H O W A R D S B E N D

Well, I never thought that these words would come from my mouth.  I might be banished from all the liberal websites and progressive blogs.  I might shunned by left-wing friends.  But, there is no denying that it is time to cut the federal corporate income tax to zero percent.

Historically, corporate federal income taxes would amount to almost 30% of federal revenue.  Last year, the federal government collected approximately $2.2 trillion and corporate income tax revenue amounted to about 6% of this total.  This is a whopping $130 billion.  When the likes of GE and Exxon pay no taxes and in fact receive a tax refund, something is wrong with the system and needs to be fixed.  There should be a better way to raise tax revenue that does not wreak of hypocrisy and does not tie up billions of dollars and thousands of hours seeking to avoid this necessary evil.

Although the US corporate tax rate is 35%, the average tax rate actually paid by a US corporation is in the mid-20% range due to a host of tax advantages offered to corporate entities.  For illustrative purposes, let’s say that a corporation earns $100 million before taxes.  With an average corporate of 25%, this would equate to $25 million in federal tax revenues.  However, if the federal government has a 0% corporate tax rate, the company would have $25 million of excess cash.  What are the options for this company with this excess cash in its coffers?  First, the company might use the excess cash to pay additional salaries and bonuses.  Or, the company might pay out additional dividends to its shareholders.  In both these instances, the lost federal revenues would come back to government in the form of the personal income tax for those receiving the additional funds.  The tax rate on dividends would have to be increase from the current level of 15% to 35% to keep the federal government revenue neutral.  The other choice for this corporation with $25 million, or some portion thereof, in its coffers would be to invest in its own growth through acquisition of capital equipment or the acquisition of another firm that might make it more competitive in the future.  Although this investment portion of the might represent a loss in direct federal revenues, the federal government might recoup lost revenue if the acquisition is from a domestic firm in which case the profits go to the employees and shareholders and again would be recouped from personal income taxes.  As this $100 million net company grows from this capital expenditure, the federal government would recoup more taxes from employees as salaries increase or from shareholders as dividends are increased as the company increases its profits.

There are many benefits to a zero percent corporate income tax rate.  First, it makes our US manufacturing firms more competitive with foreign manufacturers.  As companies have more cash in their coffers, they have more funds to invest and to increase their competitiveness in the global economy.  Second, the  0% tax rate might draw foreign manufacturers to our shores. Foreign multi-nationals look for competitive environment to locate new manufacturing.   a few years back, Ireland cut their corporate tax rate to 12% and a number of multi-nations moved their operations there.  A 0% rate would draw new manufacturing to the States creating jobs for US citizens and generating more tax revenue for the federal government.  Also, corporations spend billions of dollars and thousands of man-hours on tax avoidance whether through the tax lawyers and accountants that are hired or through the numerous tax havens they must create and maintain just to avoid taxes  One Fortune 500 company has over 200 off-shore tax havens to shelter income from the US federal government.  All this time and money lost would be eliminated with a 0% corporate tax rate freeing up additional funds to invest in the company’s growth.

And finally, one of the most active forms of lobbying efforts in Washington DC, is tax avoidance.  Corporations use their lobbyists to petition Congress for tax breaks for their industries or for certain projects.  The passing of new laws to include these new tax deductions or tax credits take-up a good portion of legislative time and energies.  In addition, this process perpetuates the “money” influence in Washington as receptive Congressmen are rewarded for their efforts with campaign contributions from their corporate benefactors all the time perpetuating the corporate influence over these legislatures.

In conclusion,  this is not a traditional “liberal” proposal.  As the federal deficit soars, the talk amongst “lefties” is to reduce the tax shelters for corporations to bring more revenues to the federal coffers.  This has not worked in the recent past and I do not believe that it will work in the immediate future. .  I believe that by eliminating corporate income taxes the government can earn the same amount of revenues.  A 0% corporate tax rate will allow corporations to become more competitive and will hopefully draw new multi-national manufacturing companies to the US and create more jobs here in the States.

Believe it or not, Scott Walker had me confused.  I knew the governor’s plan to cut public employees’ salaries and benefits was not about a budget shortfall since he recently signed into law a $130 million in tax breaks for corporations.  I could not fathom an elected official being against education which is one of the pillars of the American dream.

Of course, there is the popular argument that Republicans want to privatize education.  The  new”budget crises” would allow states to cut funds for education reducing public schools to babysitting facilities.  This would give momentum to private schools and school voucher programs where people are given vouchers to help offset the cost of tuition at the private schools.

But not everyone can afford a private education even with a state voucher.  The economically challenged public schools would fail to provide a quality education and fail to provide the skills and knowledge required to succeed in today’s high-tech world.  At that point, I realized that this is what these Republicans want.  The poor public educational system will produce under-skilled and uneducated graduates.  Poorly educated people will accept poorer working conditions and not look for advancement and of course accept lower wages with no benefits.   This is the same reason that Republicans do not support unemployment benefits for those out of work.  As the pool of unskilled graduates and unemployed workers without benefits grows the pool of cheap labor expands and wages drop and benefits are cut.  This is the the ideal pool of labor  for America as more and more of the skilled and highly qualified jobs are shipped to cheaper labor sources overseas.

One more lesson from Wisconsin  with the constant battle against the unions and their right to exist.  All of the sudden I realized the reason why several Republican governors have refused federal money for high-speed rail despite the fact that it will bring immediate jobs to the states as construction starts and will continue to provide jobs as the new high speed trains are operational.  Also, this rail should improve commerce and business in the area.  So why should a governor refuse these funds?  Scott Walker gave me the answer.  It is because the high-speed rail would most likely bring union jobs to the state.  The construction jobs would most likely be union jobs and the rail jobs would also most likely be union jobs.  As we learned from Mr. Walker and his supporter David Koch, unions are an anathema  to the Republican politicians and their ultra-rich supporters.  It is more important to keep unions out then bring jobs to a state with high unemployment.  This is not the state of Wisconsin, this is the state of the Union.

I think that we all can take away a few big lessons from the recent turmoil in Wisconsin – it is time to end public school education!

First, there is no fair way to pay for public education.  The system is rigged for those families with many children living in small homes or, even worse, renting apartments.  These families pay no or just a small amount of real estate taxes that are used to fund our schools.   Why should two families living side-by-side in identical homes pay the same real estate taxes when one family has five children and the other couple a single child?  Why should people with no children have to pay school taxes at all?  We need to find a more equitable system.

Second,  the hope and dreams that a quality education are suppose to provide are myths in today’s world of few job opportunities.   Today’s curriculum is burdensome and irrelevant for providing the skills and knowledge to succeed in the world of today.  We teach two years of pre-Algebra and then a year of Algebra I  followed by Algebra II.  I have yet to use the “x” and “y” to help solve a problem in the real world.  How about trigonometry?  We can sine that one to the dumpster, too.

And science education, where has that gotten us?  We produce a bunch of liberal scientists that take federal grant money only to try and convince us that there is global warming.  Or we pay scientists, again with federal and state grant money, to study the behavior of rats and monkeys and then try to educate our children with the theory of evolution.  Science got us to the moon and what did we get for those billions of dollars spent?   Tang.

History?  Forget about it.  We spend more time teaching American history in our schools than we do teaching Algebra.  American History is taught every year in grades 1 through 8, although much of that time focuses on Thanksgiving.  Our kids are taught social studies , whatever that is, in the ninth grade maybe one year of world history in tenth and then back to American history for the junior and senior years.  And what do we get for it?  We have politicians  who you would think would be experts on American history, and yet nationally recognized politicians stumble as they try to recall history to make a point.  John Boehner tells us he is reading the Constitution and then reads from the Declaration of Independence.  Michelle Bachman tells us that the Founding Fathers, led by John Quincy Adams (who we know was not a Founding Father) eliminated slavery.  Sarah Palin cannot recite a single decision handed down by the Supreme Court which she might disagree with.  I can bet that both these politicians got A’s in their history classes.

We, as a society, must move to a system of home schooling.  Only the parents really know what is essential for their children to learn and they can be responsible for passing along this knowledge.  We do not need elected school boards dictating that kids learn subjects that we see as totally irrelevant or contrary to our beliefs.  No one will tell us we cannot teach the Bible in our homes.  I can assure you there will be much fewer discipline problems with home schooling and we will not have to hire a police force to guard the doors of education.  Think of the savings on the federal school lunch program.  Of course, those families that are apathetic to their own childrens’ education can waste their hard-earned dollars sending their kids to private schools.  That is what we mean by ” free choice”.

By ridding ourselves of public education, we immediately go along way in solving the state and local budget problems. We immediately make education more relevant and give control back to our kids to the family.  And finally, we will not have to deal with the divisive teachers’ strike in our community every two years.

It has been almost 40 years since the first major energy crisis of our time.  Ironically, this is the same period it took wandering in the desert to find the “Promised Land.”   Over these past 40 years, have we reached the “promised land” of energy self-sufficiency to avoid jarring shock waves to our economy?  You do not need a crystal ball to predict events of the this Spring and Summer as unrest spreads in the Middle East.

The President’s Speech – David Chappelle & Geoffrey Rush

President’s Speech is a movie starring Geoffrey Rush and Dave Chappelle in which Geoffrey Rush is hired by the President’s staff to coach the President, played by Dave Chappelle, in strategies and methods of projecting more emotion and adding more tangible passion to his speeches to the American people.

Scene One: Oval Office of the White House

Mr Rush:  Okay Barack.

The President: Please call me Mr. President.

Mr. Rush: OK Barack……….You were informed that the House of Republicans just passed an alternative budget in which $60 billion is cut from programs that you strongly endorse.  Show some anger as you discuss developments with the American people.

The President:  My fellow Americans, last night I was chagrined to discover that the House of  Representatives passed an alternative budget to the one I recently presented to Congress. Their budget slashes many  of the programs that I strongly endorse and which I believe will help keep our Country on the course of recovery.  I can only hope they change their current positions……  You like how I worked in “hope and change”?

Mr. Rush – Mr President, with all due respect, I believe that you must generate a little more anger at the defiant Republican House.  For instance….Yesterday, the fucking, asshole Republicans in the House passed a fucking ridiculous budget that violates every fucking thing that I stand for.  Can you believe that these moronic and imbecilic Republicans are cutting the fucking education budget when education is the only fucking hope for the future?  These rich ass-kissing Republicans dare to cut the budgets for the SEC and the CFTC, the two agencies that oversee the fucking greedy bastards on Wall Street and all their fucking shenanigans and our only hope in preventing another calamitous crash of the markets.

Mr President: Ok, ok,ok ok…….. I think I have it……….  My fellow Americans, there are no red states and no blue states, just the United States and last night the House of Representatives passed a budget which I believe does not support the goals and ambitions of all our people. Last month, I promised a new era of cooperation and civility so in that vein I will go back and look at the budget for the Department of Education and see where we can make significant cuts and I will look at the bloated budgets of the SEC and CFTC and work to streamline these agencies to make them conform to our new standards of efficient government.

Mr. Rush: Put on the coffree…it’s going to be a long night.

As the NBA trading deadline approaches, we just learned of the a major trade that brought all-star Carmelo Anthony from the Denver Nuggets to the New York Knicks for four lesser players. The trade had immediate dividends as Carmelo scored 27 points in his debut leading the Knicks in rout of the Milwaukee Bucks.

Today their are murmurs of a much larger trade that will have worldwide implications.  There are unconfirmed rumors that Afghanistan is talking directly to Egypt about a straight-up swap of Hosni Mubarak for Hamid Karzi.  Of course, Hosni would have to be coaxed out of retirement, but the belief is that he would be very interested in running another totalitarian regime.  Of course, it might take a little while for Hosni to get the iron fist back in shape but experts feel that he should be able to dominate the new country by the middle of the season.  Friends and associates report that Hosni is regularly goose-stepping along the beach at his vacation home in Sharmelsheik in hopes of a possible return to the imperial palace again.  Egypt, on the other hand,  has been looking for a less dominant leader and one that is content sitting in the background planning domestic policy.

This trade has major implications for the United States.  The US has been funding the old Mubarak regime in Egypt for the bargain price of $2 billion a year and has gotten security and absolute stability from Egypt for the past 12 years.  Afghanistan has been requiring about $120 billion per year of US funding over the past few years.  The US believes that if Mubarak is able to quell the current unrest and bring stability back to Afghanistan for the paltry sum of $2 billion per year then it will have an additional $118 billion per year under the salary cap.  This $118 billion could then be used to back new dictators, enhance our nation building efforts throughout the Third World and there could possibly be a billion left over to fund the heating assistance program for the impoverished ederly.

The key component of the deal sending Hosni Mubarak to Afghanistan is that it guarantees the Afghan people true democracy in about 30 years which is obviously much faster than anything that might be accomplished under the present regime.  There are several recent rumors that Libya is shopping Qaddafi.