Wealthiest pay declining share of their incomes in taxes

By David Cay Johnston

The richest Americans are paying a declining share of their incomes in taxes, even as their incomes grow more rapidly than everyone else’s, according to data that the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) gave a Republican member of Congress.

The 1998 incomes, after taxes, of the top 1 percent of taxpayers increased at more than three times the rate of the bottom 90 percent, according to an analysis of this data by the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, a nonprofit research organization in Washington that seeks to advance the interests of the poor.

Over a longer period, from 1989 to 1998, the incomes of the richest 1 percent, adjusted for inflation, grew about eight times as fast. But the share of their income they paid in federal taxes in 1998 was at its lowest level since 1992, the year before Congress added two higher tax brackets that apply only to top earners.

This group, whose 1998 gross income averaged $816,189, paid 27.1 cents of each dollar earned in federal income taxes, down from 27.9 cents in 1997 and 28.9 cents in 1996.

These figures come from data the IRS gave to Representative Jim Saxton, a New Jersey Republican and chairman of the Congressional Joint Economic Committee.

For the other 99 percent of Americans, the share of income going to taxes was nearly unchanged, at 11.5 percent of income in 1998 and 1996 and 11.7 percent in 1997.

Christopher Frenze, the committee executive director, said the declining average tax rate for the top 1 percent reflected the booming stock market, and the reduction in long- term capital gains tax rates that began in 1997. The top rate is now 20 percent, down from 28 percent in 1996.

About a third of all long-term capital gains taxes are paid by fewer than 13,000 taxpayers each year.

With data available only through 1998, it was unclear whether the income gains and tax savings for the wealthy have continued during the stock market’s recent retreat.

Opponents of President Bush’s proposed $1.6 trillion tax cut say that most of the breaks would go to the rich. Mr. Bush has said that the benefits would be widely distributed.

In a report to be issued today, the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities says that Mr. Bush’s plan will further increase the share of after- tax income going to the wealthy. That is because the top 1 percent would get 40 percent of the tax breaks, more than their 18.5 percent share of income taxes paid.

“It is extremely interesting that the largest income gains were among the portion of the population whose marginal tax rates were raised in the 1990’s,” said Isaac Shapiro, a policy analyst at the center. “This suggests that higher marginal tax rates have not been a barrier to economic activity and risk-taking activity within this group.”

Backers of Mr. Bush’s plan say that high marginal tax rates reduce wealth creation by discouraging investment, an effect that has serious long-term economic consequences.

The center’s analysis showed that the top 1 percent of taxpayers had an average after-tax income of $594,814 in 1998, up $69,000, or 13.1 percent, over 1997. The bottom 90 percent — everyone who made less than $83,220 in 1998 — saw their average income rise by $984 from 1997, just 3.9 percent.

From 1989 to 1998 the incomes of the top 1 percent, adjusted for inflation, grew by 40.4 percent, nearly eight times the 5.2 percent increase of the bottom 90 percent.

As a result, the top 1 percent earned 15.7 cents of every dollar of personal income in 1998, up from 14.7 cents in 1997 and 12.5 cents in 1989, the IRS data show. Those near the top — on the 90th through 99th rungs of the income ladder — saw their incomes rise at less than half the rate of the top 1 percent from 1989 through 1998, yet their tax burden increased by a percentage point.

Source: The New York Times

Utah parents rally against child removal program

By Ashley Estes

Salt Lake City, Utah, Feb. 24— Calling their children “hostages” of the state’s child protection system, about 50 parents held an emotional rally in the Capitol Rotunda and demanded Utah officials send the children home.

“These are kids who have never been harmed by their parents,” said Anne Sherry of the group JEDI (Justice, Economic Dignity and Independence) for Women. The children were removed, in many cases, she said, because their families are poor or homeless and can’t pay for day care or doctors.

But Division of Child and Family Services officials disputed parents’ claims, saying their ultimate goal is keeping families together, not tearing them apart.

“The word ‘hostage’ is inflammatory and it’s way too strong,” said Ken Patterson, division director. “We do believe that it’s very painful for parents to lose their children, even for a short time.”

Holding signs saying “Stop the war on the poor” and “Utah will pay anybody to care for your children but you,” group members demanded the release of 315 children from state custody by March 15. They also called on Gov. Mike Leavitt to personally review each of the thousands of cases in the system.

The division does not remove children simply because their families are poor, Patterson said. “But we would recognize that poverty sometimes creates hardships for families — housing, employment, domestic violence issues.”

Several parents said they followed the division’s treatment plans to the letter, but their children still haven’t been returned to them.

Jessie Hess, 15, said he and his sisters were “kidnapped” from their school three years ago and he was “promised things if I spoke against my parents.”

Patterson said of the more than 8,000 cases of abuse or neglect substantiated last year, only 1,144 children were removed from their parents.

Utah ranks fifth lowest in the nation in the number of children in out-of-home care, he said. “Only 13 percent of the time do we remove the children.”

Source: The Salt Lake Tribune

Alaskan party struggles for independence

By Jon Dougherty

Feb.25— They’re “not a bunch of kooks like the Montana Freemen” and are not interested in armed revolt against the current authority of Washington, DC, but most of the 20,000-plus members of the Alaskan Independence Party nonetheless want eventual independence from the United States in some form or another.

At a bare minimum, party officials say, members want what they say would be a “legal vote” to decide the state’s future -- something they insist never happened when Alaska formally became a state in 1958. And, in some districts anyway, the party has ample support to perhaps someday achieve its goal; in some precincts, AIP members comprise nearly 25 percent of total registered voters.

Out of a small headquarters office in Fairbanks, leaders of the party - which began as a movement with founder Joe Vogler in the early 1970s but became recognized as a political party in 1984 - advocate a smaller-government approach with little interference from either a national or state government.

Advocating an “Alaska First” policy focused around the land and resource development, the AIP has since emerged as one of the most significant state-level third parties operating in the late 20th century, according to the California Political Science Encyclopedia.

Vogler, who ran for governor three times between 1974 and 1986, formed Alaskans for Independence in 1978 in order to promote the idea of an “Independent Nation of Alaska.” He received 4,770 votes and 5 percent of the electorate as an independent in the 1974 election - a race ultimately decided by less than 300 votes.

Since Alaskans for Independence was non-partisan and instead more oriented towards issue advocacy, Vogler later transformed the organization into the AIP so it could support the more political and campaign-related aspects of the Alaskan independence movement and his candidacies for governor.

In 1986, his candidacy managed to secure more than 10,000 votes -- or 5.6 percent of the total votes cast -- thus enabling AIP to retain “official party” status in Alaska alongside the traditional Democrat and Republican parties.

Vogler, a former gold miner and non-practicing attorney, served as the party’s chairman from its 1986 birth until his death in 1993. The party’s current chairman is Mark Chryson of Wasilla.

“The party is advocating a legal and legitimate plebiscite” -- or vote -- Chryson told WorldNetDaily, because “in 1958, there was a statehood vote,” but the question asked of voters was not in line with US treaties with the United Nations and international law.

“The question, basically, was, ‘Shall the statehood act be adopted, yes or no?’” Chryson said. “But the 1947 United Nations charter - and I’m no fan of the United Nations, however, that is a treaty the US signed - states that Alaska is a non-self-governing land.”

As such, he said, “we were entitled to have a vote on self-government.” Those choices “include independence, territorial status, remain a state or become a separate, independent nation. The 1958 vote had just two choices, not the four.”

That vote was “also a violation of international law, because US military personnel” stationed in Alaska at the time “were permitted to vote, encouraged to vote and told how to vote.” Under the law, Chryson said, “since they were not local residents, they shouldn’t have been allowed.”

Ironically, he said, in Latvia and Lithuania, when those nations were allowed to vote for independence following the breakup of the former Soviet Union, “they followed international law and the occupational [Soviet] forces were not allowed to vote.”

Also, most Alaskan natives, or indigenous peoples, in 1958 did not speak English, and “under law, elections are supposed to be held in the native tongue of the people living in a region,” Chryson said.

“The 1958 vote, however, was in English only. And, many of the indigenous peoples could neither read the ballots nor were permitted to vote at all” - a fact he said he has verified with several indigenous persons who were of legal voting age then and are still living in Alaska today.

Chryson said he believes if Alaskans were allowed “a proper vote,” most would support some form of separation from Washington, DC.

The state has 470,000 registered voters, he says, and statistically speaking, the AIP is the “largest third party in the nation” because AIP claims “more than 5 percent of voters in the entire state” — a fact he said was “verified by the University of California-Berkeley” in a recent study.

Source: World Net Daily: www.worldnetdaily.com

Prisons filled during Clinton years

By Karen Gullo

Washington, DC, Feb. 18— More Americans went to prison or jail during the Clinton administration than during any past administration, the result of get-tough policies that led to more prisons, more police officers and longer sentences, a criminal justice think tank reports.

During President Clinton’s eight years in office, 673,000 people were sent to state and federal prisons and jails, compared with 343,000 during President Bush’s single term and 448,000 in President Reagan’s two terms, says a study by the Justice Policy Institute, an arm of The Center on Juvenile and Criminal Justice.

The center advocates more balance between incarceration and treatment for criminals.

The incarceration rate at the end of the Clinton administration was 476 per 100,000 citizens, versus 332 per 100,000 at the end of Bush’s term and 247 per 100,000 at the end of Reagan’s administration, the study said.

Incarceration rates for blacks increased to 3,620 per 100,000 from around 3,000 per 100,000 people during Clinton’s two terms.

Two million people are behind bars and 4.5 million are on probation and parole, according to the study, which is based on Justice Department figures and estimates from 1993 to 2000.

The study blamed the surge in prisoners on Clinton administration initiatives that provided more money to states for prisons, police officers and crime prevention programs. The 1994 crime bill, which gave $30 billion to states, was a major factor, said Vincent Schiraldi, president of the Justice Policy Institute. Other factors included tougher sentencing and the abolition of parole, he said.

Republicans are thought to have more punitive crime policies than Democrats, but the opposite was true during the Clinton administration, Schiraldi said.

“President Clinton stole the show from the ‘tough on crime’ Republicans,’’ he said.

Allen Beck, chief of corrections statistics at the Bureau of Justice Statistics, disputed the notion that Clinton administration crime initiatives were the prime reason for the burgeoning prison population.

He said many states had already begun tough crime prevention programs before Clinton came to office and tougher sentencing guidelines for federal drug offenders began in the late 1980s.

Moreover, Beck said, people are staying in jail longer because parole boards are not releasing prisoners.

Source: Associated Press

GOP opens battle for Bush’s legitimacy

Feb. 26— The Republican leadership has grasped what could be the defining political issue of the next four years – establishing George W. Bush’s legitimacy – even as many leading Democrats have gone silent about his election, apparently in their elusive search for bipartisan peace.

As Bush continues to staff his administration with hard-line conservatives and presses his conservative political agenda, the national GOP has begun a behind-the-scenes political battle aimed at discrediting the few remaining Democratic voices daring to question the legitimacy of Bush’s election.

In a telling fundraising e-mail, the National Republican Senatorial Committee cast Bush as the victim of an unjust smear campaign carried out by Democrats who still think that Bush should have gained his legitimacy the old-fashioned way – through the counting of votes.

Specifically, the NRSC e-mail targeted Democratic National Chairman Terence McAuliffe for continuing to challenge the outcome of the Florida election. The e-mail accused McAuliffe of “openly undermining the legitimacy of George W. Bush’s presidency” and sought contributions to assure that Republicans will retain control of Congress. [Washington Post, Feb. 25, 2001]

McAuliffe has been one of the few leading Democrats to continue voicing outrage at how Bush stopped the counting of votes in Florida through the intervention of five conservatives on the US Supreme Court. McAuliffe has argued that Vice President Gore would have been the likely winner if all the votes had been counted.

Source: www.Consortiumnews.com

ELF claims responsibility for torching biotech seeds

Visalia, California, Feb. 25— The underground Earth Liberation Front (ELF) has officially claimed responsibility for a fire at the Delta & Pine Land Co. Research cotton gin in Visalia, California on February 20, 2001.

D&PL are responsible for the Monsanto Corporation’s controversial terminator seed technology. This program renders seeds sterile forcing farmers to purchase seeds annually from Monsanto. These seeds also have been proven to pass sterile genes onto wild plants through cross-pollination, threatening biodiversity.

A communique sent by the ELF stated, “We chose this warehouse because it contained massive quantities of transgenic cotton seed in storage. But now, this seed will no longer exist to contaminate the environment, enrich a sick corporation, or contribute to its warped research programs.”

The ELF is an international anonymous organization that uses direct action in the form of economic sabotage to stop what they see as being the systematic exploitation and destruction of the natural environment. Since 1997, in the United States alone, the ELF have caused nearly $40 million in damages.

The communique continued, “D&PL continues to pursue its ‘Terminator technology’ despite global opposition to the genetic engineering of plants to produce sterile seeds. Engineering a suicide sequence into the plant world is the most dangerous new technology since nuclear power and needs to be stopped.”

The communique finished by stating, “We are the burning rage of a dying planet. Earth Liberation Front (ELF). ...Terminate D&PL, cremate Monsanto, burn biotechnology...”

Source: North American Earth Liberation Front Press Office: www.earthliberationfront.com

Energy bill is multi-billion dollar payday for industry, group says

Washington, DC, Feb. 26— Friends of the Earth (FoE) sharply criticized the Senate Republicans’ energy bill today as being a gigantic payday for fossil fuel and nuclear industries, citing $400 million in subsidies the first year that would balloon to more than $10 billion over 10 years. The bill, introduced by Sen. Frank Murkowski of Alaska, also targets the sensitive Arctic National Wildlife Refuge (ANWR) for drilling.

“This is a pollution maximization bill,” said FoE president Brent Blackwelder. “Opening the Arctic Refuge to drilling is the most prominent outrage, but the bill is also a gravy train for the dirtiest industries, granting huge subsidies, tax breaks and regulatory exemptions.”

“This is just another blank check to add to the $2.6 billion the fossil fuel and nuclear energy industries get from American tax payers every year,” said Blackwelder. “Fifty years and more than $100 billion of subsidies to fossil fuels and nuclear power have led us to where we are now - energy companies with windfall profits and consumers out in the cold.”

FoE notes that the tax code is already riddled with special exemptions and loopholes, citing the percentage depletion allowance of $600 million, annually intangible drilling costs for a tidy $480 million, and a “non-conventional fuels” production credit for $1.4 billion a year. The group says that tax subsidies for the oil and gas industry cost about $2.6 billion each year.

“The answer to the current energy crisis is the same it has always been — reduce our use of energy through greater efficiency and invest in clean, renewable energy sources,” said Blackwelder.