Small Businesses Not So Small

Keith Olbermann had a great segment on his program last night:

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/32545640

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It seems that The Chicago Tribune, the billionaire Koch Brothers and multi-billion dollar Bechtel Corporation are considered small businesses under the definition being used by the Republicans.

All this in their fevered campaign to try to continue the gravy train for the rich.

Facts:

• Only 3% of businesses would be affected by ending the tax breaks for the rich.
• The definition of “small business” used by Republicans have up to 100 owners — no consideration of income, number of employees or payroll is considered.
• S-Corporations, as defined by Wikipedia, do not pay any federal income taxes. Instead, the corporation’s income or losses are divided among and passed through to its shareholders. The shareholders must then report the income or loss on their own individual income tax returns.
• The richer you are, the more likely you are to file on your taxes this way in what are also called pass-through companies.
• There are 15,000 S-Corps earning an average of $150 million a year.
• There are 18,000 S-Corps Partnerships that pull in $137 million annually.
• 750,000 businesses in total would see any change in their tax share.

In other words, multimillionaires own dozens, hundreds or thousands of these S-Corporations.

The point: Real, actual small businesses will not be harmed by letting the wealthy pay their fair share of taxes.

That’s just the lie the Republicans and their Blue Dog Democrat allies are pushing to make you believe that your neighbor’s business  is going to go under by the oppressive tax burden.

It’s just not true.

-Chris

NOT A Christian Nation

Image via Wikipedia

It keeps coming back from the dead, this idea that America was founded as a Christian nation.

All you have to do is ignore much of the Constitution, the back and forth in the Federalist Papers and the context of religious intolerance that made many of the founders flee Europe.

James Rudin, a rabbi writing for the Religious News Service, outlines the history of this country and why it is certainly NOT a Christian nation in his article (posted on the Huffington Post last week).

“The Myth of a Christian Nation”

Rudin also notes a little mentioned event in the early history of the nation that may have been the tipping point for how religion would be handled in the Constitution.

In 1785 Virginia, governor Patrick Henry proposed a tax on residents to pay for churches.

A variety of public figures, including Thomas Jefferson and James Madison allied to defeat the measure with the introduction and passage the next year of Jefferson’s Statute of Religious Freedom.

The statute reads in part:

” No man shall be compelled to frequent or support any religious worship, place, or ministry whatsoever … nor shall otherwise suffer on account of his religious opinions or belief; but that all men shall be free to profess, and by argument to maintain, their opinion in matters of religion, and that the same shall in no wise diminish, enlarge, or affect their civil capacities.”

Interestingly, Jefferson later penned these words in a much-talked about, but apparently seldom read document:

Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.

-Chris