January 12, 2015 – RI Future

January 12, 2015January 14, 2015

Rep. Regunberg supports ‘intelligently-structured parking lot tax’

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A proposed parking tax has cleared an important hurtle. Providence legislator Aaron Regunberg is speaking up for an “intelligently structured parking lot tax.”

Rep. Regunberg, who won the 4th District (East Side of Providence) with 83% of the vote, sent this statement to RI Future:

It is important for economic development, sustainability, and quality of life that our city create incentives that will lead to fewer cars on the road. Most residents familiar with Providence will recognize the incredibly negative impact on downtown of our far-too-many surface parking lots. We know the economic benefits that come with higher density land use, yet our current system incentivizes the spread of these unproductive developments which hurt pedestrian byways, impact our small businesses, and mar our city’s beauty. I believe an intelligently-structured parking lot tax could spur higher-density development and help build a more sustainable community.

Regunberg notes the importance of emphasizing the “lot” part of the tax.

A parking tax would charge a fee to surface lots in the city, and 100 percent of that fee would then be returned to residents and businesses as a tax cut. The exact type of tax cut is up for debate, but I’ve suggested reductions to property taxes targeted to areas nearest the lots.

Because the city’s tax structure offers lower taxes to parking lot owners than other businesses, owners are disincentized to redevelop lots, and building owners can even be encouraged by the tax code to knock down buildings for more parking lots. This creates a death-spiral for the city.

Ethan Gyles, Regunberg’s general election opponent who took 17% of votes, has also indicated support for a parking tax in December 8th Tweet, saying that he was behind the measure so long as it “is written such that the city must lower other regressive taxes” in its place.

January 12, 2015January 12, 2015

Whitehouse to introduce progressive tax trifecta

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Senator Sheldon Whitehouse plans to introduce a trifecta of progressive tax bills this session including the Buffett Rule bill, the Offshore Prevention Act and the Stop Tax Haven Abuse Act, he told reporters at his Providence office Monday.

“I think the pressure is on to do something on tax reform,” Whitehouse said. “Now that the Republicans are in the majority they need to prove to the American people they can govern, that they are not just a bomb-throwing obstructive minority, so that changes their motivation on something like tax reform.”

Whitehouse has introduced the first two bills before. He inherits the third piece of legislation from former Michigan Senator Carl Levin the so-called “Stop Tax Haven Abuse Act” that would prevent corporations from shielding profits from tax responsibility.

“It would help us here in Rhode Island because here’s CVS, which like most of the retail industry pays the full freight, they pay the full 35 percent tax rate,” explained Whitehouse. “Meanwhile here’s Carnival Cruise Lines pays virtually zero because they pretend they exist only in offshore Caribbean destinations.”

The three bills would net more than $300 billion in ten years, Whitehouse said.

The Buffett Rule bill, or the Paying A Fair Share Act, would tax at 30 percent all annual income over $2 million and would net $70 million over ten years of missing revenue for the American people. The Offshore Prevention Act would end the corporate practice of deferring tax payments when a company moves jobs overseas and would net $20 million in 10 years. The Stop Tax Haven Abuse Act would net $220 billion over 10 years and prevents corporations from creating overseas tax shelters.

Despite the GOP’s reluctance to help level the tax-paying field, Whitehouse thinks he’s in a good position because he envisions Republicans having to make some concessions with Democrats if they hope to get tax legislation passed this year.

“I don’t think they have 60 votes for their plan and I’m sure they don’t have 67 votes for their plan so if they want to actually have something that gets signed into law by the president and actually changes the tax code they are going to have to work with Democrats,” he said.

Whitehouse handed out this one-pager to reporters to explain the three bills.

Here’s the contents:

THE PROBLEM

Right now America’s tax code is riddled with costly loopholes that benefit some of the highest earners and largest corporations. These special interest provisions have created two sets of tax rules: one for middle-class families and small businesses, and one for wealthy interests and multi-national corporations. With President Obama and Republican Leaders in Congress indicating that they plan to make tax reform a priority in the 114th Congress, Senator Sheldon Whitehouse is introducing a package of bills that would make the current system fairer while also raising billions of dollars in new revenue. This revenue could provide substantial resources for investments in infrastructure and education, or could serve as a fairer way to fund new Republican initiatives than cuts to benefits that people rely on.

SHELDON’S PLAN

Implement the Buffett Rule.

Thanks to a number of tax loopholes, America’s top earners often pay a lower effective tax rate than middle-class workers. Billionaire investor Warren Buffett has famously lamented he pays a lower tax rate than his secretary.

Senator Whitehouse’s Paying a Fair Share Act would require multi-million-dollar earners to pay a minimum 30 percent effective federal tax rate, regardless of the number of special credits, deduction, and rates they claim.

The bill would generate an estimated $71 billion over ten years.

End tax giveaway for sending jobs offshore.

Currently, U.S. companies that manufacture goods abroad for sale here at home are allowed to defer payment of federal income tax – waiting to pay taxes on foreign income in years that minimize their tax liability.

Senator Whitehouse’s Offshoring Prevention Act would require companies that send factories and jobs overseas to play by the same rules as ones supporting jobs in the U.S., removing an offshoring incentive and helping local businesses compete.

The bill would generate an estimated $19.5 billion in revenue over ten years.

Close loopholes that allow multi-national corporations to avoid taxes.

Some of America’s biggest corporations are able to dramatically reduce their taxes by funneling assets and profits through complex networks of offshore corporations.

The Stop Tax Haven Abuse Act, which was originally championed by former-Senator Carl Levin, closes these loopholes and requires large multinational corporations to pay a fair share in taxes.

The bill would generate at least $220 billion in revenue over ten years.

January 12, 2015

Vigil for Charlie Hebdo attacks outside the ProJo offices

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About 60 people gathered outside the Providence Journal offices in Providence Sunday to hold a vigil for those killed in last week’s Charlie Hebdo terror attacks in France in which fundamentalist Muslim gunmen indiscriminately murdered cartoonists and police officers. The vigil was organized by the Alliance Française de Providence, RI in cooperation with Muslim supporters and attended by many who have been touched by the tragedy, including local artists.

The Providence Journal was chosen as the site of the vigil because organizers saw the nearly 200 year old newspaper as a strong symbol for the freedom of the press, a value shared by France and the United States.

I spoke with Dominique Gregoire, president of the local Alliance Française about the attacks, the response both here and internationally and about Charlie Hebdo.

Gregoire put the event into perspective when he told me, “This is just as if a commando came onto the set of Saturday Night Live and killed Amy Poehler and people like that.”

Balancing words and body: Je suis Charlie

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Being a Catholic school student in the sixties was religion in interesting times.

Women may remember a scramble to hide our uncovered heads from God, who did not want to look down from Heaven and see that a seven-year-old had forgotten her beret. The nuns, who wore medieval veils that would win approval from all but the most fundamentalist Ayatollahs, would chew us out before grabbing a Kleenex and a bobby pin. Heads decently covered we could proceed into the holy place. Meanwhile, our moms were testing the limits by trading their decent Sunday hats for a mantilla- a lace scarf, or even a daring lace doily that hid nothing of their offending feminine hair.

Although Warwick was probably not swarming with heretics we were not to relax our vigilance. The nuns drilled us with the lives of the saints, most of whom did not die easy. We could never measure up to their martyrdom or even comprehend why both oppressors and oppressed hung life and death on an affirmation of faith.

In the center of worship was the consecrated host. The host was a thin wafer of wheat flour, similar to a candy we bought at the penny store called ‘Flying Saucers’, but minus the food coloring and little balls of sugar inside, though it would melt in your mouth the same way. Once the priest said the words it became the physical Body of Christ. The nuns told us of a martyr priest who ran into a burning church to save the Body of Christ at the cost of his own poor body. This was how we were to set priorities.

While the older nuns had to make their life choices in the Great Depression, the younger nuns were now faced with calls for liberation from the Pope to the streets. If you craved law and order you might find yourself marching with segregationists and warmongers. It was not only a war of words, it was a time when our president was shot and murdered in broad daylight at a civic event. Other terrible assassinations preceded this crime and would follow. Willing or not, people suffered martyrdom for speaking their truth.

How do you balance the Word and the Flesh?

No social freedom exists outside society, and no virtue is absolute. The quaint fears of the nuns were not completely unfounded. There was a time when Catholics were a persecuted minority in the US, and even in the sixties the Klan included Catholics on their enemies list. This may have been the New Frontier, but many citizens in the great Melting Pot bore the scars of history.

How do we reconcile our great principle of freedom of expression with the reality that words can affront and even harm? That one person’s joke is another person’s violation? That there’s such a thing as ‘fighting words’?

Although I am long ex-Catholic, I find an answer in the metaphor of the body and blood. The body and blood of another human being is holy and not to be violated for imagined or real offense. The sacred heart beats in all of us and is not to be stopped in defense of some god or principle.

In fact, as the nuns taught us, suffering only gives validation to those who sacrificed. Thousands who never heard of Charlie Hebdo now march in the streets, because some men and women who went to work earned a martyr’s crown. Now the daily courage they showed in keeping on in the face of threats is known to the world. Their loss is not only felt by their friends and families, but by all who live by words and art, or simply hope to speak without fear.

Courtesy of CNN, here are the names of the slain Charlie Hebdo writers:

January 12, 2015

Torture in our name: #ReadtheReport

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It has been roughly one month since Senator Dianne Feinstein (who became Mayor of San Francisco following the assassination of George Moscone) released the Senate Intelligence Committee report detailing the violence and torture used by the CIA against individuals in the years following 9/11.

At least 119 individuals were detained by the CIA in years after the attacks, and, according to the Senate report, at least 26 were wrongly detained and had no associations with terrorism.

One innocent man, Gul Rahman, spent a month in solitary confinement because he had the same name as a suspected terrorist. Two CIA informants spent “approximately 24 hours shackled in the standing sleep deprivation position” before it was confirmed they were mistakenly being detained. These examples are surely some of the more benign experiences of prisoners in CIA detention facilities.

In the foreword to the report, Senator Feinstein wrote:

“It is worth remembering the pervasive fear in late 2001 and how immediate the threat felt. Just a week after the September 11 attacks, powdered anthrax was sent to various news organizations and to two U.S. Senators. The American public was shocked by news of new terrorist plots and elevations of the color-coded threat level of the Homeland Security Advisory System. We expected further attacks against the nation.

I have attempted throughout to remember the impact on the nation and to the CIA workforce from the attacks of September 11, 2001. I can understand the CIA’s impulse to consider the use of every possible tool to gather intelligence and remove terrorists from the battlefield, and CIA was encouraged by political leaders and the public to do whatever it could to prevent another attack. The Intelligence Committee as well often pushes intelligence agencies to act quickly in response to threats and world events.

Nevertheless, such pressure, fear, and expectation of further terrorist plots do not justify, temper, or excuse improper actions taken by individuals or organizations in the name of national security.

The major lesson of this report is that regardless of the pressures and the need to act, the Intelligence Community’s actions must always reflect who we are as a nation, and adhere to our laws and standards.

It is precisely at these times of national crisis that our government must be guided by the lessons of our history and subject decisions to internal and external review. Instead, CIA personnel, aided by two outside contractors, decided to initiate a program of indefinite secret detention and the use of brutal interrogation techniques in violation of U.S. law, treaty obligations, and our values.”

After many years, and despite CIA interference, the report has been made public. We should know what is done in our name.

You can read the full report here.

Day: January 12, 2015

Rep. Regunberg supports ‘intelligently-structured parking lot tax’

Whitehouse to introduce progressive tax trifecta

Vigil for Charlie Hebdo attacks outside the ProJo offices

See also: Balancing words and body: Je suis Charlie

Balancing words and body: Je suis Charlie

Torture in our name: #ReadtheReport