Get Rid of Corporate Taxes

Paul K. has convinced me, we should do away with corporate taxes. [See his comments on the 57,000 page tax return article.] It is a regressive tax. He has commented on this before.

Here is what really pushed me over the edge. Christian Century reported on a major study of the 280 most profitable Fortune 500 companies which showed that 78% paid no income tax in one of the last 3 years and 30 had negative tax rates over the same period of time. The report was done by Citizens for Tax Justice and the Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy.

They don’t pay their taxes and they just get pushed forward to us anyway if they do, so let’s just get rid of them. Of course, that may mean that our income tax might raise a bit, but at least we see that we’re paying for it instead of having it hidden from us. And, it puts all those tax lawyers finding loopholes out of a job, would that translate into lower prices? Likely not but it should.

Karl Rove and Catsup

I believe once before I wrote a bit on catsup. It was about an ad about Heinz Catsup which I could never get out of the bottle without a small stick a explosive, so they advertized it as good and thick. Or, they advertised their weakness as a strength.

What has that to do with Karl Rove? Well, his latest attack ad on Elizabeth Warren ( one of the few bright lights on the political scene) in which he doesn’t just take a weakness and make it a virtue. He just flat out lies, which seems to have become perfectly acceptable to politicians today.

In the ad he blames Warren for TARP (Troubled Asset Relief Program) and for bank bailouts. Here are the lies: 1. TARP was a Republican program implemented by G.W. Bush; 2. Warren became the chair of the Congressional Oversight Panel to bring such programs under control. 3. Warren has been an advocate of getting rid of “too big to fail” institutions by breaking them up. 4. Charged with being anti financial, she was charged with setting up the new Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, working with financial institutions. 5. Charged with siding with big banks instead of the middle class is bizarre. Big banks have been after her for a long time.

I know she and Rove are fighting in Massachusetts, but she is such a bright light I like to follow what she is doing.

Here in Wisconsin we have our Gov. in his Kock Brothers backed ads having teachers talk about how they kept the jobs and things are just fine in getting more money in the classroom. I wonder what the 3,368 teachers who lost their jobs at his cutbacks think about that. Of course, this was done under the guise of balancing the budget deficit which he created by giving tax break to the wealthy.

If the rest of us make such statements in public we would be sued for slander and libel. Ah politics.

Is The Doctor In?

When I was a kid and if someone in the family got sick, we called the doctor, and went to see him usually that day. Sometimes the doctor even came to our farm. Can you imagine that? Today, most of us don’t even try to see our doctor if we’re sick, we head off to a urgent care center. You can see your own doctor, it just takes some time. The following chart compares us to other countries in waiting time.

 We have the most expensive health care system in the world but we rarely can see a doctor when we want. There is no reason to blame the doctors for all this, they are seeing 20 to 30 patients a day. They just don’t have time. So the real problem is we don’t have enough doctors! Take a gander at the next chart to see how we compare to other countries in terms of doctors in relation to population.

Now that is a mind blower. I've heard the argument that the doctors will leave single payer systems to work in free enterprise systems. Well, we do pay our doctors more, but you can clearly see that doesn't make for more doctors. So, when someone trots that old argument out, show them the data.

I Don't Get It!

There are lot’s of things I don’t get. Here are some.

Why is Jerry Seinfeld funny. He has an annoying voice, uses mean condescending humor and is regarded as a comic Genius. I don’t get it. (But then I didn’t get “Friends” either. Perhaps it is olditis.)

Why don’t we fix the health system. Most people want universal health care. It is proven more efficient in countries that use it. The current system is an enormous drag upon the economy. I don’t get it.

Why do women fall in love with bad boys, seek to change them, and when it doesn’t work divorce them. I don’t get it.

Why don’t folk see that supply side economics (a.k.a. trickle down economics) doesn’t work. It hasn't worked for 35 years and yet folk who have not benefited by it still support it. They would have $13,000 more in their pockets it we went back to proven demand side economics. I don’t get it.

Why are there thousands of channels available on TV and you can’t find one of them worth watching? And why did the FCC allow so damned many commercials to be shown each half hour? I don’t get it.

Why is “intelligent design” called intelligent design, when it’s stupid? I don’t get it.

Why don’t we mourn Veterans Day rather than celebrate it? They died because as a race we’re so damned stupid we can’t solve our differences sensibly? And then why after praising soldiers, and we should, don’t we take care of them adequately when they come home? I don’t get it.

Why is the happiest nation in the world Sweden when they live in an inhospitable climate and pay over 50% taxes. Actually, I get that, they have a better value system and take care of each other.

Why do you need a bar at a shooting range? Seems like a recipe for disaster. And does any hunter need an automatic weapon or a bazooka? I don’t get it.

Why do we get all excited about subsidizing education, public broadcasting, social security, medicare, Medicaid etc. and not blink an eye about subsidizing professional sports programs, and corporations with tax breaks. I don’t get it?

Why is it legal for banks to bet on the the folk the lend to going broke? I don’t get it.

Why does almost the entire food industry underpay and give no benefits for their workers, so the live in poverty and can’t afford to eat out? Except at fast food places which destroy their health. I don’t get it.

Why does anyone live in the north during the winter? Sadomasochists? I don’t get it.

Why do folk think it is more moral to get up early? I don’t get it.

Why do we applaud folk who fanatically work themselves to death? I don’t get it.

Following the moral and economics failings of Wall Street why do the majority of folk want to privatize social security? I don’t get it.

Why have we allowed our country to become an oligarchy of the rich? I don’t get it.

Why do mommy’s and daddy’s love their children? Well, maybe I get that one, sometimes.

Why is it improper to fart in public but to insult people without compunction? I don’t get it.

Why do folk go to football games and freeze their butts of when they can see better at home and stay warm? And why are we a nation of such sports fanatics and so sedentary and obese? Or why do people cheer at ball games and remain quiet in church? I don’t get it.

Why do I love playing golf, which I do poorly and write blogs? Why didn’t I finish the book I had two thirds done? I don’t get it.

Why do dogs give us undying affection no matter how we treat them? I don’t get it.

Why do we put down animals when they suffer and keep humans alive when they want to go see God? I don’t get it.

Why do we think the entire world is governed by cause and effect except for ourselves? I don’t get it.

Why do we laugh at others people’s pain? i.e. the Three Stooges and my wife seeing me fall on my ass. I don’t get it.

Why did the chicken cross the road? I don’t get it.

Who cares if a tree falls in the woods and makes noise or not if not one is there to hear it? I don’t get it.

What do we think baby faces covered with gunk is adorable? Yuck! I don’t get it.

Why do women complain that men don’t put the toilet seat down and they don’t put the lid down (especially if it is under the medicine chest) when essentially both just do their business and leave without a thought about anyone else. I don’t get it.

Why is it necessary to teach MBA’s etc business ethics? Didn’t they have parents? I don’t get it.

Why do we introduce ourselves by telling each other what we do or did to make money? I don’t get it.

Why do we feel dumber the more learn and the older we get? I don’t get it.

Why do we distrust smart people? I don’t get it.

Why would pigs want to fly? I don’t get it.

How could hell possibly freeze over if hell is the absence of God and God is the creator of all; therefore hell doesn’t even exist? I don’t get it.

Why do some evangelists want to scare people into believing? Isn’t that anti-good news? I don’t get it.

Why are men from Mars and women from Venus; what’s wrong with Uranus and Neptune or Kepler 22b? I don’t get it. (Do you suppose Jesus retired to Kepler 22b?)

If we are so against illegal immigrants, why don’t we all throw ourselves out except the Native Americans? I don’t get it. And do you suppose the places where we or our ancestors came from would let us back in?

Do you think our frontal lobes where our moral compasses reside are shrinking?

Why don’t were hear Mort Saul’s comedy anymore? This political age seems made for him. I don’t get it.

Is Betty White right when she says we don’t have as many daytime quiz shows is because we just lack general knowledge nowadays? Or, we don’t get it.

If you have, why have you read so many of these speculations? I don’t get it.

Finally, why does God seem so head over heels in love with us, when we seem to spit in God’s eye? I don’t get it, but I am thankful for it.

The Social Gospel

I used a term in a recent blog that perhaps not all of you are familiar with: the social gospel.” It has been a common term that I have used most of my life, but it is not a common term today, so, I decided to write a bit about it.

Historians tend to see it as essentially a protestant movement of the 20^th century, particularly the early part. In essence the social gospel is the attempt to apply Christian ethics to social problems that face our society. As a Presbyterian, it is reflected, eloquently in my opinion, in the first chapter of our form of government as labeled as The Great Ends of the Church:

F-1.0304 The Great Ends of the Church

The great ends of the Church are:

the proclamation of the gospel for the salvation of humankind;

the shelter, nurture, and spiritual fellowship of the children of God;

the maintenance of divine worship;

the preservation of the truth;

the promotion of social righteousness; and

the exhibition of the Kingdom of Heaven to the world.4

The conditions in the country when the social gospel was prominent were similar to what they are now. During the 19^th century, lacking the governmental controls that came into being in the 20^th century following the Great Depression. There was widespread poverty, great unemployment, a lack of child labor laws, a few laws dealing with the safety net that came into being under the leadership of Franklin Delano Roosevelt.

The so called Protestant Ethic was also prominent in people’s thinking. That was the idea that good people worked hard and therefore were rewarded by God with wealth, while poor people were being punished by God because they were slackards. Not unlike how we hear the Wall Street people describing the Wall Street Occupiers. It was prominent in the Old Testament times prior to the wisdom writers. The wisdom writers (authors of Job, Psalms, Proverbs, Ecclesiastes, Song of Solomon) looked around the world and saw that a lot of good people were having a hard time of it and a lot of nasty folk were making out like bandits economically. So they rejected that type of thinking, as the Social Gospel contingent rejected similar thinking in their day.

Most mainline churches today still support the Social Gospel in one form or another feeling that we need to take care of people’s physical needs before we go out evangelizing them. The good news of the gospel includes care for people as well as the proclamation of salvation through Christ. And we are beginning to see more evidence of this type of thinking emerging in the more fundamental and non-denominational mega churches of today.

To give an example we can turn to how the church has done missionary work at various times in history. Some might remember an Ingrid Bergman movie who played a rather slow woman who just wanted to help to poor African babies; she saw them as less that her so she could help them. And so churches sent missionaries off to various countries to tell them about Jesus and in the process demonstrate the superiority of American culture and values and save their poor little ignorant souls. Fortunately, churches gained a more enlightened understanding of mission work, meeting people where they were, accepting them and their culture and providing help in living a more productive live before evangelizing them. In my home town and my church, (true story this time), a young man named Frank Younkin , felt called to be a missionary. He grew up on a farm, went to Iowa State University to learn the latest agricultural skills, and then to seminary. He and his wife Anita spent their lives in Thailand and similar places. Basically he taught farming practices that would work well in their countries, and Jesus likely was talked about a bit as well. To me that is the social gospel done properly in mission work.

One fella felt it necessary to explain my job to me as a pastor one day (one of many over the years). He said, I had but one thing to do, evangelize. I thanked him and thought privately, bull. My job, as a teaching elder is to help others grow in their faith so the may live the Christian life more fully and share it with others. The least of my work is so-called evangelism. My work as I saw it was to be aware of my church, my community, my state, nation and world, and to perceive what were it’s needs. And share those perceptions with others, who, if touched by grace, wanted to respond to the needs of others and care for them. Social gospel. Again I didn’t seem my primary job as doing the social gospel, but awakening need to do so in others and help them with their ministry of the social gospel. In other words, I mainly told stories, like Jesus did, to awaken our awareness of our needs to give thanks and share with others God’s bounty.

After all, how many times can a person be saved? For me, it was once and that took place at Golgotha (where Christ was crucified). But our response to the good news is to live as good citizens of the kingdom of God, here and hereafter. And that means taking care of each other.

Another great example I believe I shared before. The fella who runs the local gas station woke up one Sunday morning to tons of snow and all churches had cancelled their services. So, he said to his family, “Let’s go do something good today.” And he did, he went all over town with his snowblower cleaning out people driveways. That is the social gospel.

Matthew 25

³⁴“Then the King will say to those on his right, ‘Enter, you who are blessed by my Father! Take what’s coming to you in this kingdom. It’s been ready for you since the world’s foundation. ³⁵And here’s why:

I was hungry and you fed me,

I was thirsty and you gave me a drink,

I was homeless and you gave me a room,

³⁶I was shivering and you gave me clothes,

I was sick and you stopped to visit,

I was in prison and you came to me.’

³⁷“Then those ‘sheep’ are going to say, ‘Master, what are you talking about? When did we ever see you hungry and feed you, thirsty and give you a drink? ^38-39And when did we ever see you sick or in prison and come to you?’ ⁴⁰Then the King will say, ‘I’m telling the solemn truth: Whenever you did one of these things to someone overlooked or ignored, that was me—you did it to me.’

⁴¹“Then he will turn to the ‘goats,’ the ones on his left, and say, ‘Get out, worthless goats! You’re good for nothing but the fires of hell. ⁴²And why? Because—

I was hungry and you gave me no meal,

I was thirsty and you gave me no drink,

⁴³I was homeless and you gave me no bed,

I was shivering and you gave me no clothes,

Sick and in prison, and you never visited.’

⁴⁴“Then those ‘goats’ are going to say, ‘Master, what are you talking about? When did we ever see you hungry or thirsty or homeless or shivering or sick or in prison and didn’t help?’

⁴⁵“He will answer them, ‘I’m telling the solemn truth: Whenever you failed to do one of these things to someone who was being overlooked or ignored, that was me—you failed to do it to me.’

57,000 Page Tax Return

The General Electric Corporation (GE) filled a 57,000 page tax return; well it was electronic so that is the equivalent of their return. It would be 19 feet tall if stacked. That is one whopping big tax return. Makes you wonder how long it took to create and Congressman Frank Wolf, Republican TN asked the IRS commissioner how many hours it took the employees to review it. It we put legs on the bloody things it would be the Creature from the Black Return, or a Transformer light bulb with a billion watts.

Need I say it? GE paid no tax for that year. They paid a considerable amount of tax to China, but nada, zero, zip to our government.

Do you think we need tax reform?

[info for this piece came from tax.com.]

Another Internet quiz or two,

Following are the results of  another quiz I took on the internet. What you may find more interesting is the overall poll of folk who took this test. My results are at the end of the article so you know my biases in case you haven't guessed them already.

The Quiz
The more interesting part:

Currently, after 112728 submissions, the average Conservative/Progressive score is 6.03, the average Capitalist Purist/Social Capitalist score is 6.79, the average Libertarian/Authoritarian score is 5.58, and the average Pacifist/Militarist score is 4.43


1. Are our gun control laws too strict? - 27% said yes, 73% said no
2. Should gay marriage be legalized? - 65% said yes, 35% said no
3. Should we consider invading Iran? - 23% said yes, 77% said no
4. Should intelligent design be taught in public schools alongside evolution? - 51% said yes, 49% said no
5. Does the US need a system of universal health care? - 61% said yes, 39% said no
6. Should marijuana be legalized? - 58% said yes, 42% said no
7. Should we repeal [or substantially change] the Patriot Act? - 56% said yes, 44% said no
8. Does the US have a right to stop countries we do not trust from getting weapons? - 50% said yes, 50% said no
9. Should we end (or reduce the use of) the death penalty? - 40% said yes, 60% said no
10. Should there be a higher minimum wage? - 68% said yes, 32% said no
11. Does affirmative action do more harm than good? - 62% said yes, 38% said no
12. Is the United States spending too much money on defense? - 56% said yes, 44% said no
13. Should embryonic stem cell research be funded by the government? - 59% said yes, 41% said no
14. Should flag burning be legal? - 43% said yes, 57% said no
15. Should all people (rich and poor) pay fewer taxes? - 58% said yes, 42% said no
16. Should the US begin withdrawing from Iraq? - 80% said yes, 20% said no
17. Is it sometimes justified to wiretap US citizens without a warrant? - 34% said yes, 66% said no
18. Should the government be involved in reducing the amount of violence/pornography in tv/movies/games/etc? - 25% said yes, 75% said no
19. Should the United States only start a war if there is an imminent threat of being attacked ourselves? - 77% said yes, 23% said no
20. Should stopping illegal immigration be one of our top priorities? - 56% said yes, 44% said no
21. Is outsourcing of American jobs justified if it allows for cheaper goods? - 28% said yes, 72% said no
22. Are all abortions unethical? [with the exception of risk to mother's health] - 37% said yes, 63% said no
23. Should social security be privatized? - 56% said yes, 44% said no
24. Should the United States ever go to war even if the UN is against it? - 50% said yes, 50% said no

Here are the pieces I find most interesting: 2. Most folk are for recognizing gay marriage, most folk favor universal health care,10. most folk want a higher minimum wage, 13. most folk see the need for stem cell research, 15. most folk agree on progressive taxes. Yet we hear little debate on these issues which are of major importance.

Lesser important issues which I find public response a bit scary [1 (power of the NRA), 4, 11 (despite all research to the contrary), and others are not as important but get a lot of press. All this reflects a lot of single issue people who base their thinking on slogans rather than information and data.

----

My results:

The following are your scores. They are based on a gradual range of 0 to 12. For instance, a Conservative/Progressive score of 3 and 0 will both yield a result of social conservative, yet 0 would be an extremeconservative and 3 a moderate conservative

Conservative/Progressive score: 12 
You are a social progressive. You generally consider yourself a humanist first. You probably think that religion and patriotism go too far in society. You probably consider yourself to be a citizen of Earth first rather than a citizen of your country.

Capitalist Purist/Social Capitalist score: 11 
You're a Social Capitalist, you think that, left to its own, Capitalism leaves a lot of people behind. You think that Health Care should be free to all, that the minimum wage should be raised, and that the government should provide jobs to all that are capable of having them. You likely hated the Bush tax cuts, and believe that the middle class has gotten poorer, and the rich have gotten richer over the past several years. The far extreme of social capitalism is socialism.

Libertarian/Authoritarian score: 5 
You're a Moderate. You think that we all have certain inalienable rights that must be protected, but that sometimes laws need to be made to protect the majority's lives or quality of lives. You might think that the 2nd amendment isn't necessary anymore because letting everyone a gun is extremely dangerous to the community. You might also be against illegal drug use or public pornography because of its possible harmful effects to society.

Pacifist/Militarist score: 2 
You're a Pacifist. You are angered that the United States thinks it should dominate the world through its military force. You think that the only time war is necessary is when we are in direct danger of being attacked. You also believe the US spends way too much of its money on defense, as we can practically cut it in half and still easily defend ourselves, and use that money to fix all our economic problems.

Overall, you would most likely fit into the category of Hardcore Democrat

Another test I took said I was a Reality-Based Intellectualist, also know as the liberal elite. You are a proud member of what's know as the reality-based community, where science, reason and non-Jesus based thought reign supreme.

Just goes to show a lot of these tests reflect the writers bias more than reality. Both tests seem totally unaware of the social gospel of caring for each other that many mainline churches affirm. Do they have a clue of the teachings of Jesus upon these subjects?