The 4 Freedoms Of ObamaCare
As of January 1st, 2014, one of the biggest game-changing benefits of the Affordable Care Act went into effect: NO MORE DISCRIMINATION BASED ON PRE-EXISTING CONDITIONS. It deserves an all-caps, bolded...
View ArticleSCOTUS “Corporate 5” Turn Elections Into Auctions
On Wednesday April 2nd, in McCutcheon vs FEC (the “McMoney” case), Supreme Court Justices Roberts, Alito, Thomas, Scalia (RATS) + Kennedy struck down the aggregate limits that individuals can give...
View ArticleFederal Spending In One Beautiful Pie Chart
Here’s 2013 Federal spending all in one beautiful pie chart. If you master this, you’ll understand way more than most. The “fiscal year” actually begins October 1st of the year preceding, so we are...
View ArticleHow We Spend Income Tax $: Your Priorities?
The federal budget not only clarifies how we spend our money, it also reflects our national priorities. “Don’t tell me what your priorities are. Show me where you spend your money and I’ll tell you...
View ArticleSky-High U.S. Military Spending: What’s The Trade Off?
How does our Military spending compare to other countries? We are off the charts. The U.S. alone spent 39% of the entire world’s military spending in 2013 — more than $600 Billion. That’s actually...
View ArticleWe Have A MILITARY Spending Problem (In One Chart)
When it comes to spending, boy do we have a MILITARY spending problem. Even if we end the war operations in Afghanistan more quickly, we are still spending approx $150 billion more than the post-WWII...
View ArticleThe Deficit Explained And Fiscal Conservatism Debunked (In Two Graphs)
A “deficit” is when the government spends more than it takes in in a given fiscal year (Oct 1st of year preceding to Sept 30th). A “surplus” is just the opposite. All the deficits added together is...
View ArticleGuess Who’s America’s Largest Creditor (Hint: It’s NOT China)
Most folks who scream about the debt don’t realize that we owe most ($9.1 Trillion) of our $16.7 Trillion debt to OURSELVES — not to China. And as this chart shows, we owe about the same amount to...
View ArticleCHART: More Guns, More Homicides (Duh!)
Sadly, in light of the recent mass killing in Santa Barbara, it’s time to post this chart again. Here we see gun homicides (red bar) and homicides by all other means (black bar) per 100,000 people...
View ArticleYowza! Staggering U.S. Gun Facts (In One Graphic)
It's a tragedy that every day in the U.S., an average of 87 people die from gun violence — 54 from suicide, 31 from intentional homicide, and 2 from accidents. We have almost as many civilian firearms...
View ArticleHoly Hypocrisy! Hobby Lobby & Hate Mongers
Hyprocrisy from the religious right hardly seems surprising anymore, but the recent Hobby Lobby decision and the Teapublican vitriol launched against the Central American refugee children set a new...
View ArticleInversion PERVERSION: Effects of Corporate Tax Cheating (in 2 Charts)
As we can see from the chart above, the red line shows that corporations used to pay a much larger portion of total revenues — back in the mid 1940s, it was 40% of total revenue. Today it’s only 10%,...
View Article“Social Security Bankrupt” Myth: Debunked In One Chart
Social Security, which celebrates its 79th birthday on August 14th, is one of our most successful federal government programs, paying out every benefit owed since 1935 and keeping many seniors and...
View ArticleLook How Obama Raised Taxes... Or Not! Tax Rates Explained (In One Chart)
Americans scream and yell about tax rates, but most don’t have a clue how our “marginal” tax rates work, much less how to calculate their “effective” tax rate. So in honor of tax season, here’s a...
View ArticleChart: Who REALLY Benefits From Tax Cuts?
Marginal tax rates — especially for the top — used to be much, much higher. Most Americans are shocked to discover that before 1982 when Reagan first implemented the fixation with tax cutting, income...
View ArticleGet Your Income Tax Receipt: Are These Your Spending Priorities?
This graph separates federal income tax dollars from the dedicated payroll taxes that go to Social Security and Medicare Part A. As you can see, in 2014 only 2.5% of Federal spending went to...
View ArticleHow to Get a Teabagger to Rail Against ObamaTrade (aka TPP)
Where the hell are the Teabaggers when you need ‘em? The TPP (not the ACA) really is the secretly-negotiated takeover of America and subversion of U.S. laws to foreign courts. Of course the Koch...
View ArticleWhoa! Look at Our Whopping Trade Deficit. Then Say NO to the Stinking TPP.
If the definition of “insanity” is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting a different result, then supporting the latest trade monstrosity — the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) — would...
View ArticleTake That All You Social Security Chicken Littles!
The next time some “Chicken Little” tries to convince you that the Social Security trust fund is empty, show them this annual accounting statement. Notice how in 2014, the trust fund earned $98...
View ArticleGuess The $412/mo Hidden Govt Welfare LOVED by Old Teabaggers
The truth is only about 50% of Medicare can be called an “earned benefit.” Most folks don’t realize that since Medicare’s inception, the payroll tax (2.9% for most workers; and recently 3.8% for high...
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