No, I don’t want your 9, 9, 9 or Steve Forbesism, backwards flat tax theory. It won’t help me or many others I know. It benefits people like Herman Cain and Steve Forbes though.

The flat tax does not work for everyone.

The contention that a flat tax would be simpler because it involves only a single rate is flatly wrong. The complexity of the current system has nothing to do with its multiple income brackets.

The flat tax would make the 1% even more richer which is why Cain and other conservatives seem to like it. A family of four making 50k a year would get a tax bill with an increase of four thousand dollars. This flat tax is like a slippery slope actually. It’s the first step for conservatives to be able to get rid of the Internal Revenue Service.

Remember this picture: Occupy Oakland General Strike

Tomorrow Occupy Oakland protesters have called for a general strike to protest the tear gassing of activists and the injury of Scott Olsen a US veteran. After reading a book on non violent protest recently I have come to realize the power and effectiveness of a general strike if carried out successfully. When the opposition has all the financial and physical power on their side it is only non violence that can prevail. The minute you start to use violence against violence then you loose all sympathy and support from the public which you are trying to win to your side.

The main ingredient for any state or organizational structure being able to assert authority is the consent of the people. Once people withdraw their consent through non-cooperation and resistance the tides are turned. Yes, often force will be used to gain consent or like Noam Chomsky has said consent can be manufactured, but once it is withdrawn a sea change begins.

This quote below says a lot to me:

“We’re the one’s losing our homes and having city services cut because of what bankers and Wall Street have done,” said Dwight McElroy, President of 1021’s Oakland chapter. “Occupy Oakland is out there taking baton blows and tear gas to protest what has been happening, so it is incumbent on the labor movement to protect them.”

He’s absolutely right. That’s why I’m hoping participation is as wide as possible tomorrow in Oakland. Shut that city down!

You know I’ve often wondered why more homeless or soon to be homeless people weren’t doing this already. With the way we are gutting social programs in this country it won’t be long before we’re all in the big house it seems.

From Daily Kos Labor:

“He’s homeless and has nowhere to go. By taking these actions, he knew where he would be. He’d have a place to stay, a warm meal and clothes to wear,” Bradley said.

I’m not sure what to say. Obviously you cannot defend what he did. Yet at the same time you have to wonder were there no charities or programs there for him to seek help at?

Why we’ve let foreign nations beat us in wind and solar power is beyond me. Now American solar companies are seeking to level the playing field by getting the US to impose a tariff on China solar panels.

A coalition of seven American companies filed the trade case against China on Wednesday. They accused Chinese manufacturers of obtaining billions of dollars in Chinese government subsidies to help them buy market share in the United States, and of dumping solar panels in the United States at prices that did not fully cover the cost of manufacturing and distributing them.

It’s time we get past the whole notion of “free trade” nothing is free. This is really trade that makes one party better off at the expense of others. The fact that China is now singing the tune of helping the global economy and reducing global warming and any new tariffs hurting those objectives is telling.

The coalition responded quickly to the Chinese criticism. “The Chinese government’s claims that our actions are improper and protectionist, and that its illegal subsidies and massive dumping of solar product are helping the global economy and the environment, are absurd,” said Gordon Brinser, the chief executive of SolarWorld Industries America, the lead company in the coalition. “China is one of the biggest trade protectionists in the world. In the solar industry, China is gutting manufacturing and jobs here in America and abroad while China’s solar industry pollutes its own people. The accusations have no basis in fact.”

The United States should be the ones ramping up production of solar panels and  other solar power devices for export not importing them. Once the domestic solar power industry has developed then you take away the tariffs on imports.

I’ve been anti-corporate for quite some time now and because of that I’ve had numerous discussions on cooperatives as an alternative to the way a corporation is set up in the United States. With the way laws are here, if you want to be a progressive and good corporate citizen then you can’t go public. You have to stay privately held. When a corporation becomes publicly traded it must maximize profit for its shareholders.

In terms of cooperatives a friend of mine would always speak of one in particular in his home country of Spain. That cooperative is Cooperativa Mondragon one of the largest around.

The ties that link the MONDRAGON Co-operatives are strong, as these bonds emanate from a humanist concept of business, interrelated by a philosophy of participation and solidarity and a shared business culture rooted in a number of Basic Principles, a shared Mission and the acceptance of a set of Corporate Values and General Policies of a business nature.

Today I was happy to see an article in Common Dreams talking about cooperatives.

It’s a business model in British Columbia that controls more than $10 billion in assets, employs 13,000 people and returns all profits to members. The model governs enterprises in banking, housing, retail and health care. Fully one-third of British Columbians are members in at least one of the 700 operations operating in this model: the co-operative.

It’s worth looking into that’s for sure.

So they’ve gone and done what would be unthinkable in the United States and nationalized a bank in Europe.

PARIS — Europe’s debt crisis hit another milestone on Sunday when the French and Belgian governments agreed to nationalize Dexia, Belgium’s biggest bank, infusing it with billions in taxpayer money after it became the first casualty of the Greek sovereign debt crisis.

So when you look at it we essentially nationalized General Motors right? That industry has made something of a rebound. So what would have happened if we had nationalized the failing banks in 2008?

The NY Times has this great piece on cyclical vs. secular trends in an economy. During the Great Depression while the downturn was cyclical there were developments in technology that would provide positive results in the future.

“We’ve got a double-whammy effect,” says John C. Haltiwanger, an economics professor at the University of Maryland. The cyclical crisis has come on top of the secular one, and the two are now feeding off each other.

We better hope new economic engines and inventions emerge.

When I first heard of the valuation of a Groupon IPO I was concerned. I was also concerned about the Linkedin IPO as well. Have we learned nothing from the dot com, Enron scandal and housing market crashes? What was the business model to invest in?

Now we’re seeing a decline in these deal making sites.

The consumers were being told: You will never pay full price again. The merchants were hearing: You are going to get new customers who will stick around and pay full price. Disappointment was inevitable.

Some entrepreneurs are questioning the entire premise of the industry. Jasper Malcolmson, co-founder of the deal site Bloomspot, compares the basic deal offer with lenders’ marketing subprime loans during the housing boom.

This is absolutely true. If I had a Groupon for 50% off of a dinner at a high end restaurant that I would normally not go to, I would take the Groupon and go there. Would I return without a Groupon? Or would I wait for the next Groupon from the other high end restaurant and go there?

In the ultra right wing Republican Party Mitt Romney is his own worst enemy it would seem.

“How could he do this to businesses as a business guy?” Joe Casey, then a top executive at a Massachusetts bank, Seacoast Financial, recalled asking colleagues whose companies had to pay up after the Romney administration closed a tax loophole. “It was very aggressive, and it was a surprise.”

As Governor he tried to–in the NY Times on words “extract”–millions of dollars from corporations to close the budget gap in Massachusetts.  He would make a good poster child for US UNCUT the movement in the United States to get corporations to pay their fair share of taxes. At this juncture Romney might want to consider going down to Wall Street and joining the protesters there as well!

One day, a trader on the floor of the New York Stock Exchange, Adam Sarzen, a decade or so older than many of the protesters, came to Zuccotti Park seemingly just to shake his head. “Look at these kids, sitting here with their Apple computers,” he said. “Apple, one of the biggest monopolies in the world. It trades at $400 a share. Do they even know that?”

via Protesters Are Gunning for Wall Street, With Faulty Aim – NYTimes.com.

So I take it that Mr. Sarzen feels that Wall Street is not the problem? Apple Computers Inc. did not cause the financial meltdown of 2007-2008. Apple Computers Inc. did not start the housing bubble. Is he saying that these protesters are being hypocritical for using MacBooks because they are using the goods of the system they protest? Should we be protesting the monopolies instead of Wall Street bankers? Should I not drink my Starbucks Coffee? Or should we all just accept that this is the way business works?

Sure, I support independent businesses when I can but that’s besides the point. I’m typing on a Lenovo ThinkPad and I’m drinking a beverage owned by Coca-Cola–it’s an Honest Tea. The reason that people are upset at his beloved Wall Street is because they were complicit in bringing the whole system down. This is why New York Attorney General Eric Schneiderman is still investigating all of the large banking institutions for their roles in causing the economic collapse.

The AGs’ inquiry stems from cases involving the illegal “robo-signing” of foreclosure documents that bank employees are required to review and was broadened to include the sprawling mess of loan servicing and foreclosure. In August correspondence, Iowa Attorney General Tom Miller, a close Obama ally who is leading the suit, was in talks for a $20 billion settlement in exchange for releasing the banks from some civil liability.

While some of the tactics used by the protesters are carnivalesque, the overall sentiment of anger towards Wall Street is warranted. Some of them may not know what they exactly want to come out of this effort, but I think AG Schneiderman could help them out in that regard.