msnbc:

Melissa Harris-Perry showed this incredible chart today during a discussion on wealth in America and what this week’s stock market gains actually mean for most American families. 

The latest brainstorm from the mind of Scott Walker, the twice-elected goggle-eyed homunculus hired by Koch Industries to manage their midwest subsidiary formerly known as the state of Wisconsin, is a “middle-class tax cut,” which, according to Walker, is what he’s all about these days.

“Our focus is simple - more prosperity, better performance and true independence,” Walker said in his 40-minute speech. “Our middle class tax cut is a down payment on my goal of reducing the tax burden in our state every year I’m in office. I want to cut taxes over and over and over again until we are leading the country in economic recovery.”

You can see it coming, can’t you?

The top 20% of Wisconsin households - those making more than $90,000 a year - would take home more than half of all of Gov. Scott Walker’s proposed income tax cut, an analysis has found. The top 5% of tax filers - those with incomes above $162,000 - would pull in 20% of Walker’s more than $300 million tax cut.

Read more here.

Dear Massachusetts,

Thank you SO MUCH for sending Elizabeth Warren to the Senate.

justice4janitors:

Columbus janitors make signs for today’s rally! As they prepare to make a stand for living wages, will you support them by signing our petition and staying in the loop on their fight?

thepoliticalnotebook:

Want to check out what the gender pay gap is in your state or county? Slate’s got you covered with this great horribly depressing interactive map graphic… I’m looking at you, Wyoming and Utah. The national average is pretty unacceptable, but you’re way far behind even that… 

[Slate]

If not, I recommend it.

beother:

Voice of Art - Tax Dodgers, Pt. 3

The Tax Dodgers play against the 99% team in Philadelphia, using baseball as a metaphor for the games played by big corporations. Their bribery, rule changing and flat-out cheating get them arrested by Ray Lewis, (former) Philadelphia Police Captain. The Yes Men’s Andy Bichlbaum tells how creative activism can break under-reported stories through the mainstream media blockade.  

This summer the Internal Revenue Service released data from the 400 individual income tax returns reporting the highest adjusted gross income. This elite ultrarich group earned on average $202 million in 2009, the latest year available. And buried in the data is the startling disclosure that six of the 400 paid no federal income tax.
The I.R.S. has never before disclosed that last fact.

[T]his promise of free voter ID is a mirage. In the real world, poor voters find shuttered offices, long drives without cars, and with spotty or no bus service, and sometimes prohibitive costs. For these Americans, the promise of our democracy is tangibly distant. It can be measured in miles.

When did we become a country where the millionaires are jealous of the people on food stamps? A country that thinks teachers and fire fighters are soaking us dry? A country that thinks the richest who are paying the lowest taxes in 80 years are the ones being beaten up?

(via herblondness)

owsposters:

Are Your Non-Union Wages Being Kept By The Rich?

Download the poster pack

quickhits:

This is America without unions.

The word you’re looking for is “screwed.”

How the debt deal protects the rich.

The SuperCommittee is where the final yard sale of what’s left of the New Deal is going to happen.

In the middle of the worst recession since the 1930’s, with the country being told to accept nine-percent unemployment for the foreseeable future, and income inequality swamping the middle class, the responsible point of view among the leaders of both political parties is to “reform entitlements” until what’s left is sticks and splinters because then, and only then, will the delicate, blessed “Markets” feel goody-good-good about themselves again.