Bill O’Reilly is, once again, creating lies and twisting facts into what he, and FOX News, wants their viewers to believe.
Here is a video from his November 16th edition on Fox News’ “The O’Reilly Factor.” Trust me, I had a hard time stomaching the vomit he spewed forth.
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Story from the Listening Post on Al Jazeera English discusses how quickly this movement spread throughout the world and the impact with the media. Comparisons against the uprisings which occurred within the Arab Nations. The first 8:40 in this video are on this topic, then the Listening Post moves on to other such coverage as the controversy in France with the allegation of spying on journalists, and the website which was taken down due to keeping an eye on the French police. Propaganda wars between North and South Korea. The closing piece is about a video called “♫ PHOTOSHOP IN REAL LIFE Music Video” which is included below the Listening Post.
From Crooks and Liars website:
“Probably the most disturbing aspect of the multifarious effects of Fox News’ right-wing propaganda machine and its Tea Party offspring is the way it has utterly taken over the lives of so many senior citizens, who lap up every word as the gospel truth and have become increasingly radicalized by talking heads like Glenn Beck.
Even as they project their own intentions onto the likes of the unions, the Fox acolytes and the Tea Partiers have effectively become a brown shirt corps of mean-spirited, vicious thugs. It’s deeply disturbing to watch people in our parents’ generation viciously attacking liberals with increasing venom and violence.
The latest example took place last weekend in the quiet little retirement town of Roseburg, Oregon. It’s a pretty little burg on the I-5 corridor in western Oregon that is mostly populated with senior citizens of various stripes. Via Carla at Blue Oregon, we happened upon this story in the local paper:
‘A small political gathering of about 18 liberal thinkers at River Forks Park Sunday afternoon erupted in conflict when about 35 members of the conservative tea party intruded upon the meeting, waving flags and holding signs accusing the rival group of being communists, Marxists and socialists.
The liberal group — organized by MoveOn.org — decided to leave the park and move its potluck to a nearby home. Members of the conservative group followed, parking at the entrance of a private lane leading to the home to continue their protest.
Roseburg Democrats Dean and Sara Byers said Monday they told tea party members who followed that they were not welcome to drive down the lane to their home.
The Byerses said they got out of their car to stop vehicles from entering the driveway and one tea party member almost ran them over.
Sara Byers said she was so shaken she called 911. She said a Douglas County deputy called about an hour and a half later and said he had been unable to respond because of other incidents. Byers said she was still considering filing a criminal complaint against members of the tea party for harassment.
A leader of the tea party group, Rich Raynor of Roseburg, disputed the liberal group’s version of events.
“They are liars,” said Raynor, director of Douglas County Americans for Prosperity. “That is what communists do.”
Members of the smaller group said Monday they were intimidated by the tea partiers, whom they accused of violating their constitutional right to peacefully assembly.
Roseburg resident Lillen Fifield, 70, called the group’s actions an “act of domestic terrorism” and said she was appalled that a peaceful gathering — mostly of women older than 65 — was interrupted.
“It is not OK to go around and intimidate and threaten people. That is not acceptable in a polite society,” Fifield said.
Conservative organizers defended their actions and said they will continue to protest similar gatherings.
“We were there to find out what they had to say and to bring a notice to the public that this kind of thing was going on. Quite honestly, if they have it again, then we are really going to make it well known,” Raynor said.
Raynor said the group believes MoveOn.org is a communist front and said he would not stand for America becoming a fascist nation.
Sara Byers said she could not believe the meeting was targeted for protest. She said the group supports the middle class and wants to take back the government from the stranglehold of corporations.
She laughed at the accusations of communism and said the two groups actually have more in common than people think.
“I just said, ‘Are you kidding me?’ ” Byers said.
Tea party members posted a 2:46-minute video of the confrontation in the park and added captions.
On the video, heckling members of the larger group celebrate breaking up the meeting.
“That sure did it in a hurry, huh?” a man says. A woman references next year’s election year and shouts, “Sure shows who is going to win! We are!”
As one woman packs up to leave, a man in a leather jacket tauntingly offers to carry her things.
“Do you want me to help? I mean if you are leaving, I’ll help,” the man says in the video. A caption added to the video reads, “I’ll help, just leave! And take your Marxist agenda with you.”
Raynor maintained the tea party’s goal was to attend the meeting and hear what the rival group had to say.
He said the fact that they stopped the meeting and left proves they have something to hide.
Sutherlin conservative Karen Meier said she posed as a MoveOn.org member and infiltrated the group’s meeting prior to the confrontation. She said she found many of the liberals to be pleasant.
“Obviously, they don’t really know what MoveOn is and who it entails,” Meier said.
A MoveOn.org meeting attendee Lorna Hayden of Roseburg said the tea party mischaracterized the nature of the meeting. Still, any group, no matter what its agenda, has a right to be in the park Sunday without being harassed, she said.
Raynor said the tea party never threatened anyone with violence and said no one brought guns to the confrontation. He said he urged his group to be civil but also to stand up against a group they believe is harming America.
“It is not our fault that we outnumber them,” Raynor said. “The philosophy they espouse is not a live-and-let-live philosophy. … I am fearful for my children and my grandchildren.”
Source: NRtoday.com
Heather Morse
The News-Review
What has America come to? I am very disgusted… and embarrassed… by these bullying tactics.
Video produced by Australian filmmaker Taki Oldham
His closing statement, “Be careful what you wish for… you just might get it.”
One of the better made exposures I have viewed. A must-see.
The Tea Party movement has taken American politics by storm. But is this truly a populist uprising or one of the greatest feats of propaganda ever seen? Australian filmmaker Taki Oldham sets out answer this question, finding that behind the movement’s rhetoric of ‘freedom’ versus ‘socialism’ lies a highly co-ordinated network of shadow groups, funded by the likes of billionaire ideologues Charles and David Koch. Are the Tea Party protestors really just pawns in a plan to replace government with a privatized America?
Here are some other sites of interest:
The Billionaires’ Tea Party official site
Facebook: Join the Coffee Party Movement
Dear Congress: Close Loopholes, Increase Revenue & Invest in America
America Needs Information Activists!
9 Things The Rich Don’t Want You To Know About Taxes
Edited version below. Click on title for full version.
April 13th, 2011 DAVID CAY JOHNSTON | Cover Story
As millions of Americans prepare to file their annual taxes, they do so in an environment of media-perpetuated tax myths. Here are a few points about taxes and the economy that you may not know, to consider as you prepare to file your taxes. (All figures are inflation-adjusted.)
1. Poor Americans do pay taxes.
Gretchen Carlson, the Fox News host, said last year “47 percent of Americans don’t pay any taxes.” John McCain and Sarah Palin both said similar things during the 2008 campaign about the bottom half of Americans.
When it comes to state and local taxes, the poor bear a heavier burden than the rich in every state except Vermont, the Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy calculated from official data. In Alabama, for example, the burden on the poor is more than twice that of the top 1 percent. The one-fifth of Alabama families making less than $13,000 pay almost 11 percent of their income in state and local taxes, compared with less than 4 percent for those who make $229,000 or more.
2. The wealthiest Americans don’t carry the burden.
It’s true that the top 1 percent of wage earners paid 38 percent of the federal income taxes in 2008 (the most recent year for which data is available). But people forget that the income tax is less than half of federal taxes and only one-fifth of taxes at all levels of government.
Social Security, Medicare and unemployment insurance taxes (known as payroll taxes) are paid mostly by the bottom 90 percent of wage earners. That’s because, once you reach $106,800 of income, you pay no more for Social Security, though the much smaller Medicare tax applies to all wages. Warren Buffett pays the exact same amount of Social Security taxes as someone who earns $106,800.
3. In fact, the wealthy are paying less taxes.
Despite skyrocketing incomes, the federal tax burden on the richest 400 has been slashed, thanks to a variety of loopholes, allowable deductions and other tools. The actual share of their income paid in taxes, according to the IRS, is 16.6 percent. Adding payroll taxes barely nudges that number.
4. Many of the very richest pay no current income taxes at all.
Lots of other people live tax-free, too. I have Donald Trump’s tax records for four years early in his career. He paid no taxes for two of those years. Big real-estate investors enjoy tax-free living under a 1993 law President Clinton signed. It lets “professional” real-estate investors use paper losses like depreciation on their buildings against any cash income, even if they end up with negative incomes like Trump.
In Wisconsin, Terrence Wall, who unsuccessfully sought the Republican nomination for U.S. Senate in 2010, paid no income taxes on as much as $14 million of recent income, his disclosure forms showed. Asked about his living tax-free while working people pay taxes, he had a simple response: Everyone should pay less.
5. And (surprise!) since Reagan, only the wealthy have gained significant income.
Those at the top did better. The top 1 percent’s average income more than doubled to $1.1 million, according to an analysis of tax data by economists Thomas Piketty and Emmanuel Saez. The really rich, the top one-tenth of 1 percent, each enjoyed almost $4 in 2008 for each dollar in 1980.
The top 300,000 Americans now enjoy almost as much income as the bottom 150 million, the data show.
6. When it comes to corporations, the story is much the same—less taxes.
Corporate profits in 2008, the latest year for which data are available, were $1,830 billion, up almost 12 percent from $1,638.7 billion in 2000. Yet, even though corporate tax rates have not been cut, corporate income-tax revenues fell to $230 billion from $249 billion—an 8 percent decline, thanks to a number of loopholes. The official 2010 profit numbers are not added up and released by the government, but the amount paid in corporate taxes is: In 2010 they fell further, to $191 billion—a decline of more than 23 percent compared with 2000.
7. Some corporate tax breaks destroy jobs.
Despite all the noise that America has the world’s second-highest corporate tax rate, the actual taxes paid by corporations are falling because of the growing number of loopholes and companies shifting profits to tax havens like the Cayman Islands.
And right now America’s corporations are sitting on close to $2 trillion in cash that is not being used to build factories, create jobs or anything else, but acts as an insurance policy for managers unwilling to take the risk of actually building the businesses they are paid so well to run. That cash hoard, by the way, works out to nearly $13,000 per taxpaying household.
8. Republicans like taxes too.
President Reagan signed into law 11 tax increases, targeted at people down the income ladder. His administration and the Washington press corps called the increases “revenue enhancers.” Reagan raised Social Security taxes so high that by the end of 2008, the government had collected more than $2 trillion in surplus tax.
George W. Bush signed a tax increase, too, in 2006, despite his written ironclad pledge never to raise taxes on anyone. It raised taxes on teenagers by requiring kids up to age 17, who earned money, to pay taxes at their parents’ tax rate, which would almost always be higher than the rate they would otherwise pay. It was a story that ran buried inside The New York Times one Sunday, but nowhere else.
In fact, thanks to Republicans, one in three Americans will pay higher taxes this year than they did last year.
9. Other countries do it better.
Compare this to Germany, one of many countries with a smarter tax system and smarter spending policies.
Germans work less, make more per hour and get much better parental leave than Americans, many of whom get no fringe benefits such as health care, pensions or even a retirement savings plan. By many measures the vast majority live better in Germany than in America.
To achieve this, unmarried Germans on average pay 52 percent of their income in taxes. Americans average 30 percent, according to the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development.
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David Cay Johnston is a columnist for tax.com and teaches the tax, property and regulatory law of the ancient world at Syracuse University College of Law and Whitman School of Management. He has also been called the “de facto chief tax enforcement officer of the United States” because his reporting in The New York Times shut down many tax dodges and schemes, just two of them valued by Congress at $260 billion. Johnston received a 2001 Pulitzer Prize for exposing tax loopholes and inequities. He wrote two bestsellers on taxes, Perfectly Legal and Free Lunch. Later this year, Johnston will be out with a new book, The Fine Print, revealing how big business, with help from politicians, abuses plain English to rob you blind.
