by ilene - March 10th, 2011 1:46 am
By Yasha Levine, The eXiled
Why are American taxpayers forced to subsidize the billionaire Koch brothers’ massive campaign contributions to Republican Party politicians, the Tea Party movement, and policies that ensure greater subsidies to the Kochs, while cutting more public services to the taxpayers who fund the Kochs’ business and political activities?
It is an important question, but not one you’ll hear discussed much by our political class. Instead, right-wing pundits whinge endlessly about the public sector union bosses’ evil schemes to shake down taxpayers for union dues that eventually flow towards the Democratic Party. Here, for example, is Michael Barone, American Enterprise Institute resident fellow and senior Moonie political analyst, complaining in the Washington Examiner last week:
Follow the money, Washington reporters like to say. The money in this case comes from taxpayers, present and future, who are the source of every penny of dues paid to public employee unions, who in turn spend much of that money on politics, almost all of it for Democrats. In effect, public employee unions are a mechanism by which every taxpayer is forced to fund the Democratic Party.
Okay, fine, you’re serious about not wanting taxpayer dollars going to finance partisan political campaigns. But before we start talking about public sector unions, let’s test this: if think-tank jockeys like Barone are genuinely concerned with saving taxpayers’ money, would they extend this concern to the fake private sector (i.e.: the publicly-funded private sector)? Would they be in favor of demanding that publicly subsidized billionaires like Charles and David Koch stop funneling money to fund corrupt Republicans and Tea Party campaigns as long as they keep sucking billions in taxpayer subsidies?
Fair is fair, right?
The Kochs could start by giving up the $1 billion their biofuels division is scheduled to receive in 2011 alone. That’s $1 billion in savings from just one of many massive taxpayer subsidies the Kochs profit from. Not only will that help balance the budget, but taxpayers will no longer be forced to watch helplessly as their hard-earned money is used to fund radical right-wing Tea Party Republicans or is spent on causes that deny Americans the same universal health care that every other First World country offers its citizens.
This talk about Koch Industries being a huge beneficiary of taxpayer money might come as a surprise—especially to all the gullible Tea Party libertarians who believe the Kochs actually…
Tags: biofuels, Charles Koch, David Koch, Frederick Koch, Koch Industries, Libertarians, Soviet oil infrastructure, taxpayer subsidies, Tea Party
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by ilene - June 25th, 2009 8:18 pm
Courtesy of Tom Lindmark at But Then What
The Fed has announced that it’s extending the maturity of most of its alphabet soup of lending program
s from the end of the year until February 2010. Here is the opening paragraph of their statement:
The Federal Reserve on Thursday announced extensions of and modifications to a number of its liquidity programs. Conditions in financial markets have improved in recent months, but market functioning in many areas remains impaired and seems likely to be strained for some time. As a consequence, to promote financial stability and support the flow of credit to households and businesses, the Federal Reserve is extending a number of facilities through early 2010. At the same time, in light of the improvement in financial conditions and reduced usage of some facilities, the Federal Reserve is trimming the size and changing the terms of some facilities.
You can check out the entire press release to see what’s happening to your favorite program.
At this point in time the financial markets are hooked on central bank support throughout the world. They have improved only in the sense that counterparties trade with one and other on the presumption of sovereign support. Until that support is withdrawn it seems to me relatively impossible to assess the true functionality of the markets.
I found this article that was published a couple of days ago by MarketWatch pertinent:
Who says the credit crunch is over?
Not banks that operate in the euro zone, evidently. The European Central Bank issued a pretty simple proposition: borrow whatever you want, for one year at 1%.
The answer to that historic first was — yes, please!
Over 442 billion euros, or over $600 billion, was lent. That was more than the loosely-pegged 300 billion euro consensus, though short of some whispers that up to 1 trillion euros would have been allocated.
And who could blame the banks?
True, they can borrow for even more cheaply than 1%. Three-month and six-month inter-bank lending rates in the euro zone are running over a quarter-point lower than that.
And whatever the hawkish noises from ECB members like Axel Weber, interest rates aren’t going up anytime soon with the euro-zone economy stuttering as it is.
But the
…
Tags: central bank, federal programs, financial markets, taxpayer subsidies
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Philip R. Davis is a founder Phil's Stock World, a stock and options trading site that teaches the art of options trading to newcomers and devises advanced strategies for expert traders...
Ilene is editor and affiliate program
coordinator for PSW. She manages the site