Enlighten Radio:The Poetry Show -- Case's choices -- March 27, 2017

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Blog: Enlighten Radio
Post: The Poetry Show -- Case's choices -- March 27, 2017
Link: http://www.enlightenradio.org/2017/03/the-poetry-show-cases-choices-march-27.html

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Fwd: [CCDS Members] POEM: THE LOW ROAD.....

Thie beautiful Marge Piercy poem, via an old contrary comrade in California, Gary Hicks, fits like a glove.

The Low Road

What can they do

to you? Whatever they want.

They can set you up, they can

bust your fingers, they can

burn your brain with electricity,

blur you with drugs till you

can't walk, can't remember, they can

take your child, wall up

your lover. They can do anything

you can't stop them

from doing. How can you stop

them? Alone, you can fight,

you can refuse, you can

take what revenge you can

but they roll over you.

 

But two people fighting

back to back can cut through

a mob, a snake-dancing file

can break a cordon, an army

can meet an army.

 

Two people can keep each other

sane, can give support, conviction,

love, massage, hope, sex.

Three people are a delegation,

a committee, a wedge. With four

you can play bridge and start

an organization. With six

you can rent a whole house,

eat pie for dinner with no

seconds, and hold a fund raising party.

A dozen make a demonstration.

A hundred fill a hall.

A thousand have solidarity and your own newsletter,

ten thousand, power and your own paper,

a hundred thousand, your own media,

ten million, your own country.

 

It goes on one at a time,

it starts when you care

to act, it starts when you do

it again after they said no,

it starts when you say We

and know who you mean, and each

day you mean one more.

 

- Marge Piercy

 

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John Case
Harpers Ferry, WV

The Winners and Losers Radio Show

7-9 AM Weekdays, The EPIC Radio Player Stream, 

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The Poets and Mechanics Quaker Worship Group

Poets and Mechanics Friends Worship Group:Call to Meeting -- 26 March 2017

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Blog: Poets and Mechanics Friends Worship Group
Post: Call to Meeting -- 26 March 2017
Link: http://poetsandmechanicsfriends.blogspot.com/2017/03/call-to-meeting-26-march-2017.html

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Fwd: Following the Fight

Sent from my iPhone

Begin forwarded message:

From: Stewart Acuff <acuff.stewart@gmail.com>
Date: March 25, 2017 at 5:54:19 PM EDT
To: Stewart <acuff.stewart@gmail.com>
Subject: Following the Fight

A lifetime of following the fight

My life a map of America's southeast

Travelled campaign to campaign day after night

People and things lost on the way even pieces of me ceas't

To be as rollin down the road might

Be not just a journey, but the life you lived hard and full

Loaded, large, complete never dull

Still there are those missed even till this journey ends.

Sent from my iPhone

Enlighten Radio:EPIC Radio is NOW Enlighten Radio

John Case has sent you a link to a blog:



Blog: Enlighten Radio
Post: EPIC Radio is NOW Enlighten Radio
Link: http://www.enlightenradio.org/2017/03/epic-radio-is-now-enlighten-radio.html

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Ted Boettner: WV Tax Proposals Shift Load onto Working Families [feedly]

Ted Boettner: Tax Proposals Shift Load onto Working Families
http://www.wvpolicy.org/ted-boettner-tax-proposals-shift-load-onto-working-families/

Gazette – Unfazed by a looming budget crisis, some lawmakers are pursuing destructive tax proposals that would shift more of the tax load onto working families and small businesses to pay for tax cuts for wealthy and powerful special interests.

West Virginia already has an upside down tax system that requires more from low- and middle-income residents than the wealthy. Commonsense reform would rebalance the tax system while providing enough revenue to close the state's $500 million budget gap and invest in the building blocks of thriving communities, such as schools, public colleges, transportation and public safety.

Similar to Kansas' failed tax experiment, Senate Bill 335 puts West Virginia on a path to eliminate the state's personal and corporate income taxes, reduce severance taxes and replace with them with a broad-base 8 percent sales tax that would be the highest in the nation. In Kansas, this has resulted in an ongoing fiscal crisis that has forced cuts to schools and other services people rely on every day, without the promised economic benefit. Kansas' Republican-controlled legislature is now trying to reverse course.

SB 335 would dramatically increase taxes on low-income populations and the middle-class to pay for large tax breaks for the richest West Virginians. If enacted, it would probably be the largest redistribution of wealth in the state in the past century.

SB 335 will also reduce what people spend in local stores, slowing the state's economic growth and job creation. A higher sales tax makes the price of everything that is subject to a tax go up, and that is likely to reduce spending at local businesses. When they can, people will, instead, cross the border or buy from out-of-state internet merchants who do not charge sales tax or charge a lower rate, causing West Virginia small businesses to lay off workers.

Businesses will also face higher sales taxes that will eliminate a portion of any savings from the income tax cuts. A substantial share of business purchases — such as electricity, heat, water, machinery, equipment, computers, furniture and shipping supplies — will now be taxed at 8 percent, hurting West Virginia small businesses by adding thousands of dollars in annual expenses.

Our tourism industry will suffer as the state lodging tax increases from 6 percent to 11 percent. Combined with the 6 percent local hotel occupancy tax, West Virginia would have the highest lodging tax in the nation.

Because the increased sales tax revenue is unlikely to fully replace the lost income tax revenue, the state will almost certainly have to cut back on funding for schools and other services provided at the local level, and local governments, in turn, likely will increase business taxes to make up some of the difference.

The idea that economists agree that taxing consumption is better for economic growth than taxing income is just not true. There is no consensus among economists that shifting from reliance on state income taxes to sales taxes would improve economic growth.

Another tax proposal in the House, House Bill 2934, would replace the state's graduated income tax structure with a flat 5.1 percent income tax rate. A graduated income tax that taxes higher incomes at higher rates allows our state's revenue to keep pace with growth in the economy, because the state's wealthiest residents capture so much of the income generated by economic growth in today's lopsided economy. For example, between 1979 and 2007, the top 1 percent of income earners in West Virginia received 74 percent of real income growth while the bottom 99 percent received less than 7 percent.

Similar to SB 335, the House's flat-rate proposal would raise taxes on 80 percent of West Virginians while giving the wealthiest in the state a huge tax break. Instead of another tax break for those on top, we need to clean up our tax code by getting rid of special carve-outs for the powerful, not adding more of them. Regular, working people already pay higher taxes, relative to their income, than the richest in our state. Both of these proposals would double-down on this upside-down system.

While we all want a strong economy with good-paying jobs, shifting more of the tax load onto working families to pay for tax cuts for the wealthy is not going to get us there. It does nothing to address our state's looming budget crisis or the things that hold our state's economy back, such as a large, unhealthy and undereducated workforce, an undiversified economy, low wages and deteriorating and inadequate infrastructure.

If West Virginia wants to avoid becoming a failed state in the future, it will have to take up common-sense tax reform that pays for the things communities need and asks everyone to contribute.

 -- via my feedly newsfeed

Wait…wuh? Reflections and links after a totally crazy week… [feedly]

Wait…wuh? Reflections and links after a totally crazy week…
http://jaredbernsteinblog.com/wait-wuh-reflections-and-links-after-a-totally-crazy-week/

…with an unbelievable ending.

First, links to stuff you may have missed.

–A joint oped with Ben Spielberg on why work requirements for Medicaid are a really bad idea. House R's tried to win over their hard right colleagues by adding this to their benighted health care bill, which by now you know failed anyway. But I fear it ain't going away.

–Speaking of Ben, here's a link to our podcast episode #5, on health care, of all things, with an absolutely kickin' musical interlude and a…um…long joke by Ben.

–I contend, and events suggest I may be right, that for the R's, health care reform is a lot harder to pull off than tax cuts. So why did they start with health care? Here's why.

–Finally, off the top of the old noggin', I just scratched out a bunch of explanations as to why the R's failed to repeal/replace O'care. See what you think, and add your own additions in comments.

Now, I plan to not think about health policy all weekend. Instead, I'll watch and listen to this mind-altering performance of Mozart's Violin Concerto #3 by the incomparable Hilary Hahn. If the cadenza at the end of the first movement doesn't give you chills, please check your pulse, as you may have perished. To say that this music/performance is the universal opposite of the R's health care plan isn't quite right–they don't belong to the same universe. But you maybe know what I mean. There is still a lot of good in the world, if you know where to look for it.

 -- via my feedly newsfeed