Update: Michigan Department of Corrections
Abandons Routine Body Cavity Searches

The American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) and the ACLU of Michigan reports the Michigan Department of Corrections has decided to no longer routinely subject women to body cavity searches at the Women's Huron Valley Correctional facility. The facility had[...]

Read The Full Article:
http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/firedoglake/fdl/~3/ZsRxK7UdDvA/

Add to del.icio.us   Digg this   Post to Furl   Add to reddit   Add to myYahoo!

Fox Spreads Romney's Dubious Talking Point On
Women's Job Losses

Fox is reinforcing Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney's attacks on the Obama administration by parroting his misleading claim that since President Obama took office, "92.3 percent of the job losses ... has been women who've lost those jobs." In fact, this indicator is meaningless in understanding how Obama's policies have impacted working women as it ignores several important factors, including when the recession began and the fact that more women are in the workforce today than in January 2008.

Mitt Romney: "The Real War On Women Has Been Waged By The Obama Administration"

Mitt Romney Made Dubious Women Jobs-Loss Claim To Attack Obama Over Economy. CNSNews.com reported:

GOP presidential frontrunner Mitt Romney on Tuesday said President Barack Obama is waging war on women through his administration's failure on the economy.

The former Massachusetts governor said 92.3 percent of job losses during Obama's presidency were experienced by women.

"The other day there's been some talk about a war on women. The real war on women has been waged by the Obama administration's failure on the economy. Do you know what percent of the job losses in the Obama years have been casualties of women losing jobs as opposed to men?" Romney said during a campaign stop in Wilmington, Del.

"Do you know how many women - what percent of the job losses were women? 92.3 percent of the job losses during the Obama years has been women who've lost those jobs. The real war on women has been the job losses as a result of the Obama economy," he said. [CNSNews.com, 4/11/12]

Fox Runs With Claim That Women Have Suffered 92 Percent Of Job Losses

Fox Host Steve Doocy: 92 Percent Of The People "Who Have Lost Jobs On Barack Obama's Watch Have Been Women? That's Big." On the April 11 edition of Fox & Friends,co-host SteveDoocy presented Romney's talking point:

DOOCY: And [Romney] uses for the first time we have heard a statistic that is absolutely jaw-dropping. Listen to this. He's going to mention that 93, rather 92 percent of the people who have lost jobs during Barack Obama's three and a half years have been women. Listen to this.

[...]

DOOCY: Ninety-two percent of the women -- of the people who have lost jobs on Barack Obama's watch have been women? That's big. [Fox News, Fox & Friends, 4/11/12]

Conservative Fox Guest: "Under Obama The Number Of Unemployed Women Has Increased By 858,000." Adding to Romney's misleading figure, conservative author Jedediah Bila said on Fox News that the number of unemployed women since January 2009 has increased by 858,000:

BILA: [Women] know what these costs are. They're the ones who are unemployed. I want to add one figure to Mitt Romney -- what he said before, under Obama the number of unemployed women has increased by 858,000. Talk to women. Explain why these policies, Obamacare, etcetera, are hurting women. [Fox News, America's Newsroom, 4/11/12]

Doocy: "92 Percent Of People Who Have Lost Jobs Since That Guy Took Office Have Been Women." On the April 12 edition of Fox & Friends, Doocy again pushed Romney's talking point:

DOOCY: The former governor of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts, Mr. Romney, said -- and I looked it up. He was citing Department of Labor Statistics, which said that since Barack Obama has been in office -- since the day he took office up to the end of March 2012 -- of the women who have been losing jobs under President Obama, 92 percent of the people who have lost jobs have been women. Ninety-two percent of people who have lost jobs since that guy took office have been women. [Fox News, Fox & Friends, 4/12/12]

But Romney And Fox Are Ignoring Key Facts About The 2007 Recession

Wash. Post: 92 Percent Claim Is "A Function Of The Dates One Picks." Washington Post fact-checker Glenn Kessler found that the 92 percent figure was a "function of the dates one picks":

[T]here is less to this stat than meets the eye. First of all, why start in January? Obama, after all took office on January 20. If you start the data in February, then the overall job loss is just 16,000 jobs--while women lost 484,000 jobs. (We should note that in a previous column we said that, by picking January, the RNC was using a relative common measure of job growth during a presidency.)

How could women lose more jobs than the overall total? It's a function of the dates one picks. In fact, the picture becomes clearer if you start running the data from the date the recession began -- December 2007. With that starting point, the total decline in jobs was just over 5 million, with women accounting for nearly 1.8 million of those jobs.

Now look what happens when we just look at the past year, March 2011 to March 2012. Men gained nearly 1.9 million jobs while women gained 635,000 jobs.

In other words, men did lose more jobs in the recession. Now that the economy is growing again, men are recovering jobs at a faster pace than women. In fact, the latest employment report shows that male participation in the work force was up 14,000 while female participation fell 177,000, in part because women tend to work in retail or government jobs (such as teaching), which have been cut in recent months. [The Washington Post, 4/10/12]

AP Fact Check: In Recession, Which "Began 13 Months Before Republican George W. Bush Left The White House," More Men Than Women Lost Jobs. In its fact check looking at Romney's claim, the Associated Press wrote: "As a meaningful measure of Obama's economic record and its effect on women, though, it is dubious at best." It further stated that the people pushing the claim "ignore how recessions generally -- and the last one in particular -- unfold." From AP's article:

Romney's math is solid as far as it goes. But more men than women have lost jobs since the recession began -- that's why economists called it a "man-cession."

[...]

The deep recession that began 13 months before Republican George W. Bush left the White House hit men harder than women at the beginning. Recessions often do that because male-dominated enterprises such as construction and manufacturing tend to be the first to tumble in a downturn. Eventually, sectors with more women in the workforce follow suit, and that happened mostly after Obama took office.

In the recession that began in December 2007 and ended in June 2009 -- with high unemployment lingering to this day -- the crisis in the financial sector and bursting of the housing bubble accentuated the damage to jobs held primarily by men. "The initial losses were even more male-dominated than normal because of the nature of the recession," [Diane] Swonk [chief economist at financial services firm Mesirow Financial] said.

Women were more heavily represented in jobs that suffered in the recession's later months and beyond, as revenue-strapped state and local governments laid off teachers and cut other public-sector workers.

Romney's claim is based on statistics showing the number of unemployed women grew by 858,000 since January 2009, Obama's inauguration month. But it ignores the disproportionate hit on men the year before Obama became president - and their greater job losses overall.

Some 3.4 million men and 1.8 million women have lost jobs since the recession started, according to the government. [Associated Press, 4/12/12]

Talking Points Memo: "Male-Dominated Industries Took A Hard, Early Hit During The Recession." As a chart from economist Justin Wolfers of the University of Pennsylvania's Wharton School showed, men suffered higher job losses during the recession:

Male-dominated industries took a hard, early hit during the recession. As those industries rebound, more jobs are going to men than to women. Conversely, women lost a huge number of jobs in states and municipalities as a result of teacher layoffs -- a hemorrhaging that could have been stanched by Obama-proposed legislation to spur teacher hiring, which the GOP blocked.

[Talking Points Memo, 4/11/12]

PolitiFact: "Women Account For Just 39.7 Percent" Of Total Jobs Lost In Recession. PolitiFact rated the 92 percent statistic "mostly false," because it "ignores critical facts that would give a different impression":

"Between January 2009 and March 2012 men lost 57,000 jobs, while women lost 683,000 jobs. This is the reverse of the recession period of December 2007-June 2009 (with an overlap of six months) which saw men lose 5,355,000 jobs and women lose 2,124,000 jobs," [Bureau of Labor Statistics spokesman Gary] Steinberg told us in an email.

So timing was important. And if you count all those jobs lost beginning in 2007, women account for just 39.7 percent of the total.

Gary Burtless, a labor market expert with the Brookings Institution, explained the gender disparity.

"I think males were disproportionately hurt by employment losses in manufacturing and especially construction, which is particularly male-dominated. A lot of job losses in those two industries had already occurred before Obama took office," he said. "Industries where women are more likely to be employed - education, health, the government - fared better in terms of job loss. In fact, health and education employment continued to grow in the recession and in the subsequent recovery. Government employment only began to fall after the private economy (and private employment) began growing again." [PolitiFact, 4/10/12]

NBC News: "Women Actually Make Up A Larger Share Of The Workforce Now Than They Did In Jan. 2008." An NBC News fact check criticized the Romney campaign for painting an "incomplete picture" and stated:

First Read contacted the Bureau of Labor Statistics to get to the bottom of this 92 percent charge. The conclusion: The Romney campaign's figures don't tell the whole story.

The campaign, in a research document circulated yesterday and on its website, said the numbers come from the "Current Employment Statistics" database at BLS. The document notes that there was a net change of -740,000 nonfarm payroll jobs from January 2009 to March 2012 -- and that women accounted for 683,000 of those jobs.

That is accurate, according to BLS. But Brian Davidson, an economist at BLS, told First Read: "The math they use is correct; the terminology is completely wrong."

Davidson noted that women actually make up a larger share of the workforce now than they did in Jan. 2008 before the financial meltdown, and since January 2009, it is a statistically insignificant change.

In January 2008, women made up 48.8 percent of the workforce; in January 2009, 49.5 percent; now 49.3 percent.

"Do we still have the same amount of women workers relative to men in the 'net-change'? Yes we do," Davidson said.

He added, "It's like trying to pull a bunny out of a hat, but there's no bunny inside." [NBC News, First Read, 4/11/12]

CNN: "Since February 2010, Women Have Actually Gained 863,000 Jobs." CNN reported that employment among women has actually increased by 863,000 jobs since February 2010:

[T]he statistic does not reflect that men constituted a much larger chunk of the job loss pie in the year leading up to Obama's inauguration.

In the 2008 calendar year, men lost a total of 2.7 million nonfarm jobs, compared with 895,000 jobs lost for women. Men made up 75.4% of the 3.6 million jobs lost that year.

Romney's claim also does not reflect that the job losses for women began in March 2008, almost a full year before Obama took office. At that point, women held a total of 67.3 million nonfarm payroll jobs, the highest level of female employment of the Bush administration.

From that high point, the number of women with nonfarm payroll jobs fell for 23 consecutive months, spanning from the final 10 months of the Bush administration and first 13 months of the Obama administration. Since February 2010, women have actually gained 863,000 jobs. [CNN.com, 4/11/12]

Recession Aftermath Impacted Women-Dominated Industries

Economist Betsey Stevenson: "Many Of Women's Job Losses Have Been Government Jobs ... Which Have Been Slower To Come Back." PolitiFact reported:

Betsey Stevenson, a business and public policy professor at Princeton University, also pointed out that "in every recession men's job loss occurs first and most, with unemployment rates for men being more cyclical than those of women's."

She added that many of women's job losses have been government jobs -- teachers and civil servants -- which have been slower to come back because they require greater government spending.

So have Obama's policies been especially bad for women?

Said Stevenson: "I don't think you could point to a single piece of evidence that the pattern of job loss: men first then women, is due to the president's policies. It's a historical pattern that has held in previous recessions." [PolitiFact, 4/10/12]

Ezra Klein: The Recession Aftermath Was "Harder On Industries That Women Dominate, Like Retail And Teaching." The Washington Post's Ezra Klein wrote that recessions tend to hit male-dominated industries first:

To put this a bit differently, the crisis began in industries that men dominate, like construction and manufacturing. That was where we saw the bulk of the job losses. But the aftermath has been harder on industries that women dominate, like retail and teaching. Because Obama took office midway into the recession, he's got less of the initial crisis on "his" record, but all of the aftermath.

The reality is that the recession has been easier on women than men. You might remember various magazines branding it the "he-cession." [The Washington Post, Wonkblog, 4/11/12]

St. Louis Fed: "Men Always Bear The Brunt Of Unemployment Losses During The Recession." A study by the St. Louis Fed broke down unemployment during recessions along gender lines in the last six recessions and found that unemployment is usually higher among men than women:

As already mentioned, men always bear the brunt of employment losses during recessions, and the current recession has been no different. This is true whether one looks at payroll employment, as earlier studies have, or at household employment, as this study does.

[St. Louis Fed, September 2009]

Obama Has Pushed For Increasing Female Employment

NY Times: First Bill Obama Signed Was Aimed At Eliminating Gap Between Men's And Women's Salaries. The first bill President Obama signed as president did away with the 180-day statute of limitations in wage discriminations cases:

President Obama signed his first bill into law on Thursday, approving equal-pay legislation that he said would "send a clear message that making our economy work means making sure it works for everybody."

Mr. Obama was surrounded by a group of beaming lawmakers, most but not all of them Democrats, in the East Room of the White House as he affixed his signature to the Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Act, a law named for an Alabama woman who at the end of a 19-year career as a supervisor in a tire factory complained that she had been paid less than men.

[...]

Now 70, Ms. Ledbetter discovered when she was nearing retirement that her male colleagues were earning much more than she was. A jury found her employer, the Goodyear Tire and Rubber Company plant in Gadsden, Ala., guilty of pay discrimination. But in a 5-4 decision, the Supreme Court threw out the case, ruling that she should have filed her suit within 180 days of the date that Goodyear first paid her less than her peers. [The New York Times, 1/29/09]

Matt Yglesias: The Obama Administration "Pushed Hard For Legislation To Prevent Layoffs Of Teachers." Because teaching is dominated by women, preventing teacher layoffs would have resulted in higher levels of employment for women:

The story within the story is that recessions hit male-dominated highly cyclical sectors like construction and manufacturing first. Women tend to disproportionately work in sectors like health care and education that show slow and steady job growth. But those male-dominated cyclical sectors also bounce back relatively quickly. So since the recession started more than a year before Obama's inauguration, male job losses were close to bottoming out by the time Obama took office and he's presided over a lot of rebound growth in male employment. Women, by contrast, have been devastated by cascading waves of teacher layoffs:

Not only have these layoffs primarily been implemented at the behest of Republican Party governors and state legislators, but the Obama administration twice--once in the Spring of 2010 and a second time in the fall of 2012--pushed hard for legislation to prevent layoffs of teachers. These efforts were roundly denounced by conservatives as wasteful and costly "bailouts" and so they didn't happen. [Slate, Moneybox, 4/11/12]

Read The Full Article:
http://feeds.mediamatters.org/~r/mediamatters/latest/~3/79pV8x85Gas/201204120014

Add to del.icio.us   Digg this   Post to Furl   Add to reddit   Add to myYahoo!

Inside the Cauldron

The whole Romney/Rosen squabble boiled down to 100 Seconds?Watch [...]

Read The Full Article:
http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/Talking-Points-Memo/~3/JJJ_w-UuXuA/inside_the_caul
dron.php

Add to del.icio.us   Digg this   Post to Furl   Add to reddit   Add to myYahoo!

Can the slide to war with Syria be stopped

According to the public account the US and allies would very much like to take a more active role (i.e. start a war) against Syria and the only thing holding them back is the opposition of Russia and China in the UN security council. This has led Russia to put pressure on Syria which has in turn led the Syrian government to agree to a ceasefire which few people expect to last. Meanwhile Turkey is mobilizing its army in case the Syrian civil war spills further into their territory. There have already been shots fired across the border with Turkey and Lebanon and three people are dead as a result.

Now consider an alternative explanation of the same facts. Let us assume that the last thing Obama wants right now is to become involved in a new war at the start of a general election campaign. It was not Obama's idea to take action Libya, that was the work of Cameron and Sarkozy. Nor has the liberation of Libya been an unqualified strategic success for the US. It is certainly good for the war on terror, Gadaffi supplied bullets and bombs to terrorists while Bin Laden was still wearing diapers. But as with the fall of East Germany, the loss of a strategic enemy is always a disaster for the military-industrial complex: how can they justify their existence if peace were to accidentally break out?

The fall of Syria is certainly an unqualified lose-lose proposition for Iran, Israel and Russia. Iran would lose their principle regional ally and their post Iraq war claim to being the emerging regional super power. While this part would be good for Israel, the regime that replaces Assad is almost certain to be more hostile to Israel. Either it will be a democratic regime and the people will demand that it takes a hostile position or it will be a dictatorship and picking fights with Israel will be the likely method of distracting those discontented with the regime.

Russia would lose as the wave of governments being toppled by popular discontent spreads northwards towards the corrupt ex-Soviet satellites surrounding the Caspian Sea. Also the Russia faces the embarrassing position of having been on the losing side of every major international engagement they have been involved in since the defeat in Afghanistan. Since then they lost control of Western Europe, watched the breakup of the Soviet empire and picked the losing side in the Bosnian war and in Libya.

A war in Syria is the last thing any party would want right now. The outcome can only damage the interests of every party other than Turkey which is re-emerging as the real regional super power in the wake of the Arab Spring. But even in Turkey the civilian government cannot exactly be sure of the loyalty of the military which not so long ago was running the country as a dictatorship.

So another explanation of what we can observe is this: The Russian veto currently allows the US and allies to be vocal in their support of the Syrian opposition without the need to take any action against it. The government of Turkey is looking for excuses to avoid being dragged into the war and has agreed to overlook the insult to their territory in return for the current temporary ceasefire to allow humanitarian aid to be delivered into Homs.

The situation is a house of cards and there are numerous triggers that could bring it down. China is already disengaged and Russia is getting visibly tired of its role. The incursions into Turkey are becoming more frequent and at some point the Turkish government is going to find it hard to persuade the army to ignore the insult. If we get to that point, Turkey is almost certain to invoke the NATO charter under article 4 (consultation). But they may have the right to invoke article 5 (an attack on one is an attack on all) which would render the UN discussion moot.

We appear to be facing a long, slow slide into war against the will of almost every government concerned and it is very hard to see how it can be stopped. The one positive note is that it is highly unlikely that Russia would engage to protect the Assad regime but it will be yet another blow to their dignity.

Read The Full Article:
http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/Americablog/~3/J5zG1un3jMg/can-slide-to-war-with-s
yria-be-stopped.html

Add to del.icio.us   Digg this   Post to Furl   Add to reddit   Add to myYahoo!

U.S. Presses First-Ever Charges Under LGBT Hate
Crimes Law

For the first time in history, the United States government has issued an indictment in a case that involves a hate crime based on the victim’s sexual orientation. Defendants David Jason Jenkins and Anthony Ray Jenkins of Kentucky allegedly kidnapped Kevin Pennington, took him into a secluded part of a state park, and beaten until he was nearly dead. The Matthew Shepard and James Byrd, Jr. Hate Crimes Prevention Act was signed into law on October 28, 2009, but this is its first application.

Read The Full Article:
http://thinkprogress.org/lgbt/2012/04/12/463703/us-presses-first-ever-charges-und
er-lgbt-hate-crimes-law/

Add to del.icio.us   Digg this   Post to Furl   Add to reddit   Add to myYahoo!

Two More Companies — Including Candymaker
Mars, Inc. — Sever Ties With ALEC

The American Legislative Exchange Council, a right-wing corporate front group that helped passed “stand your ground” laws and voter suppression initiatives in states across the country, lost two more member companies. In an email sent to Color of Change, a progressive group organizing the petition against ALEC, Mars, Inc., the maker of M&M’s and Snickers, announced that they have “decided not to renew the ALEC membership in 2012.” Arizona’s largest energy company, Arizona Public Service, has severed ties with ALEC as well. Following pressure from progressives, a host of other companies announced they would no longer contribute to ALEC in the past two weeks, including Coca Cola, Pepsi Co, Intuit, Kraft, the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation and Wendy?s.

Read The Full Article:
http://thinkprogress.org/justice/2012/04/12/463893/mars-inc-severs-ties-alec/

Add to del.icio.us   Digg this   Post to Furl   Add to reddit   Add to myYahoo!

Scott Brown Ad Touts Legendary Boston Baseball
Park He Wanted To Move To The Suburbs

Boston sports teams are always a hot topic in Massachusetts political races, and with Major League Baseball’s Boston Red Sox celebrating their 100th season in legendary Fenway Park this summer, Massachusetts Sen. Scott Brown (R) is attempting to take advantage. Brown released a new ad this week about Fenway Park and the great memories Red Sox fans share there. In the ad, Brown praises Red Sox ownership for keeping the Red Sox in Fenway instead of moving them to a new stadium, a plan that was under consideration a decade ago.

BROWN: You know there’s been a lot of talk over the years about replacing the park. But that would have been a mistake. John Henry, Tom Werner and Larry Lucchino deserve credit for improving what we have instead of starting over somewhere else. Families throughout the years will never forget their first Fenway appearance.

Listen:

But as the Huffington Post’s Sam Stein found, Brown himself wanted to move the Red Sox to the Boston suburbs. “Exploring the possibility of a Red Sox relocation to Foxboro makes fiscal and economic sense,” Brown, then a state senator, wrote in January 2001. Brown was apparently alone with his proposal to move the Red Sox to Foxboro, a suburb 20 miles from Boston that is home to the National Football League’s New England Patriots, because Red Sox owners laughed it off. “The Red Sox belong in Boston where we have played for the last century,” team vice president Jim Healey said.

Ultimately, the Red Sox ignored Brown’s proposal and abandoned their own effort to build a new stadium, making this summer’s 100th anniversary celebration — and Brown’s misleading ad — a possibility.

Read The Full Article:
http://thinkprogress.org/special/2012/04/12/463375/scott-brown-fenway-park-move/

Add to del.icio.us   Digg this   Post to Furl   Add to reddit   Add to myYahoo!

Reince Priebus Doubles Down on Comparing 'War on
Women' to 'War on Caterpillars'

Click here to view this media

If RNC Chairman Reince Priebus thinks nasty, petulant interviews like this one with MSNBC's Thomas Roberts are going to win his party some support back with women voters, I think he's sadly mistaken. Last week, Priebus appeared on Bloomberg TV's Al Hunt and claimed that the "war on women" was as fictional as the "war on caterpillars."

This Wednesday, Priebus was asked about those remarks and decided to double down:

On Wednesday, MSNBC host Thomas Roberts gave Priebus a chance to revise his remarks.

?I?m not going to walk back,? the RNC chairman insisted. ?I?ll double down on it. This war on women is a fiction that the Democrats have created. And the real war on women is the war that this president has put forward on the American people by not following through on his promises, by having women disproportionately effected by the Obama economy.?

?How can you say that it?s a fiction, though, if you stand of the record of what the Republican Party has said and done?? Roberts wondered, noting that all of the remaining GOP presidential candidates had promised to eliminate funds for family planning and Republican-controlled state legislatures had pushed through 90 anti-abortion bills in 2011.

?Because it is a fiction, Thomas,? Priebus replied. ?It?s a fiction because, number one, there is no war on women. ? The fact of the matter is that the real war on women, the actual thing that I think most women in this country are most concerned about, which is a good job, a good family, being able to live the American dream, provide for your kids and your family, that war on women is being perpetrated by President Barack Obama.?

Thomas actually did a pretty good job of pushing back at Priebus' arguments and pointed out the record number of anti-abortion legislation passed by the Republicans and their attacks on Planned Parenthood.

?You can?t discount the fact that we almost took the government to the brink of closing Planned Parenthood,? Thomas pressed.

?The world will continue,? the RNC chairman quipped. ?I don?t buy your argument. I happen to believe that you can be pro-women and pro-life. You don?t. That?s the problem, Thomas.?

Sadly, Thomas did not point out to Priebus that their forced birth agenda is not necessarily "pro-life" when it means forcing a woman to choose between her life and the life of a fetus that's not viable when there's a problem pregnancy with some of these extreme laws they've been passing -- or the fact that abortions are only a small fraction of the services provided by Planned Parenthood and that life-saving cancer screenings are "pro-life."

Planned Parenthood has done more to prevent abortions than the current Republican Party. All the Republicans want to do is to restrict access to birth control and dumb down our kids by refusing to teach them sex education at the appropriate age and pretending they're never going to have sex until they're all adults and married.

It's been pointed out repeatedly by those on the left that if you actually want to limit the number of abortions in the United States, then make sure everyone has access to affordable contraception and educate people on how to prevent unwanted pregnancies. The right would rather demagogue the issue and pander to the religious right.

Read The Full Article:
http://crooksandliars.com/heather/reince-priebus-doubles-down-comparing-war-o

Add to del.icio.us   Digg this   Post to Furl   Add to reddit   Add to myYahoo!

Every Small Business In America Would Have To Pay
$2,116 To Make Up Revenue Lost To Corporate Tax Havens

Photo by Flickr user Joseph Seal

This week, Citizens for Tax Justice released a report showing that 26 major American corporations haven’t paid federal corporate income tax for the last four years. But that is just the tip of the iceberg when it comes to corporate tax avoidance.

In fact, the use of offshore tax havens by corporations costs the government $60 billion annually. Such tax dodging gives multinational corporations a leg up on smaller firms that can’t avoid their tax bills, whether its through higher taxes or fewer services. According to a new report from U.S. PIRG, the cost of corporate tax havens amounts to $2,116 for every small business in America:

Instead of competing on a level playing field, small businesses and those without offshore tax havens must pick up the extra tax tab and compete against the artificially lower costs of multinational companies using tax havens.

To illustrate that burden, this paper looks at how much more the average small business tax bill would need to be to cover the $60 billion in federal revenues estimated lost each year from multinational corporations using offshore tax havens. We define a small business as one with less than 100 employees, using Census Bureau data on the number of such businesses. Based on the number of small businesses in the United States, each would need to pay an additional $2,116 in taxes to shoulder this burden.

?When corporations shirk their tax burden by shifting profits legitimately made in the U.S. to offshore tax havens like the Caymans, the rest of us must pick up the tab through either cuts to public spending priorities, higher taxes, or more debt,? said U.S. PIRG’s Dan Smith, a co-author of the report. A poll commissioned by the American Sustainable Business Council, the Main Street Alliance, and the Small Business Majority — organizations seeking to level the playing field between small and large businesses — found that more than 90 percent of small business owners believe that corporate tax havens are a problem, while “three-quarters of respondents agree that their small business is harmed when loopholes allow big corporations to avoid taxes.”

President Obama has been trying, since he came into office, to crack down on some of the offshore tax havens utilized by corporations, but has been stopped by conservatives and corporate lobbying every time. Instead, Republicans have designed a “small business tax cut” that would actually further enrich hedge fund managers, sports teams, and millionaires.

Read The Full Article:
http://thinkprogress.org/economy/2012/04/12/463813/small-business-pays-for-tax-do
dgers/

Add to del.icio.us   Digg this   Post to Furl   Add to reddit   Add to myYahoo!

CHART: House GOP Budget Cuts Taxes For The Rich,
Raises Taxes On The Poor

As ThinkProgress has detailed, the House Republican budget, authored by Budget Committee Chairman Paul Ryan (R-WI), pays for massive tax cuts for the wealthiest Americans by cutting spending from programs that primarily benefit lower-income Americans. While giving an average of $187,000 to each millionaire, the budget finds 62 percent of its cuts from programs that benefit the lower- and middle-classes, kicking millions off of food stamps, gutting Pell Grants, and slashing Medicare and Medicaid.

As if that weren’t enough, according to a report from the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, the budget also raises taxes for low-income Americans:

The Urban-Brookings Tax Policy Center has published new numbers that show the Ryan plan would raise taxes on low-income working families ? those making up to $30,000 a year. That?s because, while he would extend the Bush tax cuts, which are due to expire at the end of this year, he would not extend President Obama?s tax cuts for those with the lowest incomes, which will expire at the same time. Our updated report gives the details.

Ryan is, of course, taking up a fight Republicans have been waging for most of the last year. For instance, while working to ensure that the rich won’t face any tax increases any time soon, the GOP tried to block extension of a payroll tax cut, which primarily benefits the middle class, before finally relenting early this year. The GOP has also pushed the myth that nearly half of Americans don’t pay taxes in order to distort debates about tax fairness.

A majority of the Republican caucus has signed onto the radical anti-tax pledge authored by Americans for Tax Reform head Grover Norquist, assuring Americans that they would not raise taxes under any circumstance. But as their budget makes clear, Republicans do indeed support raising taxes in their quest to balance the budget, as long as those tax increases only hit the Americans who can afford them least.

Read The Full Article:
http://thinkprogress.org/economy/2012/04/12/463694/gop-budget-raises-taxes-on-poo
r/

Add to del.icio.us   Digg this   Post to Furl   Add to reddit   Add to myYahoo!