Thursday 26th of December 2024
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onwards...

onwards...

US president Barack Obama is insisting that the wealthiest Americans should pay more tax and says his re-election victory gives him a mandate to pursue that aim.

Mr Obama has made his first pubic remarks since his re-election, inviting Republican and Democratic leaders of Congress to the White House for talks.

The US is facing a so-called fiscal cliff, a combination of automatic tax increases and spending cuts and Democrats and Republicans disagree on how to handle it.

"We can't just cut our way to prosperity," Mr Obama said.

"If we are serious about reducing the deficit, we have to combine spending cuts with revenue, and that means asking the wealthiest Americans to pay a little more in taxes.

"If Congress fails to come to an agreement, everybody's taxes will automatically go up on January first."

http://www.abc.net.au/news/2012-11-10/obama-invites-warring-parties-to-economy-talks/4364594

Speaker John A. Boehner of Ohio dug in Friday on his opposition to raising tax rates on the rich, claiming his own mandate with the re-election of a House Republican majority but expressing confidence that any deal he can reach with President Obama can get through the conservative House.

“When the president and I have been able to come to an agreement, there has been no problem getting it passed here in the House,” he told reporters. Some House Republicans have already warned him against cutting a deal without seeking their approval first.

Any agreement to avert a fiscal crisis in January when hundreds of billions of dollars in automatic tax increases and spending cuts kick in now revolves around the definition of tax increases.

http://thecaucus.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/11/09/boehner-digs-in-on-opposition-to-tax-hikes-for-wealthy/?hp

hate and blame feels good...

 

Hate is not a plan...

This is the Republican Party’s coyote morning, and it’s not pretty to watch.

It’s Mitt’s fault. It’s Mitt’s advisers’ fault. It’s Chris Christie’s fault. It’s Superstorm Sandy’s fault. It’s Obama’s fault for being better at practicing the “the darker arts of public persuasion” (huh?). Or maybe the Republican Party lost because it simply scares the bejeezus out of much of the country.

The one strain of thought that the GOP should abjure is the one that blames the people themselves. There is a notion afoot — and let us not linger on the question of how a notion might ambulate — that says the country has reached a stage in which the moochers outnumber the makers and thus we will collectively vote ourselves into socialism and then into communism and ultimately into oblivion. This is Romney’s 47 percent theory run amok. (Romney’s “gaffe” was, as noted in this space, Paul Ryan’s ideology.) Beyond the fact that it’s simply not true (refer to the excellent David Brooks column on this),

http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/achenblog/post/hate-is-not-a-plan/2012/11/09/3d99b1fc-2a7b-11e2-96b6-8e6a7524553f_blog.html?hpid=z2

In regard to tax increase for the rich, they are not so much an increase as the elimination of tax cuts that were beyond the affordable for the USA but popular with the rich dudes. So may be it should be called a "REDUCTION in tax cut" instead of an "increase in taxes" for the rich... The process can be done in four easy steps (the US people are very used to four-easy steps, especially with things to do with weight reduction) as a reduction of 25 per cent in tax cuts per annum, till the tax cuts are zero... Easy. 

 

siphoning profits...

One of the largest suppliers of drugs to the NHS escaped paying any tax to the UK Government last year, it has emerged.

Pfizer, the company behind the best-selling drug on the UK market, Lipitor, and impotence drug Viagra, had a turnover of £1.8bn on its sales in the UK last year. But despite its huge business in this country, the accounts of the company's British-based subsidiary suggest it made an operating loss of £59m in 2011 and £46m in 2010.

Critics say Pfizer's operating loss is this country is typical of the way in which large multi-national companies are systematically able to legally avoid paying tax by piling costs into high tax jurisdictions, while reporting profits in low tax havens

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/politics/how-can-viagra-maker-pfizer-pay-no-uk-tax-8301414.html

the follow-up cartoon...

fiscal cliff

no clause allowing states to leave the union...

US election: Unhappy Americans ask to secede from US

More than 100,000 Americans have petitioned the White House to allow their states to secede from the US, after President Barack Obama's re-election.

The appeals were filed on the White House's We the People website.

Most of the 20 states with petitions voted for Republican Mitt Romney.

The US constitution contains no clause allowing states to leave the union. By Monday night the White House had not responded.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-us-canada-20301477