TiLTNews Network: Earth Watch -
Freedom is defined by the ability of citizens to live without government interference,
not by safety. It is easy to clamor for government security when terrible things happen; but liberty is given true meaning when we support it without exception, and we will be safer for it ~ Dr. Ron Paul
On Saturday, White House officials announced that President Obama’s upcoming State of the Union address will include a plan to increase tax credits for the middle class, with $320 billion in revenue obtained by increasing taxes on the wealthy over the next ten years.
Americans for Tax Reform reported that Obama’s budget will include five major tax increases: a capital gains rate hike, an increase in the death tax rate, an increased tax on banks, a tax increase on families saving for college, and a tax increase in retirement plans.
According to the Associated Press, the capital gains rate hike would “increase the total top capital gains rate on couples with incomes above $500,000 to 28 percent,” which has “already been raised from 15 percent to 23.8 percent” during Obama’s presidency.
Obama’s changes in the death tax rate would eliminate a tax break on inheritances, where individuals pay both income and estate taxes on the same dollars. This would close a “loophole” that Obama has suggested is a “huge scam that wealthy people exploit,” according to Forbes.
The Guardian reported that Obama’s proposed “Bank Tax” will put a new 0.07% tax on the liabilities of U.S. financial firms with assets of more than $50 billion, “making it more costly for them to borrow heavily.”
Obama’s plan also includes increased taxes on families saving for college. While the current law lets money put in 529 plans, or college savings accounts, grow tax-free, Obama’s proposal would require that earnings “face taxation upon withdrawal, even if the withdrawal is to pay for college,” according to Americans for Tax Reform.
Politico reported that Obama plans to increase taxes on retirement plans such as the IRA and 401(k), by capping the amount an individual can accumulate in the account at $3.4 million, giving retirees a limit of $210,000 in annual income.
Once accumulating the money from the wealthy, the Associated Press reported that Obama plans to give a “new $500 ‘second earner’ tax credit for families where both spouses work,” and an expanded child care tax credit of up to “$3,000 per child under age 5.”
According to Politico, Obama also plans to “expand tax breaks for small businesses that automatically enroll their employees in retirement savings accounts.”
NPR reported that Obama’s plans have been met with criticism from Republicans in Congress, such as a spokesperson for Representative Paul Ryan who said that the plan was “not a serious proposal.”
The Senate’s top tax law writer, Senator Orrin Hatch, told Reuters that Obama “needs to stop listening to his liberal allies who want to raise taxes at all costs and start working with Congress to fix our broken tax code.“
The next round of secret Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) negotiations begins this Monday, January 26, and runs through the following week at the Sheraton New York Time Square Hotel in downtown Manhattan.
As with many previous TPP meetings, the public will be shut out of talks as negotiators convene behind closed doors to decide binding rules that could impact how our lawmakers set digital policy in the decades to come. Big content industry interests have been given privileged access to negotiating texts and have driven the US Trade Representative's mandate when it comes to copyright—which is why the TPP carries extreme copyright measures that ignore users' rights.
Some claim that this could be the final official round of TPP negotiations. The White House and Congressional lawmakers are now hard at work to pass a law to fast track this agreement and other secretive deals through Congress to ratification. Fast Track, also known as trade promotion authority (TPA) would transfer Congress' power over trade policy to the President, by preventing them from debating or modifying the terms of trade deals after international negotiations are finalized. The countries negotiating TPP with the US are willing to give in and agree to bad copyright rules as long as they get the other gains they were promised—things like market access and lowered tariffs so they can sell their products to US consumers. But those other countries will not budge without a guarantee that the overwhelming public opposition to the agreement won't prevent its adoption in the United States. Fast Track offers that guarantee; that's one reason the White House is now desperate to pass it.
Several public interest groups are organizing a protest outside the luxury Sheraton Hotel this Monday, January 26 at noon. Many of those demonstrating will be there to oppose other provisions in the TPP, but we encourage people to be there to represent all the users around the world who will be impacted by this massive agreement's draconian policies.
If you are not in the New York area, take action now by signing this petition to Sen. Ron Wyden, calling on him to stand up for digital rights and oppose any new Fast Track bill. You can also give him your message directly by phoning his office at (202) 224-5244.
If you have already signed the petition, contact your elected representatives and let them know that you want them to oppose Fast Track for TPP and any other secret deals that put users' rights at risk.
The late Saudi King Abdullah, whose death was confirmed Thursday, has been lionized by politicians around the world. En route to the World Economic Forum in Davos, U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry hailed Abdullah as "a man of wisdom and vision" and a "revered leader." Similarstatements were made by other Western leaders.
Christine Lagarde, the female head of the International Monetary Fund, even hailed the monarch as "a strong advocate for women."
That last eulogy ought to furrow brows. After all, when it comes to gender rights, Saudi Arabia's absolute monarchy is one of the most heavily criticized regimes in the world. Its draconian religious laws place limitations on everything from the clothes women can wear to the means by which they travel outside their homes. Controversially, women are still banned from driving in the country.
Lagarde did qualify her comment, saying Abdullah was a reformer "in a very discreet way," credited with initiating a number of measures aimed at it giving women a bigger stake in the country's economic and political life. But the change is very gradual, stymied by traditionalists who still hold sway in the country's courts. Abdullah's reforms, writes one commentator, have "all the substance of a Potemkin village, a flimsy structure to impress foreign opinion."
Closer to home, moreover, there are a few women related to the late monarch who may object to the praise being heaped upon him. Abdullah, like other Saudi royals, had numerous wives — at least seven, and perhapsas many as 30. He had at least 15 daughters. Four of them, according to news reports, live under house arrest.
The plight of the Princesses Jawaher, Sahar, Hala, Maha attracted attention last spring, when details emerged of their supposedly dire condition living in captivity in Saudi royal compounds in the city of Jeddah. Their mother, Alanoud Al-Fayez, has lived in the United Kingdom for the past decade and a half. She was divorced by her husband multiple times, the final instance in 1985.
Fayez claims her daughters' supposed incarceration, which has gone on for some 13 years, was both a mark of Abdullah's vindictive streak and intolerance of his daughters' modern, independent upbringing. She says the four have been locked away for more than a decade, subject to abuse and deprivation.
'We just want our God-given #rights & 4 all #women in this country to enjoy these rights'Sahar #FreeThe4 End #VAW#UN
Last year, various news stations managed to reach Sahar, 42, and Jawaher, 38, who live in a separate compound from Maha, 41, and Hala, 39. In an interview with RT last May, the pair described how they were running out of food and water.
The British TV network Channel 4 News ran this video, which included footage allegedly taken by one of the daughters that depicted the depths of their neglect at the hands of Saudi authorities.
In another interview with an Arabic channel, the princesses described how they were being punished for championing women's rights and resisting the kingdom's strict rules mandating male guardianship over women.
Speaking to the New York Post last April, their mother claimed her daughters' continued detention was "about psychological warfare and breaking them down," and that her children "are wasting away."
There are some doubts about the extent to which the women are living in genuine captivity. When confronted with the daughters' claims, Saudi authorities have been tight-lipped, insisting that the situation "is a private matter." The women have not been formally charged with any crime.
Since the spasm of media stories last year, reports on the condition of the princesses have dried up. On social media, their mother continues to call for their release, using the hashtag #Freethe4. She holds regular protests in London urging action.
As news of her ex-husband's death spread around the world, Fayez issued just one short tweet on Friday, quoting a Quranic verse: "We belong to Allah, and to Him we will return."
Ishaan Tharoor writes about foreign affairs for The Washington Post. He previously was a senior editor at TIME, based first in Hong Kong and later in New York.
Joining together ahead of Greek elections, leaders of Syriza and Podemos signal their unified fight against austerity will extend beyond national borders
Greek opposition leader and head of radical leftist Syriza party, Alexis Tsipras (L) and Spanish Podemos party Secretary General Pablo Iglesias wave to supporters following a campaign rally in central Athens January 22, 2015. Greek leftist leader Tsipras told thousands of people gathered in Athens that an end to "national humiliation" was near after opinion polls on Thursday showed his Syriza party pulling ahead three days before an election. (Photo: Reuters/Yannis Behrakis)
"History is knocking at our door," declared Alexis Tsipras, the leader of the leftwing coalition party of Syriza in Greece, during a speech addressed to thousands of supporters in Athens on Thursday night as he stood next to his foreign compatriot Pablo Iglesias of the Spanish Podemos Party.
"The wind of democratic change is blowing in Europe."
—Pablo Iglesias, PodemosSyriza and Podemos have become the mouthpiece of the anti-austerity movement in southern Europe while Tsipras and Iglesias have emerged as key political leaders who emerged from the grassroots, street-level protest movements which rose in opposition to the severe economic policies imposed by elite forces following the financial crisis that began in 2008. In relatively short time, both Syriza and Podemos went from being non-existent political entities to standing on the doorstep of taking power.
With national elections in Greece just days away, and Syriza's polling numbers only improving, Alexis Tsipras announced that his party is prepared to "overthrow" the status quo and vowed to implement swift changes to undo the austerity policies—imposed at the behest of foreign creditors and attached to a bailout package offered by the European Central Bank and the IMF—that have left the Greek economy in tatters. Standing before the large crowd, Tsipras announced that by Monday, "[Greece's] national humiliation will be over. We will finish with orders from abroad."
Syriza's answer to austerity, he continued, would be this: "The bailout is over. Blackmail is over. Subservience is over."
According to reporting by the Irish Times, Tsipras "received one of his biggest cheers of the night when he said that he will press for the repayment of a forced war loan from Greece toGermany during the second World War.
Taking the podium to address the thousands gathered, Iglesias indicated the fate of the Greek and Spanish people—both crushed by unemployment and the gutting of the public sector—were intimately tied. But, Iglesias declared, "The wind of democratic change is blowing in Europe." Less than one year since its inception, Podemos is now polling ahead of Spain's ruling party. Though national elections in Spain could happen later this year, they have not yet been scheduled.
A sampling of voices taken from the crowd in Athens reveal that those supporting what Podemos and Syriza represent are ecstatic for the hope the parties are now offering.
"I am voting for Tsipras because even my parents, after 40 years of work, don't have money to pay for heating," Maria Labridou, a 55-year-old teacher at the rally, told Reuters. "He is our only hope, the only way out."
Speaking with the Irish Times, a retiree named Babis, said, "We want change not only in Greece, but across Europe. The change will start from here, and then go through Spain,Portugal and Ireland. There has to be social justice."
A continental view was not absent among the politicians on the stage either as Leonard Cohen's famous protest song, 'First We Take Manhattan,' played from the loudspeakers and Iglesias at one point declared, "Then we take Berlin!"
Ahead of the Greek election on Sunday, the latest polling in the country shows Syriza has built on its previous lead over the ruling New Democracy party, now led by Prime Minister Antonis Samaras.
As Helena Smith reports for the Guardian on Friday:
Barely four weeks after the failure of parliament to elect a president, triggering the ballot, Greece’s fate now lies in the hands of 9.8 million voters. All the polls show, with growing conviction, that victory will go to Syriza. A poll released by GPO for Mega TV late on Thursday gave the far leftists a six-percentage-point lead over Samaras’s center-right New Democracy, the dominant force in a coalition government that has held power since June 2012. A week earlier, GPO had the lead at four percentage points. [...]
Analysts maintain that Syriza’s ability to attain an outright majority will be difficult. With pressure mounting from the EU and IMF to “respect” the commitments made as the price of aid, speculation has been rife that the party might prefer to enter a coalition government that would enable it to forge ahead with the structural reforms and budget cuts demanded in exchange for the biggest financial assistance program in global history.
But Tsipras put paid to that. The leftists, who have never held office in the near 200 years of the Modern Greek state – and who, after a bloody civil war, were hounded and imprisoned for decades – wanted to win an absolute majority that would allow them to govern unimpeded, he insisted.
“We are asking for a clear mandate, crystal clear, undiluted, indisputable,” he told the crowd. “The time of the left has come.”
Dr Eleni Panagiotarea, a research fellow at Greece’s leading thinktank Eliamep, said Syriza was on a roll.
“It’s now all about making a clean break with the past. The party has picked up on the fatigue that people feel with the country. It has become a voice for the disgruntled middle class, unemployed, socially vulnerable, all those who want change.”
Though Prime Minister Samaras has tried to counter the rise of Syriza by telling Greek voters that its leftwing policies will lead the nation to ruin, experts and economists argue that it has been the austerity policies imposed across Europe, though most severely imposed in nations like Greece and Spain, that have been the clearest culprits of economic ruin.
As Mark Weisbrot, co-director of the Center for Economic and Policy research, wrote earlier this week:
Greece continues to face a dismal future under the current European program, with more than 18 percent unemployment even in 2017. This is according to IMF projections, which have been consistently over-optimistic in the past. Mass unemployment will also be the norm for the eurozone, with more than 10 percent unemployment in 2017, even if it the eurozone authorities’ program is “successful.” Not to mention all the other sacrifices in living standards, including cuts in health care spending, public pensions, minimum wages and government services.
This prolonged punishment and regressive social engineering from the European authorities is only possible because the electorate has had little or no influence over the most important economic policy-making. The Greeks are trying to win some of that back; hence the intimidation from on high.
And Nobel Prize-winning economist Joseph Stiglitz, in a recent column, called the commitment to austerity by European elites—namely the IMF, the ECB, the European Commission, and the powerful German government—a very cruel form of "economic madness" that betrays sound reasoning.
Stiglitz wrote, "If Europe does not change its ways – if it does not reform the Eurozone and repeal austerity – a popular backlash will become inevitable." Whatever happens in the Greek elections, he concluded, "this economic madness cannot continue forever. Democracy will not permit it. But how much more pain will Europe have to endure before reason is restored?"
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By Tenth Amendment Center A bill filed in the Utah state house yesterday would deny critical resources - like water - to the massive NSA data center there should it pass. House Bill 150 (HB150), introduced by Rep. Marc Roberts, would require that the water being supplied to the NSA’s data center in Bluffdale be shut off as soon as the city’s $3 million bond is paid off. Support this effort at OffNow.org/Utah
Free The 4 Women
