Bad Deeds for 10-14-2009

 

Many Wealthy Dodge Their Tax Responsibilities by Hiding Income in Overseas Accounts – Thursday is the deadline for Americans to come clean about the money they have hidden offshore, in places like Swiss bank accounts. No one can say with certainty how much money is out there — the accounts are secret — but the hoard may be tens of billions of dollars.

Several thousand wealthy people have come forward, hoping to avoid large fines or possibly even prison. But many others are still weighing their options. The choice is stark: They can confess and pay the penalties, or gamble that they will not get caught. With the deadline only days away, tax lawyers say they are being inundated by anxious clients.

“We’re seeing a flood of people,” said Scott D. Michel, a tax lawyer in Washington. His firm, Caplin & Drysdale, has 350 clients who are preparing to report their offshore accounts to the Internal Revenue Service. The firm has 14 lawyers handling their cases, one of which involves a tax bill of hundreds of millions of dollars.

 

Americans Are Forced to Self-Ration Health Care – Among the most pernicious and blatantly false Republican talking points designed to obstruct health care reform is the fear-mongering claim that Democratic proposals will lead to “rationing.” Of course, with almost 50 million uninsured and another 25 million underinsured, Mitch McConnell’s dystopian future of a system which “denies, delays, or rations health care” is already today’s nightmare for millions of Americans. But as it turns out, recent studies show that the market failure that is the crumbling U.S. health care system is producing a another, often hidden crisis: self-rationing.

As McClatchy reported last week, a new Consumers Union survey revealed that due to skyrocketing costs and reductions in coverage, Americans are forced to deny themselves needed medical treatment. Among the findings of CU’s poll of a 1,002 respondents:

In the new poll 59 percent said that the cost of their health care had increased more than their other expenses over the past two years. Fifty-one percent said they had faced difficult health care choices in the past year. The most common responses were putting off a doctor visit because of cost (28 percent), not being unable to afford medical bills or medication (25 percent), and putting off a medical procedure because of cost (22 percent).

Twenty-eight percent said they had lost or experienced cutbacks in their health care coverage in the past year. The greatest concerns about health care expressed by respondents were a major financial loss or setback from medical cost due to an illness or accident (73 percent), not being able to afford health care in the future (73 percent), necessary care being denied or rationed by health insurance companies (73 percent), and the prospect of rising costs forcing them to choose between health care and other necessities (64 percent).

Those dismal results echoed the shocking revelations from an April 2009 Thomson Reuters survey.

That poll of 12,000 people not only found that employer-provided health care coverage had plummeted to 54.9% in 2009 from 59% in early 2008, but that 20% of Americans have postponed or delayed medical care. That 1 in 5 figure is a staggering jump from 15.9% in 2006.

 

The Republican 10 Point Plan for Health Care

1. 50 Million Uninsured in America
2. Another 25 Million Underinsured
3. Employer-Based Coverage Plummets Below 60%
4. Employer Health Costs to Jump by 9% in 2010
5. One in Five Americans Forced to Postpone Care
6. 62% of U.S. Bankruptcies Involve Medical Bills
7. Current Health Care Costs Already Fueling Job Losses
8. 94% of Health Insurance Markets in U.S Now “Highly Concentrated”
9. Dramatic Decline in Emergency Room Capacity
10. Perpetuating Red State Health Care Failure

 

Bush Administration Covered up Global Warming Finding, Then Deliberately Kept Them From Democrats – An e-mail message buried by the Bush administration because of its conclusions on global warming surfaced Tuesday, nearly two years after it was first sent to the White House and never opened.

The Bush administration, and then EPA administrator Stephen Johnson, refused to release the document when it was written in 2007, and labeled it “deliberative, do not distribute” to Democratic lawmakers. The White House instead allowed three senators to review it in July 2008, when excerpts were released.

The e-mail and the 28-page document attached to it, released Tuesday by the Environmental Protection Agency, show that back in December of 2007 the agency concluded that six gases linked to global warming pose dangers to public welfare, and wanted to take steps to regulate their release from automobiles and the burning of gasoline.

The document specifically cites global warming’s effects on air quality, agriculture, forestry, water resources and coastal areas as endangering public welfare.

 

Fox News’ Unbalanced Coverage of Protests – Fox News covered nearly every tea party protest in America (no matter how small) but did not send a reporter, or even a camera crew, to cover Sunday’s gay rights March on Washington. They only devoted a total of 4 minutes to even mention the gay rights march.

Regards,

Jim