A Redress of Grievances to Congress

Grievances  Can No Longer Be Ignored After Decades of Catering to the Wealthy and Punishing of Labor

It has become increasingly and overwhelmingly obvious with every passing day that policies and laws passed, promoted and enforced by our legislative, judicial and executive branches of government no longer uphold and promote the originally intended goals of Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.  The vast majority of citizens have been and presently are enduring a long train of abuses and usurpations resulting in economic hardship, emotional distress, instability, a declining quality of life and most alarmingly an ever widening inequality of wealth and opportunity. The people have endured patiently some of the most insufferably buffoonish, incompetent and disrespectful leadership.  The resulting laws and policies imposed upon us over the past few decades have successfully eroded the economic stability of the great majority of the populous. The sad and slow death of the middle class, increasing numbers of people living in poverty, decline in educational prowess and competitiveness, outrageous injustices, frauds. thievery, waste and other abuses are a result of these deliberate and intentional policies.  

The following list of grievances is provided and is based upon these truths, held as evidence, to clearly state and emphasize the  policies, actions and behaviors that have been imposed and promoted by governmental forces to bring about the above described conditions of the people.

1. Federal and State Income Tax Policies

    Taxing labor was not a founding principle of our country and not intended by founders.  A huge hindrance to American Dream. It is our lifeblood and means of existence and should be recognized as such and left untouched by governments

      Lowering of Taxes of Higher Income Brackets from 77% in 1964 to 33* in 2010,

Allowing loopholes which only high tax bracket entities can use, Making itemized deductions less available  to middle class.

Increasing complexity of tax code so only wealthy payers can use loopholes and escape income or estate taxes,

Allowing loopholes so many corporations pay no income tax or may get refunds. The average effective tax rate is 12.6%, well below the 35% federal corporate tax rate.

Taxing Labor without giving the full deductions necessary to produce income. This is another discriminatory practice.  The standard deduction and personal exemption barely keep up with cost of living and inflation and many itemized deductions are not feasible or have restrictions.
   
Individual taxpayers cannot deduct FICA tax from gross income so pay a tax on a tax and then pay a tax on SS benefits again when received in most cases.

Congress holds hearings on taxes and then promptly ignores the call for simplification and gives more complex rules, loopholes, etc wasting time, and money,  The tax code is now over 54,000 pages because of this FOOLISHNESS and CORRUPTION.

Congress upholds  hundreds of discriminatory provisions that exist throughout the income tax code. Equal justice under law (NOT) Favoritism/Incompetence/Corruption

Congress obviously has no intention of using sane and simple policies as it would hinder the ability to influence, manipulate and give favorable treatment for political contributions.  Can’t give up the toy box.

Congress upholds, supports and promotes the income tax system which is to most people a hated system which is inherently immoral, unethical and a really bad idea. They have no respect.

2.  SUBSIDIES FOR WEALTHY INDIVIDUALS AND CORPORATIONS

Congress approves over $100 billion a year on corporate welfare. That’s an average of $870 for each one of America’s families.  (Cato Inst.)
374 individuals on the plush Upper East Side of New York City  own farms, including Bruce Springsteen, Bon Jovi and Ted Turner. Wealthy heir Mark Rockefeller received  $342,000 to NOT farm, to allow his Idaho land to return to its natural state.

States, counties and cities give up over $80 billion each year to companies,
Congress approves of this:
Subsidy of $83 billion to banks or about $722 from every American family.
The wealthiest five banks — JPMorgan, Bank of America Corp., Citigroup Inc., Wells Fargo & Co. and Goldman Sachs — account for three-quarters of the total subsidy. The Huffington Post article notes that without the taxpayer subsidy, those banks would not make a profit. In other words, “the profits they report are essentially transfers from taxpayers to their shareholders.”    NICE!!!

Overall, American families are paying an annual $6,000 subsidy to corporations that have doubled their profits and cut their taxes in half in 10 years while cutting 2.9 million jobs and adding almost as many jobs overseas.Paul Buchheit

3.  PRIVATIZATION AND BAILOUTS

Selling of public assets to corporate interests who “supposedly can run things better and cheaper”.  They do this by paying lower wages, skimping on quality of service and creating more profits for owners and executive.  No magic there.

Selling of prisons and juvenile detention facilities is proving to be dangerous and leading to horror stories of deplorable conditions and policies.

4.  TRADE AGREEMENTS

Congress approved of trade agreements   NAFTA  and GATT and others that included no basic labor standards, it would preserve a huge "wage differential between the United States and Mexico" .  Perot made his famous statement that it would result in "the giant sucking sound" of American jobs. 75.79% of all Republicans voted for NAFTA  34 Republican Senators and 27 Democratic Senators. voted for it.

GATT 76-24 vote 35 Senate Republicans joined 41 Democrat

Congress approved of NAFTA which  helped drive millions of Mexicans into poverty, The New York Times reports that "Mexican migration to the United States has risen to 500,000 a year. 

Congress approved trade agreements with the net effect of NAFTA - the elimination of 1 million American  jobs. NAFTA frees corporations from government regulation which would constitute a barrier to trade. It permits relatively unrestricted movement of money, capital, goods and services, while at the same time providing investors and corporations with extensive protection of their property rights. It even extends corporate property rights through the so called "intellectual properties" provisions.



5.  FAILURE OF REGULATORS, The Federal Reserve, SEC, OTS, Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac, Allowing non transparent derivative trading and high leveraging and risk taking

Congressional Oversight and Accountability did not prevent the recent financial crisis and by allowed excessive risk taking, overleveraging, derivatives trading, sub prime lending and the Failure of Rating Agencies to properly rate assets to the detriment of the entire economy, devastating effects of foreclosure, job loss, underwater mortgages and loss of wealth of individuals, municipalities, states, cities, counties and townships.

Banks are larger now than before the crisis and engage in off-balance-sheet’ transactions called “variable interest entities” and trading in derivatives such is reported by Forbes: By contrast, at the end of the third quarter of 2012, JPMorgan had $72 trillion in notional amount on its books—almost five times the size of the U.S. economy, or about the size of the entire world economy.

 
More than 30 years of deregulation and reliance on self-regulation by financial institutions, championed by former Federal Reserve chairman Alan Greenspan and others, supported by successive administrations and Congresses, and actively pushed by the powerful financial industry at every turn, had stripped away key safeguards, which could have helped avoid catastrophe,” said the Financial Inquiry Commission Report in 2011.




6,  FEDERAL RESERVE

FEDERAL RESERVE POLICIES:  DUAL MANDATES    Quantitive Easing

Fed’s “dual mandate” of “price stability” and “full employment”
How often, during the history of the Fed, have we actually had “price stability” and “full employment”? The Fed has achieved its dual mandate a whopping 3.5% of the time since 1957 when core inflation was first tracked.  Yes, you read that right.  THREE POINT FIVE PERCENT OF THE TIME.*  That means the Fed has failed to simultaneously achieve both its mandates 96.5% of the time. The Fed really has one mandate – make sure the banks are healthy.

Read more at http://pragcap.com/feds-dual-mandate-bull-sht#uTDIQo11ziG1obtA.99


Quantitive Easing
The Fed is printing money, giving it to banks through bond transactions, then banks hold onto that money instead of passing it along into the economy, thus reducing the “stimulus” effect the Fed was looking to create. (Over $2 trillion)

A banker named Andrew Huszar that helped manage the Federal Reserve’s quantitative easing program during 2009 and 2010 is publicly apologizing for what he has done.  He says that quantitative easing has accomplished next to nothing for the average person on the street.  Instead, he says that it has been “the greatest backdoor Wall Street bailout of all time.”  And of course the cold, hard economic numbers support what Huszar is saying. 

Trading for the first round of QE ended on March 31, 2010. The final results confirmed that, while there had been only trivial relief for Main Street, the U.S. central bank’s bond purchases had been an absolute coup for Wall Street. The banks hadn’t just benefited from the lower cost of making loans. They’d also enjoyed huge capital gains on the rising values of their securities holdings and fat commissions from brokering most of the Fed’s QE transactions through designated primary dealers.  Wall Street had experienced its most profitable year ever in 2009, and 2010 was starting off in much the same way. Having racked up hundreds of billions of dollars in opaque Fed subsidies, U.S. banks have seen their collective stock price triple since March 2009. The biggest ones have only become more of a cartel: 0.2% of them now control more than 70% of the U.S. bank assets.http://www.infowars.com/federal-reserve-whistleblower-tells-america-the-real-reason-for-quantitative-easing/


I would think that the societal costs of monetary policy shocks, positive or negative, would fall disproportionately on those least able to make adjustments to their savings/consumption and income decisions.
Capitalists reallocate physical and financial resources to minimize the effect of any shock, but labor's resource allocation decision is less flexible. If so, then capitalists will tend to capture more of the gain and less of the cost.
I would have liked to have seen the same results for an expansionary shock.- Given that the transmission mechanism from FED to Agg Demand is broken, why doesn't the FED just mail a 1.2 trillion dollar check to households? As it is, the 1+Trillion is sitting in excess reserves.
.
120 million households x $10,000 = $1.20 Trillion.
Wouldn't that be a more efficient way to ignite some inflation, reduce real rates, and incentivize capitalists to shift money from cash to productive uses?
At least the lower end gets $10K to cushion the effect of inflation, instead of having to wait for a lagged wage effect and try to catch up to output price increases. (Comment from NC blog)



7.  Political Power/Corruption/Conflict of Interest/Incompetence
SEC  OTS   FEDERAL RESERVE  REPEAL of  GLASS STEAGALL 

The financial crisis might not have happened at all but for the 1999 repeal of the Glass-Steagall law that separated commercial and investment banking for seven decades.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/09/12/financial-crisis-regulato_n_3908814.html

More than 30 years of deregulation and reliance on self-regulation by financial institutions, championed by former Federal Reserve chairman Alan Greenspan and others, supported by successive administrations and Congresses, and actively pushed by the powerful financial industry at every turn, had stripped away key safeguards, which could have helped avoid catastrophe,” said the Financial Inquiry Commission Report in 2011.

When economic inequality increases, the people who have become economically more powerful will often attempt to use that power in order to gain even more political power. And once they are able to monopolize political power, they will start using that for changing the rules in their favor. And that sort of political inequality is the real danger that’s facing the United States.
http://thinkprogress.org/economy/2012/03/23/451166/acemoglu-income-inequality-political-powe/#




8.  EDUCATION

In FY 2012, a report issued by the State Higher Education Executive Officers Association, the annual revenue per student adjusted for inflation was $11,084 in 1987 and in 2012 it was $11,095.
States are spending $2,353 or 28 percent less per student on higher education, nationwide, in the current 2013 fiscal year than they did in 2008, when the recession hit."--Center on Budget and Policy Priorities" except for North Dakota and Wyoming

In 1970, the average college tuition at a top private university cost about $4,000 per year. Today the cost is about $50,000 per year. That is an increase of 1,250 percent while salaries for college graduates have gone up about 400 percent.
Creating this student debt crisis is also making the U.S. much less competitive in the world. In most of the First World and much of the Third World higher education is free/

Schools have turned to Wall Street to secure loans based upon tuition and which generate fees for investment firms have given Wall Street firms a way to profit by bundling of student loans into asset backed securities which are traded for profit.

Bankruptcy laws have made it impossible to discharge student loan debt but have enabled corporate interests to dissolve and reduce all types of debt, contract and pension obligations.

9.  AMERICANS PAY HIGH PRICES

Internet - American consumers pay higher prices for lower speeds than their international peers.

Drugs -
Research shows that prescription drug prices in the United States are the highest in the world. According to Barlett and Steele in Time Magazine in 2004

Health Care

The U.S. leads the world in health care spending, but we don't live very long, and going to the doctor is so expensive that we don't do it very often
In every category of health care costs, the US citizens pay much much more for surgeries, drugs, doctor visits and all medical procedures than any other people worldwide and do not live longer or have better outcomes.

Higher Education Costs

Annual undergraduate tuition fees at US colleges and universities are almost 3 times higher than those around the world.  Example: 
Princeton University    $40,170

University of Cambridge    $14,000





10.  JUSTICE SYSTEM

Congress has criminalized vast new swaths of activity.

The US has a plea-bargain system in which prosecutors not only bring the charge but also, in effect, determine guilt and pass sentence.

Congress has also enacted a raft of mandatory minimum sentences

The incarceration rate in the United States of America is the highest in the world. (1,571,013 in 2012 )

U.S. imprisonment has become an institution of slavery, torture, and rape Most of those who commit sexual abuse in detention are corrections staff, not inmates. That is true in all types of detention facilities, but especially in juvenile facilities.

No criminal prosecutions of Wall Street have occurred. Sen. Ted Kaufman (D-Del.) helped usher the Fraud Enforcement and Recovery Act through Congress designed to appropriate money to hire more FBI to investigate Wall Street Fraud.  Nothing every came of it and the idea just fizzled out.  There were no referrals from any regulators flagging any wrongdoing and Wall Street players rationalized behavior as being perfectly legal. There’s two levels of justice in this country. Clearly people can steal millions of dollars … and get away with it, and the rest of the folks have to pay for whatever crimes they commit.” The fallout from the financial crisis has caused Americans’ retirement savings to shrink by about $2.5 trillion. More than 8.8 million jobs were lost, and roughly 3 million homes have gone into foreclosure.


11.  LOBBYING    CORRUPTION   BRIBERY   CONFLICT OF INTEREST
For every member of Congress in 2011, there were 23 registered Washington lobbying firms. 535 senators and representatives; 12,719 lobbyists. - $3.3 Billion spent on lobbying in 2011 - 55 percent of lobbyists are former employees of the U.S. Congress and increased salaries by 1452 percent on average Former Congressman Billy Tauzin (R-LA) made $19,359,927 as a lobbyist for pharmaceutical companies between 2006 and 2010.  Former Congressman Cal Dooley (D-CA) has made at least $4,719,093 as a lobbyist for food manufacturers and the chemical industry from 2005 to 2009.  Former Congressman Steve Largent (R-OK) has made at least $8,815,741 over the years as a lobbyist for a coalition of cell phone companies and related wireless industry interests.  Former Congressman Richard Baker (R-LA) made $3,219,255 between 2008 and 2009 as head of a hedge fund lobbying association.  Former Congressman Steve Bartlett (R-TX) has made at least $9,192,761 as the chief lobbyist for an association of investment banks, including Goldman Sachs, Citigroup, and JP Morgan Chase

Top lobbying groups by industry are:  Pharmaceuticals, Business Associations, Insurance, Electric Utilities, Oil and Gas, Computers/Internet