I like the symmetry of our group name being WE THE PEOPLE and our slogan being CORPORATIONS ARE NOT PEOPLE.

What do you think about getting a story in the Emerald?

Fergus

Good meeting last night. I'm glad Marion and I were able to join you.

The UO chapter of OSPIRG is under attack by a Tea Party-type energy in student government, which has withdrawn their funding. OSPIRG is fighting for its life. Corporate Personhood could be the issue which brings them back into relevance on campus. Perhaps we could collaborate with them and co-sponsor a weekly film series regarding corporate personhood in the Ben Linder room- they've already begun it by showing The Corporation.

I thnk I was wrong about Anne Aiken. She would make a great speaker for us.

How about making one of our three Town Hall meetings a showing of the new Citizens United film at Cozmic Pizza? It's a great space for breaking out into discussion groups.

blessings

Ofer Raban is a constitutional lawyer at UO. He recently presented on Citizens United in an academic setting, and is examining our website and considering whether he might fit us into his busy schedule before traveling in May. Here's a link to his vita:

http://www.law.uoregon.edu/faculty/ofer/

We met with David Cobb for a while yesterday. It was interesting. If you missed the meeting you can email me for a link to the audio.

I think our spelling out all the communities' legal challenges which were rebuffed with "you don't have the right to take care of your community" should be the first information we share in our educational campaign, and then we should present the history of corporate personhood/corporate rule.

I am going to the Kelly Middle school demonstration today...please join us! If someone has the petition and can bring it that would be great! I'll see if I can print some of the handouts we used for PIELC.

what time?


Kelly Middle School. 850 Howard Avenue, Eugene, OR 97404. (541) 790-4740.

I think I heard on the news that it is at 4:00...

Please upkoad Flyers, Forms and Petitions to the folder Flyers, Forms and Petitions or email them to me so I can upload them.

http://www.celdf.org/democracy-school-on-line---part-i

legal use by state then communities are banned from prohibiting it
we must appeal state permit

around minute 18

Apparently corporate rights may have an upside - although I am not sure how this will end up being decided in litigation. The ACLU in Florida is suggesting that for a woman to protect her body, she should incorporate her uterus. http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/42440533/ns/health-womens_health/

Why did the Paul Cienfuegos Event page become so hard to find? Not long ago, it was obvious on the Navigator. Now I have to go to the index of all of the pages.

Regarding our table at Stan's water conference, it would be nice to have some numbers about how much more money was spent following Citizens United. Also, we could talk about Obama's decision to support the Bush tax cuts compared to the social service cuts which he's signed off on. Could there be a connection...?

The following are some data that may be of interest. We often hear from conservatives that raising taxes on the wealthy will not provide that much money, since there just are not that many people who are wealthy. Here are some facts relating to this notion *:

1. Simply by taxing capital gains at the same rate as earned income for those making more than $10,000,000 per year (the top 0.02%), we could raise more than the $39 billion that Republicans forced Democrats to cut from the rest of this year's budget.

2. If we eliminated the Bush tax cuts for those making over $200,000 per year, we could raise $100 billion. By also taxing capital gains at the rate of earned income, again only for those making over $200,000 per year, we could get another $170 billion. This $270 billion is well over twice the cuts that Republicans wish to make in spending for the year. We could cut the deficit by as much as the Republican plan and raise discretionary spending on everything but "defense" and "security" by more than 30% with this tax revenue.

3. Those making over $200,000 per year represent 4% of the taxpayers, make over 40% of the income, and pay 52% of taxes.

4. Those making over $1,500,000 per year represent 0.2% of the taxpayers, make 17.6% of the income, and pay 23% of taxes.

5. Those making over $10,000,000 represent 0.02% of the taxpayers, make 8.2% of the income, and pay 9.8% of taxes. Their tax rate is lower than those making between $500,000 and $10,000,000.

6. Wealth is substantially more skewed. The top 400 individuals have more wealth than the bottom 50% (over 150,000,000 people).

* The data are calculated from detailed reports from the IRS (for the year 2007, the latest year for which detailed reports are available). The percentages relate to tax returns, not individuals.

Thiis is Charlie's original work. He cited the source if his data. Good stuff!

The tax data for year 2007 was from http://www.irs.gov/taxstats/indtaxstats/article/0,,id=129270,00.html
I forget which of the many available tables that I used, but I will try to get more specific later.

Tax rates for various years were found at http://www.taxfoundation.org/publications/show/151.html

The IRS table breaks down income, taxes, & number of returns by income categories, and the tax paid in each income category is broken down by marginal rate. One can find a column for the 15% capital gains rate for each income category. By putting these data together, and doing some calculations in a spreadsheet, I got the data that I presented above.

Note that the data that I presented is only for income tax data. It does not include social security taxes and medicare/medicaid taxes. I will try to combine this information when I get a chance. This will not affect points 1 & 2. It will make the data for % of total taxes paid in 3, 4, & 5 less - wealthy individuals will pay substantially less % of total taxes than what I stated.

I will try to put together sources for the wealth distribution data (point 6) also. It was from wealth distribution data published by the federal reserve, combined with (I think) Forbes list of the net worth of the wealthiest people.

very impressive, Charlie. Thank you very much -- we can do a lot with that data -- flyers, charts, posters, and just talking with people.

Deconstructing the corporate-financier oligarchy:

http://landdestroyer.blogspot.com/2011/03/naming-names-your-real-government.html

Just finished watching "Jesus Camp" an evangelical christian documentary that focuses on indoctrinating young kids into a bullshit brainwash. They are against abortion, pro-Bush and helped Alito into the Supreme Court. I think they are a force to be reckoned with. They have a lot of energy, base their teachings from the bible (as the word of God) and try to cram Jesus as the only way to salvation. They are anti-evolution (creationists). I think we should approach them calmly look them in the eye and if we believe in God (I do) tell them its not anthropomorphic but we believe in an organizational intelligence that permeates the world. The world was created in millions of years (not 7) and there is a spiritual component to evolution (just the fact that atoms in all their complexity exist is proof) I think that what I believe (science and buddhism) has enough overlap to make a relation possible. Dave Ivan Piccioni