of pride swelling over something called The United States of America…. Just the number of hallelujahs and amens muttered out loud. Just the fact that average people felt pulled, nay, felt compelled to make an arduous journey, one that wasn’t easy, and probably will not be repeated in their lifetimes…. because they felt they HAD to be there….
The news focused on Obama as well it should… But anyone who was there, knows first hand that it is that mass of American people who were the hero’s of yesterday’s events…. Anyone who was there, knows first hand that here in America, hope can triumph pain, fear, oppression, and evil….. Anyone who was there, knows that if almost one hundredth of the population of this country can drop everything and show up on a bitterly cold winter morning, braving the elements side by side with each other to be there, where history is being made; ….. if that can happen, then anything, anything … is possible… With that much humanity watching your back…
Anything is…. possible…
The parallel between this post and the one before, was just too good to pass up…
In a deft balancing act, done to fulfill the state’s constitutional mandate and avoid conflicting with the Presidential inauguration mandated for the same day, a midnight swearing in ceremony was held at Mitchell Hall, University of Delaware, to begin the terms of Delaware’s Governor and Lieutenant Governor.
Only twice before had the two coincided in similar fashion, and the same solution had been executed then, as well.
(Was it just me, or did the temperature outside rise like ten degrees while we were inside witnessing this event….)
We are lucky to have such fine leadership in this financial time of crises… it won’t be easy… As we saw early Sunday evening, even when you play hard, and execute well, events can still slip up and change your destiny. In these coming times, we need players skilled enough to hang on to a ball with both hands, never taking their eyes off their immediate task of the moment, for the slightest slip, has the most profound consequences….
We will be cheering them on…
Other accounts of this event will be recorded by Mike Matthews, LiberalGeek, Cassandra, and Redwaterlily… As of this early inaugural day posting, some are not yet awake but will I am sure, offer their take on this historical occasion as well as the hope it portends….
We are fortunate, being such a small state, to have great people among us.
