Getting our national "family" out of debt...

There’s a bill in Congress that may have real solutions for the economy, and it’s called the 99% Act. It was introduced in congress earlier this month. Yes, it's from the left. Get over it.

The 99% Act claims it would create 5 million new jobs in two years, raise taxes on Wall Street and millionaires, add a public option to the Affordable Care Act, and much more.  I've been looking for the full text of the bill, but no luck so far...but http://cpc.grijalva.house.gov/uploads/4OnePagerRAD99.pdf has more details.  Probably a good thing as the actual text is probably painfully long and obfuscating - like any legislation.

It hits most of the items I'd put down in a "note to self" over the last few months:

The solution to reduce the national debt is pretty simple and straightforward, but not easy given entrenched interests.  I appeal to the sense of patriotism I hear shouted out by many - but that really means "Give Me what I want out of My country, and give back My 1950's style Andy Griffith all white country." 

Here's what I'd do if I were El Rey:

Remove enough $$ from the pockets of the 1% to pull the country that built them into billionaires out of the hole they dug for it, and enable a new start for everyone.

Unfair you say? Not hardly, I say it's more like their patriotic duty.

Leave the poor and middle class enough of a safety net they need not fear personal bankruptcy and ruin from medical emergencies or other personal disasters, by having access to basic preventative healthcare and

Higher education for young students either in university or the trades, and continuing education/retraining for existing laid off workers.

Remove the "money is free speech" rights from any corporation that is not wholly American owned and American based and paying full tax rate with no subsidies -- those that qualify in that way will have an interest in America, as well as their stockholders (only Americans can hold stock in the company). Huge multinationals would never qualify under this plan, but small and medium sized American corporations would - the real job creators.

Get the money out of politics. Corporations are not people. Money is not speech.

Reform (radically simplify) the tax code (keeps tax lawyers from finding loopholes & makes auditing easier) 

Remove corporate tax loopholes and lower corporate rate as they'd like, but resulting in more net tax income.

Have everyone pay some amount on their income so they have some "skin in the game" - but keep a progressive tax structure.

Get for-profit corporations out of the role of basic care for everyone, use the VA as a model for how to provide care.  It's done well enough for our veterans - I guess government can do some things. We're the richest country in the world - for now - we CAN afford it - especially if it's not handcuffed - allow that system to negotiate drug costs based on volume - the WalMart model. 

Yes, "Single Payer" health care, "Medicare for all" if you wish -- that provides basic preventative, emergency and long term care to everyone - from prenatal to the grave. And yes, man up, you are going to die - and at some point replacing everything in your body when it wears out isn't going to be affordable for that kind of system.  Enter - the role for private insurance: Let for profit insurance companies shift gears to provide 'gold plated' insurance for those that want/can afford it.

To dig out of the current hole - call on/require/tax the 1% to provide financing (perhaps in exchange for low-return or negative return bonds - again, it's their patriotic and moral duty)

Allow repatriation of foreign corporate funds at a low tax rate - but not without tax and only IF THAT $ IS USED TO GENERATE JOBS - allow some low multiplier for $ per job.

Impose tariffs on imports in line with our foreign competitors.

No tax breaks for companies that shift jobs out of the US, and tariffs on the products they return to the US.

Sen. Bernie Sanders, as always, said it best:

"The deficit was caused by two wars not paid for, huge tax breaks for the wealthiest people in this country, and a recession as a result of the greed, recklessness and illegal behavior on Wall Street. And if those are the causes of the deficit and the national debt I will be damned if we’re going to balance the budget on the backs of the elderly, the sick, children, and the poor. That's wrong." 

-----------------

The 99% bill is based on the contract to rebuild the American Dream: http://contract.rebuildthedream.com/ 

Go hit the link for more info, but here's an introduction...from the website:

To produce this Contract for the American Dream, 131,203 Americans came together online and in their communities. We wrote and rated 25,904 ideas. Together, we identified the 10 most critical steps to get our economy back on track and restore the American Dream:
10 CRITICAL STEPS TO GET OUR ECONOMY BACK ON TRACK

• I. Invest in America's InfrastructureII. Create 21st Century Energy Jobs

• II. Create 21st Century Energy Jobs

• III. Invest in Public Education

• IV. Offer Medicare for All

• V. Make Work Pay

• VI. Secure Social Security

• VII. Return to Fairer Tax Rates

• VIII. End the Wars and Invest at Home

• IX. Tax Wall Street Speculation

• X. Strengthen Democracy

Here's the graphic they've put out about the act; note the top marginal income tax rate graph -- we did pretty good as a country from Eisenhower through LBJ - Carter was left with the fallout of the Vietnam war, tried to get us pointed in an energy independent route - and was derided constantly for his efforts. Reagan cut taxes, then raised them something like 5 times to make up for the mistake...and the '80s were on...Wall Street's fictional Gordon Gecco (Michael Douglas) showed us how it was done.  Mergers and Acquisitions reigned, corporations grew like cancers until they now, unregulated  threaten to kill the host -- the U.S. We need a dose of some chemo-therapy and radiation to drive the cancerous rot of huge, too-big-to-fail multinational corporations out, so we can have decent "mom and pop" medium sized, and even huge, but all-American companies.

1 infographic, 5 million jobs | Rebuild the Dream | A Hub for the American Dream Movement:

Go to Americans Elect and participate in getting Presidential nominations OUTSIDE the Republican/Democratic party processes. 

In 2012, Americans Elect (AE) will empower the people to nominate a competitive third ticket for President and Vice President through the first-ever Online Convention

Our political system is broken and our country is in trouble! The two political parties are so

polarized that Washington is paralyzed. Our elected officials continue a vicious cycle of mindless

partisanship, inaction on crucial issues and unsustainable dysfunction covered endlessly in the 24-

hour news cycle.

Although the Founding Fathers feared it, our two-party system has generally served us well in the

past, when leaders found common ground and did what was best for their country. The two

parties have always argued, but we’ve often been the better for it. History shows that, on

important things, in the end they have come together.

 Social Security:!!Even after President Franklin Roosevelt, a Democrat, elected in 1932,

a huge majority of Republicans in Congress voted for Social Security Act.

 Medicare:!!A majority of Republicans in Congress backed President Lyndon Johnson’s

Medicare program in 1965.

 Welfare Reform:!!After the Republicans gained control of Congress in 1994, a

majority of Democrats in both houses, and President Clinton, too, helped get a Welfare

Reform package enacted.

Now is the time for leadership that puts principled progress above petty politics and restores

cooperation, civility, and compromise. Leadership for genuine and sustainable change can only

come from the people.

Times are tough all over — High Country News

You wonder why the OCCUPY movement picks on those poor bankers and traders...

Here's some snippets from Jaime O'Neill's entry at High Country News.

Times are tough all over — High Country News:

NEWS - October 21, 2011By Jaime O'Neill

It's a crying shame how rich people are being treated these days. You hear a lot about their sufferings daily, especially if you read The Wall Street Journal. If black sharecroppers hadn't invented the blues down there on the Mississippi Delta a hundred years or so ago, hedge-fund managers and bank CEOs would be coming up with that genre about now. Instead of "Nobody Knows You When You're Down and Out," they'd be singing "Nobody Loves Me When I'm Up and Tax-Exempt." The blues ain't nothin' but a rich man gone sad.

...

Jeff Immelt was on 60 Minutes. Immelt's the head of GE, a company that managed to eliminate thousands of jobs under his stewardship. In his interview, he expressed consternation that more Americans weren't cheering on the success of corporations like his. He honestly couldn't understand why any patriotic American wouldn't wish his company well -- even as he was telling Leslie Stahl that corporations have no civic responsibility, nor any patriotic duty. Corporations answer, he said, to a higher authority -- their stockholders -- who must reap ever-higher profits.

...

So, while having no civic or patriotic requirements, corporations want unlimited "Free $peech" rights via campaign contributions to buy politicians with no documentation of where the money came from. 

I have old friends and family who firmly believe corporations are people, and that the problem is with the government/politicians who have just too much control over business.  

I just don't know what to say to them anymore.  I've stopped talking so much to those who are convinced of the above, brainwashed by blaring Faux News (GOP TV) from multiple TV's and their home page.  

They don't seem to mind my ignoring them, and I know I don't mind not having the angst of trying to maintain relationships and be nice to them. 

'via Blog this'

On Playing By The Rules – The Strange Success Of #OccupyWallStreet | www.nakedcapitalism.com | Readability

This is long, but DAMN!

You want to know why/how OWS came to be.

READ THIS!

David DeGraw of Amped Status is widely credited as the originator of “We are the 99%.”

By David Graeber, who is currently a Reader in Social Anthropology at Goldsmiths University London. Prior to that he was an associate professor of anthropology at Yale University. He is the author of ‘Debt: The First 5,000 Years’ which is available from Amazon.

On Playing By The Rules – The Strange Success Of #OccupyWallStreet | www.nakedcapitalism.com | Readability: "On Playing By The Rules – The Strange Success Of #OccupyWallStreet
by YVES SMITH • OCT. 19, 2011"

'via Blog this'

Lawrence Lessig: "There is a feeling today among too many Americans that we might not make it"

Lawrence Lessig on How Money Corrupts Congress - and How to Stop It | Julian Brookes | Rolling Stone

"There is a feeling today among too many Americans that we might not make it," Lawrence Lessig writes in the introduction to his new book Republic, Lost. "Not that the end is near or that doom is around the corner, but that a distinctly American feeling of inevitability, of greatness – culturally, economically, politically -- is gone."

I found this today, initially from an interview with Rachel Maddow, then the top Google of Lessig and his book took me to this Rolling Stone article. It crystalized thoughts I've been having. It's not that Politican A is more or less corrupted than Politician B. And A or B can be from either party. It's that the whole stinking mess is now thoroughly corrupted. Politicians are owned by the moneyed interests that fund their ever more expensive campaigns.

"We had the catastrophe. [the 2008 Wall Street collapse] And in our history every time we’ve had a major collapse like this, we’ve had a government with a strong enough backbone to step in and say “Okay, how can we fix the problem?” And many people thought that’s what was going to happen after the 2008 collapse. What instead we saw was that congress was overwhelmed by an army of lobbyists – twenty-five times the lobbyists defending bank interests as promoting reform! The product of that swarm of bank lobbyists was a reform package that has not addressed any of the fundamental issues that led to the bubble and the burst and the collapse of our economy. And that’s testimony to Wall Street’s extraordinary power over the left and the right. The president’s pandering to raise money on Wall St., the democrats pandering to raise money on Wall St., and the republicans of course smiling as Wall St. threatens to turn against the democratic party and favor the republicans because of the regulation of Wall St."

President Obama hasn't the will or standing to enact the meaningful reforms he campaigned on with CHANGE.

"I think the only effective reform is to get a system where the money that funds congress, the “funders,” are basically the people, as opposed to the funders being separated from the people. So systems that try to push for small-dollar funded elections and make those effective. I lay out my own voucher program that tries to do that, but the challenge isn’t as much to imagine the solution as much as it is to imagine the process to bring about the solution, given how entrenched the cancer is and how much the very people we need to reform the system depend upon the existing system. "

"I think that the real challenge is we’re not used to exercising power as citizens anymore. We’ve been passive listeners to television commercials for too long, and not really active producers of democracy. So we might be inspired by other countries around the world that are doing this right now, because I don’t yet see in our own will the ability to exercise that energy and demand the fundamental change that’s needed here. "

I think the #OccupyWallStreet movement may be a start forward, even if it is currently being dismissed by some as just a bunch of hippies. It is gaining across the board support - and I think there are a bunch of TeaPartiers that may find it closer to their original intent and complaint -- before their movement was co-opted by the same moneyed interests that has corrupted politics.

Time to get out of the house and into the streets. We're all part of the "99%" that's getting hosed by large corporate money. It's time we get a handle on them. Find your local movement at #OccupyTogether and contribute whatever energy inputs you can - time, money, food, signs, your voice.

Also look at AmericansElect.org - an alternative to the two party system for nominating 2012 presidential candidates.

THE GOAL OF AMERICANS ELECT is to nominate a presidential ticket that answers directly to voters—not the political system.

American voters are tired of politics as usual. They want leaders that will put their country before their party, and American interests before special interests. Leaders who will work together to develop fresh solutions to the serious challenges facing our country. We believe a secure, online nominating process will prove that America is ready for a competitive, nonpartisan ticket.

There's now as much difference between the rich and the poor as there was in 1929. The rich are killing their own golden goose -- us, the people that do the work -- with their Machiavellian attitudes and greed.

Get out of the house and into the street. Do something to help change the status quo while you still can.

Good Night, and Good Luck.

Lawrence Lessig on How Money Corrupts Congress - and How to Stop It | Julian Brookes | Rolling Stone:

'via Blog this'

That was my brother's death you were cheering, you a$$holes!

OK - I'm fed up and so angry with the part of the U.S. neo-conservative, uber-christian, taxed-enough, selfish, scared, low-information (stupid) citizenry. I can't express how dumbfounded I feel at the positions I hear taken by them - and when I express how idiotic and self-centered those positions are I keep upsetting friends and family, and it runs against Buddhist teachings to have such anger and attachments...so I'll let Susan's post have a go at it...

td

by Susan at 29

To all of those tea-jadist assholes at last night’s GOP debate: I don’t generally like to use profanity, but I fear that English is above your comprehension level, so in terms you might better understand, may God damn your worthless souls to hell for all eternity.

I had not planned on watching the debate because it conflicted with more important activities, like a new episode of The Closer. But even more importantly, it was being held at a time when I had committed to posting a diary for The Grieving Room. That diary was about the death of my brother from a very painful, uninsured struggle against metastatic cancer.

I had planned to write another separate diary about his journey through what passes for health care in a nation fixated on the profits that that care brings. In a nation where his death was cheered in front of a panel of politicians, none of whom had the decency to object (my emphasis - td). It is not yet a capital crime in this nation to be uninsured.

Steve worked 14 hours a day building beautiful guitars. Songs will not be sung because he died and will make no more. Thanks to the Republican Party’s theft of our national wealth, he barely eked out an existence with financial help from my husband and me. Money for health insurance? Don’t be ridiculous.

He was 63. He had to start Social Security early so he could afford to eat. He was too young for Medicare and too male for Medicaid. This nation does not recognize the years he spent working for others and making this economy grow, it only focused on the years he worked for himself, creating instruments of rare beauty.
....
His buddies came up with the $2000 a proctologist wanted to do an outpatient surgery. But the hospital wanted $20,000 for use of the room for the brief procedure because he was uninsured. Because the pain didn’t matter half as much as the profit.

For six weeks he suffered at home. You bastards, you would have liked to watch that, wouldn’t you?  Too bad there were no cameras to catch him as he collapsed when he tried to microwave his oatmeal. No microphones to catch his cries of pain or despair.
...
I was holding his hand as he drew his last breath. Have you ever seen a man die, you bastards? His fingertips turn grey, his breathing becomes shallow. His grip weakens. And he simply stops breathing.

And all of the laughter and love goes away with that last breath. The intelligence, the creative beauty, the caring compassion. They all disappear. But that probably wouldn’t matter to you since I doubt you would recognize any of it.

Love, compassion, beauty. Laughter, intelligence. And the ability to realize a dream. A dream that never included cruelty or indifference to the suffering of others.

And I cannot, for the life of me fathom why he is only ashes today and you are walking this earth.
But then, I am not the hero my brother was. He would have forgiven you. He would have understood the source of your fear that caused those cheers. I don’t want to.

I think you are scum.

______

Read her whole post here at Daily Kos:

A better way to connect solar, wind to the grid


The sun makes sidewalks hot enough to fry eggs, the wind blows hard enough to tear fences, but if solar and wind energy can't be converted to the 60-hertz alternating current (AC) standard in the United States, it can't be connected to the grid for use in homes or offices.

And these guys get to contribute all they want to political candidates...

Thom Hartmann notes:
According to a new report by the Wall Street Journal – corporate giants: General Electric – Caterpillar – Microsoft – Wal-Mart – Chevron – Cisco – Intel – Stanley Works – Merck – United Technologies – and Oracle…all American corporations – have fired 2.9 million American workers since 2001 – then hired more than 2.4 million workers overseas. 

This isn’t a coincidence – these guys actually have an annual conference about how to outsource American jobs more efficiently. Like in 2009 – when American corporations gathered together for the 2009 Strategic Outsourcing Conference – where 57% of executives there bragged that since the Great Bush Recession – they’ve increased the number of American jobs they’re shipping overseas. So here we have so-called American corporations – that are paying hardly any American taxes – and hiring hardly any American workers.

http://www.green960.com/cc-common/news/sections/newsarticle.html?feed=313154&article=8474852

REPUBLICANS vs. DEMOCRATS ON THE ECONOMY

May 9, 2005

By: Kevin Drum

http://www.washingtonmonthly.com/archives/individual/2005_05/006282.php


REPUBLICANS vs. DEMOCRATS ON THE ECONOMY....Did you know that Democratic presidents are better for the economy than Republicans?
...

Michael Kinsley ran the numbers in the LA Times and came to the same conclusion.

The results are simple: Democratic presidents have consistently higher economic growth and consistently lower unemployment than Republican presidents. If you add in a time lag, you get the same result. If you eliminate the best and worst presidents, you get the same result. If you take a look at other economic indicators, you get the same result. There's just no way around it: Democratic administrations are better for the economy than Republican administrations.

...

The dataset that delivers these results now covers more than 50 years, 10 administrations, and half a dozen different measures. That's a fair amount of data, and the results are awesomely consistent: Democrats do better no matter what you measure, how you measure it, or how you fiddle with the data.

...read the full article

http://www.washingtonmonthly.com/archives/individual/2005_05/006282.php

The Top 7 Corporate Tax Evaders | Wall St. Cheat Sheet

Here's some interesting info from U.S. Uncut, and the Wall Street Cheat Sheet:
td

We lose out on $100 billion in corporate tax revenue every year.

Big business has to learn to be responsible to the American taxpayers who make it possible for them to run an American business. If you earn income here, you should pay income taxes here.

Bank of America and numerous other corporations should pay their fair share in taxes so more people can keep working. I'd say lost jobs and less local spending are both anti-business, wouldn't you?"

The Top 7 Corporate Tax Evaders | Wall St. Cheat Sheet

7) Hewlett-Packard (HPQ) earned pretax income of $9.4 billion, but managed to keep their tax rate the same as someone earning less than $33,950 a year. Their trickery? Book profits at lower-tax foreign subsidiaries.

6) Verizon (VZ) has a lovely 10.5% tax rate. That’s better than a long term capital gain. Although Verizon earned $11.6 billion in pretax income, they have diverted much of their income through foreign wireless partner Vodafone.

5) Chevron (CVX) paid $8 billion in taxes on $18.5 billion in pretax income. So why did they make the list? Chevron only sent Uncle Sam a check for $200 million. The rest was paid abroad in lower-tax countries. I think they should change their logo colors from red, white and blue to something more representative of the Caymans.

4) We all know Ford (F) and other car makers have been skidding since the recession began. The struggling car maker still managed to earn $3 billion in pretax income. The beauty? Ford only plunked down $69 million in taxes — a 2.3% tax rate. Not bad considering all the other subsidies, bailouts, and cash for clunkers we’ve already given as gifts to one of the oldest car manufacturers in the world.

3) ExxonMobile (XOM) did pay $17.6 billion in taxes on $37.3 billion in pretax income. However, unlike Chevron, none of Exxon’s taxes were paid in the US. That’s funny … I think they sell a fair amount of profitable gasoline here.

2) Bank of American (BAC) earned pretax income of $4.4 billion in 2009, yet the financial services super market tallied up a $1.9 billion tax benefit. How could such a travesty occur? Bank of America scoured the tax code for deductions like $860 million in tax-exempt income, $670 million in low-income housing credits, and a $600 million loss on shares of foreign subsidiaries. Making matters worse for the US Treasury, Bank of America has a provision for credit losses of $49 billion which will carry over for a long, long time.

1) Like those who received an Earned Income Credit (EIC), GE (GE) actually made money on their tax filing this year! Although the industrial behemoth generated $10.3 billion in pretax income, they recorded a tax benefit of $1.1 billion. Don’t we all wish we could be in that bracket. But big tax breaks are nothing new for the 12th largest company in the world. In 2008, GE’s effective tax rate was 5.3% versus the marginal US corporate rate of 35%. In 2007, it was 15%. You’d think GE would at least pay a little more for paper and administration costs considering their tax filing to the IRS is an astounding 24,000 pages when printed out.


Bank of America Tax Avoidance
• BofA is the largest bank and 5th largest corporation in America
• BofA holds over $2.2 Trillion in assets
• BofA in 2009 earned a pretax income of $4.4 Billion.
• BofA received $45 Billion in taxpayer bailout funds in 2008 and 2009
• BofA paid ZERO federal income tax in 2009
• BofA actually received a $1.9 Billion tax benefit from the government in 2009
• BofA took deductions of $2.1 Billion in 2009
• BofA funneled its income through 115 foreign tax-haven subsidiaries
General Corporate Tax Avoidance
• Two-thirds of all US corporations do not pay federal income tax
• 25% of the biggest US corporations do not pay federal income tax
• US corporations avoid between $37 Billion and $100 Billion a year in US taxes
• President Obama has called for ending corporate tax loopholes in his campaign, the 2010 State of the Union and the 2011 State of the Union
• The “Stop Tax Haven Abuse Act” was not acted upon by the previous Congress.

Behind the Arab Revolt Is a Word We Dare Not Speak

I love my country, I just think it's been perverted into a corporatist monster
td

by: John Pilger, t r u t h o u t | News Analysis

Fascism is a difficult word, because it comes with an iconography that touches the Nazi nerve and is abused as propaganda against America's official enemies and to promote the West's foreign adventures with a moral vocabulary written in the struggle against Hitler. And yet, fascism and imperialism are twins. In the aftermath of World War II, those in the imperial states who had made respectable the racial and cultural superiority of "western civilization" found that Hitler and fascism had claimed the same, employing strikingly similar methods. Thereafter, the very notion of American imperialism was swept from the textbooks and popular culture of an imperial nation forged on the genocidal conquest of its native people, and a war on social justice and democracy became "US foreign policy."

As the Washington historian William Blum has documented, since 1945, the US has destroyed or subverted more than 50 governments, many of them democracies, and used mass murderers like Suharto, Mobutu and Pinochet to dominate by proxy. In the Middle East, every dictatorship and pseudo-monarchy has been sustained by America. In "Operation Cyclone," the CIA and MI6 secretly fostered and bankrolled Islamic extremism. The object was to smash or deter nationalism and democracy. The victims of this western state terrorism have been mostly Muslims. The courageous people gunned down last week in Bahrain and Libya, the latter a "priority UK market," according to Britain's official arms "procurers," join those children blown to bits in Gaza by the latest American F-16 aircraft.

The revolt in the Arab world is not merely against a resident dictator, but against a worldwide economic tyranny designed by the US Treasury and imposed by the US Agency for International Development (USAID), the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and the World Bank, which have ensured that rich countries like Egypt are reduced to vast sweatshops, with half the population earning less than $2 a day. The people's triumph in Cairo was the first blow against what Benito Mussolini called corporatism, a word that appears in his definition of fascism.

How did such extremism take hold in the liberal West? "It is necessary to destroy hope, idealism, solidarity, and concern for the poor and oppressed," observed Noam Chomsky a generation ago, and "to replace these dangerous feelings with self-centered egoism, a pervasive cynicism that holds that ... the state capitalist order with its inherent inequities and oppression is the best that can be achieved. In fact, a great international propaganda campaign is underway to convince people - particularly young people - that this not only is what they should feel but that it's what they do feel."

Like the European revolutions of 1848 and the uprising against Stalinism in 1989, the Arab revolt has rejected fear. An insurrection of suppressed ideas, hope and solidarity has begun. In the United States, where 45 percent of young African-Americans have no jobs and the top hedge fund managers are paid, on average, $1 billion a year, mass protests against cuts in services and jobs have spread to heartland states like Wisconsin. In Britain, the fastest-growing modern protest movement, UK Uncut, is about to take direct action against tax avoiders and rapacious banks. Something has changed that cannot be unchanged. The enemy has a name now.

Behind the Arab Revolt Is a Word We Dare Not Speak:

The War on Logic - NYTimes.com

"[T]he modern G.O.P. has been taken over by an ideology in which the suffering of the unfortunate isn’t a proper concern of government, and alleviating that suffering at taxpayer expense is immoral, never mind how little it costs."

The War on Logic - NYTimes.com:

Salvation Army not out in the light...where DOES your donation $$ go? No telling

I got an email fwd from a friend, as follows

Whenever I receive a phone call for donations, I always ask how much of my dollar will actually go to the intended precipitants.  In almost all cases, I am amazed at how little gets to them. 

You may have already received this or knew it.   Just a reminder.

As you open your pockets for yet another natural disaster or Christmas
season, keep these facts in mind when "donating".

Marsha J. Evans, President and CEO of the American Red Cross... Salary for
year  was $651,957 plus expenses. (That's $74.42 an hour for EVERY hour of
EVERY day.)

Brian Gallagher, President of the United Way receives a $375,000 base
salary, plus numerous expense benefits. (That's $42.80 an hour for EVERY
hour of EVERY day.)

UNICEF CEO receives $1,200,000 per year plus all expenses and a ROLLS ROYCE car where ever he goes and only cents of your dollar goes to the cause.
(That's $1369.86 an hour for EVERY hour of EVERY day.)

 The Salvation Army's Commissioner Todd Bassett receives a salary of only
$13,000 per year (plus housing) for managing this $2 billion dollar organization.

No further comment necessary except listen for the bells outside stores this Christmas. Please share this with everyone you can think of. 

Which inspired me to do some checking.  This kind of FWD: fw: fwd: email is almost always BS.


An average CEO compensation of about $150,000 is reported by the over 5,000 charities rated by Charity Navigator.
http://www.charitynavigator.org/

From Charity Navigator's current information:

• American Red Cross head Gail J. McGovern President, CEO makes $446,867 or 0.01% of Program Expenses (on the ground $$) which are 91.8% of total expenses.
• United Way Worldwide head Brian A. Gallagher, President, CEO makes $982,768 or 1.70% of Program Expenses which are 86.0% of total expenses.
• United States fund for Unicef head Caryl M. Stern, President, CEO makes $419,832 which is 0.08% of Program Expenses which are 91.8% of total expenses.
• Salvation Army - Charity Navigator notes: Many religious organizations are exempt under Internal Revenue Code from filing the Form 990. As a result, we lack sufficient data to evaluate their financial health.

And another charity rating organization, CharityWatch notes:
http://www.charitywatch.org/articles/salvarmy.html

"After repeated requests from AIP, The Salvation Army has prepared consolidated audited financial statements of its 9,347 centers of operation that provide counseling, shelter and other assistance to nearly 27 million people. AIP is particularly pleased with this development since The Salvation Army, unlike most other major charities, is not required to file public information because it is considered by the IRS and state authorities to be a church. These statements show over $2 billion in income and $1.6 billion in expenses for fiscal 1996."

I don't know if those are on the ground Program Expenses, or if I should take that to mean something like 75% for internal expenses, and 25% for on the ground. 

also from CharityWatch, you

"should be aware that the organization lacks an independent governing board. AIP encourages all religious and secular nonprofit organizations to demonstrate good governance by electing an outside board of directors that consists predominately of members who do not receive compensation or other financial benefits from the organization that they are governing. Otherwise, nonprofit directors may be tempted to place their own interests over the best interests of the organization. The absence of outside directors at any nonprofit could also lead to serious problems being swept under the rug and away from public scrutiny.

The Salvation Army has a national advisory board and each local chapter has its own advisory board. Although these advisory boards do not have governing powers, according to the Lieutenant Colonel Tom Jones, Community Relations and Development Secretary of The Salvation Army, they do carry moral weight or suasion. Nonprofit advisory boards can offer advice to charity employees but do not have the authority to set organizational policy, hire or fire the executive director, approve the audit or budget, or perform other functions of a governing board.

The Commissioners’ Conference is the governing board of The Salvation Army USA. It consists of ten Salvation Army officers, who are all ordained ministers: the National Commander, Robert A. Watson, four territorial Commanders, and the chief national and four chief territorial Secretaries. Even though the ten Conference members are paid by the Salvation Army and work for the group full time, Lt. Col. Jones says, “technically they are not employees but are self employed and work full time for The Salvation Army.” "

 
 
And it seems like a few other people have some significant issues with the insular Salvation Army:
http://salvationarmykroccenterprotest.com/information.php

http://exposingthearmy.blogspot.com/2009/01/exposing-army.html#comments

What do you think?

td