The Kevin Trudeau Show: 8-25-11

Today, Kevin explains how attitude makes all the difference and gives you an example of loser mentality. Plus, find out how vodka can be used as a natural remedy!

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19 Natural Home Cures That Work!

August 25th, 2011

Prevention.com

By: Lauren Gelman

Of course there are some health staples you should never be without—bandages or OTC pain relievers come to mind. But you can treat or cure a surprising number of minor ailments with these unexpected household objects and foods.

Next time you burn your tongue on piping hot pizza or come down with an unshakeable case of hiccups, keep these tips from The Big Doctors Book of Home Remedies in mind.

Home cure: Vodka
Use it for: Foot odor
If your feet smell less than swell, wipe them down with a vodka-soaked washcloth to get rid of the stench. It’s the same principle as rubbing alcohol (which works equally well if you’d rather drink your Grey Goose). Vodka contains alcohol, which is antiseptic and drying, so it destroys odor-causing fungus and bacteria and dries out the moisture that lets these organisms grow.

Home cure: Pencil
Use it for: Headaches
When you’re stressed or anxious, you subconsciously clench your jaw and teeth; this strains the muscle that connects your jaw to your temples and can trigger a tension headache. A solution: “Put a pencil between your teeth but don’t bite,” says Fred Sheftell, MD, director of the New England Center for Headache in Stamford, CT. You automatically relax your jaw muscle to do this, which can prevent the pain.

Home cure: Yogurt
Use it for: Bad breath
Preliminary research shows that the live bacteria in yogurt can suppress levels of bad breath-causing bacteria. “Good” bugs in yogurt may crowd out the “bad” stink-causing bacteria or create an unhealthy environment for it, says John C. Moon, DDS, a cosmetic and general dentist in Half Moon Bay, CA.

Home cure: Listerine
Use it for: Blisters
The classic breath freshener—and powerful antiseptic—can also do a number on blisters. Moisten a cotton ball with Listerine and dab it on your blister 3 times a day until the area dries out and no longer hurts, says Janet Maccaro, PhD, CNC, a holistic nutritionist and certified nutrition consultant in Scottsdale, AZ.

Home cure: Lemon balm tea
Use it for: Cold sores
Lemon balm is a first-choice herbal treatment for cold sores, which are caused by a type of herpes virus (not the same kind that’s sexually transmitted). It has antiviral properties that work to tame herpes outbreaks, says James Duke, PhD, author of The Green Pharmacy. Prepare lemon balm tea by brewing 2 to 4 tablespoons of the herb per cup of boiling water. Let it cool, then dot with a cotton ball on the cold sore several times a day.

Home cure: Licorice
Use it for: Calluses and corns
“Licorice contains estrogen-like substances that soften the hard skin of calluses and corns,” says Georgianna Donadio, PhD, director of the National Institute of Whole Health. Make this homemade licorice paste: Grind up a few licorice sticks, mix them with ½ teaspoon of petroleum jelly, and rub the mixture into the rough areas of your feet.

Home cure: Tennis ball
Use it for: Achy feet
For an easy, free mini massage that stretches and soothes your arches, slip off your shoes and roll each foot over a tennis ball, golf ball, or soup can for a minute or two. To cool throbbing feet, roll them over a bottle of frozen water.

Click here for the full report from Prevention.com

A Prime Example of the “Loser Mentality”

August 25th, 2011

Gawker.com

By: Seth Abromavitch

Late Friday afternoon, an employee of the Whole Foods Market in Toronto sent this epic resignation letter to the entire company. It’s an alternatingly amusing, enlightening, and occasionally infuriating read—but a good read, nonetheless.

The letter begins with a point-by-point evisceration of the grocery chain’s carefully calibrated image as an earth-and-body-friendly, organic foods paradise. Likening the chain to “a faux hippy Wal-Mart,” our disgruntled bulk foods buyer accuses the company of constantly mistreating and underpaying their employees. (Like Wal-Mart and Target, this corporate retailer is staunchly anti-union, though stores do offer American employees affordable health care.)

But for every compelling point our writer makes, there’s one that hurts his credibility. For example, on the subject of promptness, he writes, “Oh, you actually think being 20 minutes late matters?” Yes, actually, I do. Then the employee gets deeply personal, calling out individual co-workers by name, and devotes a paragraph to each in which he details exactly what he thinks their problem is. It’s all utterly uncalled for, but also pretty hilarious.

So yeah, he’s a dick, but you could probably have figured that with his choice of opening quote — or his choice to open with a quote at all. Here’s the letter. All names have been redacted, and certain boring passages about wholesale prune purchasing have been omitted for your own good. And I’ll throw this out to Whole Foods employees — is there a quinoa of truth to what he’s saying? Email me.

“All that is necessary for the triumph of evil is that good men do nothing.”

Dear Whole Foods Market,

My experience at Whole Foods was like an increasingly sped up fall down a really long hill. That got rockier with every metre. And eventually, just really spiky … With fire, acid and Nickleback music. I was hired about five or six years ago. I appreciated and respected what the company said it’s philosophies were at that time. The “core values” essentially. However, it didn’t take long to realize what complete and utter bullshit they are:

• Oh, you don’t recycle properly? (Caring about our communities and our environment)
• Oh, you throw out enough food to feed a lot of hungry university students. (Caring about our communities and our environment)
• Oh, you’re asking me to put latex gloves on the sales floor so customers can throw a pair out for every handful of gummy bears they take? (Caring about our communities and our environment)
• Oh, you’ve installed massive television screens all over the store, sucking up energy and polluting the environment with tacky advertisements. (Caring about our communities and our environment, Supporting team member happiness and excellence)
• Oh, you waste an absurd amount of energy, ink and paper in your offices for useless bureaucratic nonsense. (Caring about our communities and our environment, Supporting team member happiness and excellence, )
• Oh, you just write off 10-20% of the product that you buy for your bulk department because the bins look nice. (Caring about our communities and our environment).
• Oh, you sometimes intentionally order too much just to guarantee a full shelf, knowing full well the product will most likely be thrown out? (Caring about our communities and our environment)
• Oh, you don’t actually audit or evaluate each product you sell? (Caring about our communities and our environment, We sell the highest quality natural and organic products available)
• Oh, you force team members to come in to work, on their day off, once a month, at 7 in the morning, knowing a lot of them live an hour away and the TTC isn’t completely running that early in the morning and then force feed them useless updates on the company and embarrassingly artificial pep talks ([Redacted] once compared Whole Foods Market to religion… had to throw that in there. That was definitely a “Did she really just say that moment.”)? (Supporting team member happiness and excellence, Caring about our communities and our environment)/
• Oh, you buy poorly made, ugly t-shirts for your employees that will just be thrown in the trash and pretend they’re gifts when they’re really just advertising tools? (Supporting team member happiness and excellence, Caring about our communities and our environment)
• Oh, the food here is really quite awful on average? Almost everything that prepared foods makes is terrible. The pizza used to be pretty good but the slices have shrunk, the toppings are sparser and it’s usually extremely overcooked. The sandwiches are the stuff of nightmares. (It’s amazing what advertising can make people think. It can even trick their senses.) (We sell the highest quality natural and organic products available)
• Oh, you let some customers abuse your employees and then actually reward the customers for their behaviour and then trample on the integrity and honour of your abused employees? (Supporting team member happiness and excellence)
• Oh, you practice discrimination by offering “healthier” employees better discounts? And you think having different rules for new smoker employees versus old smoker employees is a good idea? (Supporting team member happiness and excellence)
• Oh, you purchase products from Israel (Or any distant country) if they’re slightly cheaper than local alternatives? (Caring about our communities and our environment)
• Oh, you’ve somehow created the worst computer program I’ve ever used to run your entire buying system? IRMA is some Windows 95 era stuff, guys. I could design a significantly better interface in 30 minutes on a pad of paper. I know several students who could create a superior program in their spare time. Was someone actually hired to create that thing? Was it the Realplayer dudes? Even Captain Picard couldn’t facepalm hard enough to express the amount of failure in that… that, thing… (Supporting team member happiness and excellence)
• Oh, you push employees into greater responsibilities without compensation? Often having them essentially do all the work of a higher position without the pay? (Supporting team member happiness and excellence)
• Oh, you ambush employee’s using two managers when you want to write someone up? No warning. No representation. All reasons and excuses fall on deaf ears. (Supporting team member happiness and excellence)
• Oh, you’d rather attempt to create some sort of fake “culture” with signs and forced meeting than let it happen naturally by letting employees socialize lightly as they work? (Supporting team member happiness and excellence)
• Oh, you like to manage “systems” instead of people? You don’t hold critical thinking and discretion in high regard? You encourage blindly following rules? I.e., no recourse in challenging write ups. Employees given cold shoulder when they attempt anything like this. (Supporting team member happiness and excellence)
• Oh, you want us to politely call and let you know if we’ll be late… but you’ll still write us up when we arrive? Kind of a dick move, guys. (Supporting team member happiness and excellence)
• Oh, you actually think being 20 minutes late matters? You know Whole Foods Market is just a grocery store, right? (Supporting team member happiness and excellence)
• Oh, you don’t believe inflation exists? Cost of living raises aren’t given here? (Supporting team member happiness and excellence)

I notice a trend… Honestly, I could go on and on and fill out the details but since most people will just dismiss this email I should probably not put too much effort into it. I should have kept a blog…

Now the employees have lost a lot of their former power and the store is being sucked into some centralized monster. Quality is being thrown out in favour of the people at the top having to do a little less work. Competition is being destroyed and you’re not even pushing that many healthy products. Every second endcap is potato chips or pop or some sort of salt filled snack (Promoting the health of our stakeholders through healthy eating education). A lot of the stuff in Whole Body doesn’t even work or has absolutely no credible evidence to back any claims up. You’re kind a faux hippy Wal-Mart now. Great. Job.

Dear [REDACTED],
How you haven’t been fired by now is a massive mystery to, not just me, but many people. You probably belong in a psychiatric ward. If you didn’t have such a constant negative impact on everyone around you I might just feel sorry for you. BUT, you’ve hurt too many people. You create a hostile work environment with your flashes of insane anger and passive (I hesitate to use the word passive…) aggressive behavior. Please, just leave and piss all over the patio at [REDACTED]‘s again. Maybe [REDACTED] will help this time. Her childish, two-faced personality suits you quite well. The fact that you still have a job is also a massive failure by your department’s leaders as well. I’d be ashamed of being such push-overs who refuse to support good people if I were them. Quite ashamed.

Dear [REDACTED],
I don’t think you could calm down enough and become a happy, tolerable person if you were to do yoga in a hot spring while high on ecstasy. Daily. For the rest of your life. Just wouldn’t happen. I haven’t met a single person working under you or who has worked under you who doesn’t loath the way you treat people. Your job doesn’t matter AT ALL. Get over it, relax and start treating people with a shred of respect. Chances are, you’ll improve a lot of lives. Possibly even your own. I do have a suspicion that you’re a sociopath though. Especially now, after seeing your reaction to you-know-who’s hospital visit. If that is the case, this was futile. May I suggest some acting classes? You’re not very good at pretending to be a complete, emotional, sincere human being.

Dear [REDACTED],
You win a lot of awards in my book. Best at being a chauvinist. Least likely to realize he’s about to walk into someone. Just another sign that shows how inconsiderate and egocentric you are. Or, if you do realize you’re plowing through people… well, I won’t get into that… Best at ruining the entire meat department vicinity by blasting terrible music. Do you ever think about the people around you? By the way, how did you manage to spit on the back hallway’s floor with your head so far up your ass? I guess I can at least forgive you for never learning employee’s names because of that. It’s probably difficult to hear up there.

For the love of god, learn to respect women. You have no idea how insulting and aggravating it is to be around someone who is so condescending to all the women you work with. Stop calling them “mamma” don’t refer to them as “beautiful”… for christs sake, just keep all pet names off the table. You are NOT complimenting women, you are being open about not knowing knowing their names, and lazy enough to not read a name-tag. Lazy, or you are just that self centered? You have no clue. Take notice of people around you. If you are dumping work on them without real communication we are going to think you are a dick. Take the holiday table for example. You have nothing to do with it, take credit for it and can barely remember the people who run it so smoothly. Who do you think you are?

Dear [REDACTED],
You confuse the hell out of me. Sometimes you seem like a reasonable person and then sometimes you refuse to support your employees and in some cases even treat them quite terribly. Unfortunately, you’ve been hanging out mostly in Terrible Person territory lately. You’re not welcome there! [REDACTED] owns it. You show little to no support for your team members and turn everything into a boy’s club. You rant and bitch and moan to the wrong people, because it always get back to the people you rant and bitch and moan about. Quit rolling your eyes and let people speak. You might actually like and understand more of your employees this way. Respect your employees and the precious time that they are giving up to work for you. Perhaps take some time yourself and relearn the core values you are supposed to hold so dear. Stop taking your personal life out on everyone and have some compassion for the team members you disregard so much.

Dear [REDACTED],
Your dot idea was a really, really stupid idea. Try to learn how an operation works before trying to “fix” it. All of your suggestions so far have been outdated, time consuming, poorly thought out nonsense. You aren’t impressing anyone or increasing your chances of moving up in the company with these terrible attempts at seeming proactive and full of “ideas.” You’re just frustrating to work with. Also, I think you should stand a little further back from people when you talk to them.

Dear [REDACTED],
We get it, we get it. You go to the gym. Nobody is impressed. In fact we all just laugh at your inferiority complex.

Dear [REDACTED],
Stop being such a cowardly weiner, hiding behind your emails and that awful hallway grin. Try communicating with people under you. Face to face when it’s possible. If you’re overworked you need help. Especially if your lack of time is affecting other people’s jobs and the store/company.

Dear [REDACTED]/[REDACTED]/Anyone else who visits our store,
Do you guys realize that the store NEVER looks as good as it does when you arrive? When word spreads that you’re coming to inspect the store almost every team leader begins running around like Brampton teens on PCP. They whip their employees into a frenzy. They sweep anything under the bed that they think you won’t like. They attempt to make the store look like nobody ever shops there. This stops us and them from doing actual productive work which in turn impacts sales and creates a lot of pointless stress. Then you arrive, hand out your almighty advice. The team leaders grovel at your feet and follow your advice. Then you leave and they put everything back the way it was. Undo a lot of what you suggested. Oh, I’m sure there are things happening that I don’t see. But you really do waste a lot of time. Even making our efforts regressive sometimes. Meanwhile, if I’m awesomely efficient at my job and take a moment to chat with a fellow employee, I’m bitched at. Seems to me a costly double standard.

Consider checking some of the “stats” and “facts” used in your in store education. They’re often faulty logic, myths, misconceptions and lies used by so-called “environmentalists”. I agree we’re currently destroying our environment and I’m quite liberal and all for natural living. But evidence and credible sources very often disagree with the propaganda spouted to us at Whole Foods. It’s just a little too extreme and biased sometimes which I believe just discredits the environmentalist movement in general, sadly.

Dear everyone else,
As I’ve said above a few times: you work at a grocery store. Go ahead and relax. Also, Whole Foods will try to make you feel like they are doing you a huge favour by employing you. It’s really a mutual agreement or transaction. Don’t fall for the guilt trips. Call in sick if you need to, etc.. There are laws in place to stop them from taking advantage of you. And if you’re thinking “This is just the way it is. Suck it up!”. You’re the biggest part of the problem. I’m afraid we can’t be friends.

Just enjoy life. It’s pretty short, you know?

Good luck,
[REDACTED]

Click here for the full report from Gawker

Warren Buffett Invests $5 Billion In Which Bank?!

August 25th, 2011

CNNMoney.com

By: Ken Sweet

Bank of America finally caught a break.

Warren Buffett’s Berkshire Hathaway announced a surprise $5 billion investment in Bank of America Thursday morning, sending shares of the struggling Dow component jumping 13% in late-morning trading.

The investment is seen as a major vote of confidence from one of the world’s foremost long-term investors.

“Bank of America is a strong, well-led company, and … I wanted to invest in it,” said Berkshire Hathaway (BRK) Chief Executive Warren Buffett, in a statement.

According to the terms of the deal, Bank of America will issue 50,000 preferred shares to Berkshire at a value of $100,000 each. The preferred shares will carry a somewhat hefty 6% annual dividend, paid out quarterly.

Berkshire will also receive warrants to purchase an additional 700 million shares of BofA over the next ten years at a strike price of approximately $7.14 per share. With BofA shares trading above $8.15 on Thursday, Buffett already made a roughly $1 billion profit if he were to activate his warrants today.

Bank of America (BAC, Fortune 500) shares have taken a beating on concerns that the banking giant may need to raise capital to shore up its balance sheet. But the stock made a comeback Wednesday after influential analyst Meredith Whitney said Bank of America wouldn’t need fresh capital.

The Whitney effect

Analysts said with the $5 billion investment, BofA won’t likely need to raise any additional capital, if the bank even had to at all.

“While the investment is expensive and dilutive, it’s an investment that will act as a bridge to get Bank of America through this uncertainty,” said Erik Oja, a equity research analyst with Standard & Poor’s.

The bank announced it would lay off 3,500 employees earlier this month, on top of the 2,500 layoffs that the company announced earlier this year.

Buffett has a recent history of being a lifeline for well-known companies at time of financial stress. He made a $5 billion investment in Goldman Sachs (GS, Fortune 500) in September 2008 at the height of the financial crisis. A month later he invested $3 billion in General Electric (GE, Fortune 500).

But investments from the “Oracle of Omaha” do not come cheap. Both GE and Goldman paid a rather large 10% annual dividend on Buffett’s investment. Goldman only recently bought back the preferred shares it issued to Berkshire while GE plans to repurchase Buffett’s preferred shares by October.

Click here for the full report from CNNMoney.com

The Kevin Trudeau Show: 8-24-11

Today, Kevin gives you an overwhelming amount of evidence proving that nutrients found in food can indeed cure, prevent, and treat a disease.

Self Help:
Prevent Disease
Supplement Your Diet
Alternative To Sunlight

Everything Kevin:
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Support Kevin!
Kevin is on YouTube!
Sign Up For Kevin’s FREE Podcast
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The Kevin Trudeau Show: 8-23-11

Today, Kevin explains why it is so vital for the government to stop giving out free lunches and how, in reality, welfare is actually hurting Americans, not helping.

Wealth:
51% of Americans Pay No Federal Income Tax
Americans Becoming Incompetent Due To Welfare System

Everything Kevin:
Become An Insider!
Support Kevin!
Kevin is on YouTube!
Sign Up For Kevin’s FREE Podcast
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Take Trudeau on the Go! Click here to download this show to your iPod, mp3 player, or PC through iTunes!

Click below to watch The Kevin Trudeau Show!

Do This To Lower Cancer Risk

Did you know that a higher percentage of Americans today are getting cancer than they did 20 years ago?  Cancer rates are rising every single year across the board.  A higher percentage of people are diagnosed with cancer.  Cancer keeps going up and that’s just in America.  In other countries, there is almost no cancer.

What causes the cancer?  Well, a barrage of things; fluoride and chlorine in the water, the herbicides and pesticides, radiation, cell phones, high definition televisions, 3D TVs, monosodium glutamate, artificial sweeteners, the chemicals and stabilizers in your food, high fructose corn syrup, genetically modified food, negative thinking… the list goes on.

Click here to protect yourself from these cancer risks: http://bit.ly/nEGB23

Yours in health…
KT

Is the Welfare System Making Americans Incompetent?

August 23rd, 2011

The Huffington Post

By: Janell Ross

Sasha Mandel says she never imagined going on welfare. But her plans for a career and the independence she craved ran headlong into a pair of unforeseen developments — an unplanned pregnancy at 18, and the worst job market since the Great Depression.

In April 2009, freshly unemployed and devoid of savings, Mandel reluctantly walked into a state office in Phoenix to apply for welfare. Her caseworker was sympathetic, swiftly arranging emergency food aid along with cash assistance. But she was also clear on the limits of that relief: Under the terms of Arizona’s welfare program, Mandel could draw a welfare check for no more than three years.

That timeframe was about to get shorter. This April, cash-strapped Arizona tightened the limit on welfare payments to two years. Mandel learned about the change when she received a letter from the state in June. She was only a few weeks away from exhausting her benefits.

“That letter,” she said, “it just said to me that they decided to change the rules when the game for single mothers is already really, really hard.”

Fifteen years after President Clinton joined with congressional Republicans and affixed his signature to a law that “ended welfare as we know it” — imposing a five-year time limit on federal cash assistance for poor families, while allowing states to set shorter limits — the social safety net is failing to keep pace with the needs of struggling Americans, many experts say. Millions of single mothers are falling through the cracks, scrambling to support their families with neither paychecks nor government aid.

Welfare reform, one of the hallmark events of the Clinton presidency, was supposed to be a healthy tradeoff: Single mothers who had grown dependent on government checks would instead go out and work. The federal government gave the states lump sums of money, known as block grants, to create programs that would prepare, prompt and push poor single mothers accustomed to living on welfare into the workforce, providing job training, resume-writing tutorials and subsidized child care.

But the time limits on cash aid were enacted in the mid-1990s, in the midst of one of the most vibrant job markets in modern times. Today, with nearly 14 million people officially out of work and jobseekers outnumbering available positions by more than four-to-one, the logic of those reforms is being overwhelmed by the reality of a stark shortage of paychecks, experts say.

“Today, everybody is expected to work,” said Sheila Zedlewski, an economist at the Urban Institute and co-author of an institute study released last week that examines the consequences of welfare reform during the recession. “The problem is finding a job is incredibly hard.”

Since the beginning of the recession in late 2007, the nation’s unemployment rate has increased by 88 percent, while welfare caseloads have grown just 14 percent, according to the Urban Institute report.

Experts say this disparity reflects the inadequacy of remaining welfare programs in the face of a veritable epidemic of joblessness. During a period of national distress, fewer and fewer people have been able to secure help to meet their basic needs, according to the report.

Between 2007 and 2010 — just as the economy was contracting and joblessness was rising, generating greater demand for public assistance — welfare caseloads dropped in 13 states, according to the Urban Institute report. In Arizona, which faced a particularly powerful blow to its finances in the form of a sustained plunge in housing prices, the welfare caseload dropped by 48 percent during that timeframe.

Many of those who advocated for ending welfare as an unlimited entitlement say the change has been beneficial — the share of single, never married mothers in the workforce climbed from 62.9 percent in 1996 to 72.4 percent a decade later, according to federal data.

“Poverty rates are still lower and work rates still higher than before welfare reform,” said Ron Haskins, who played a key role in shaping the policy as a senior Republican congressional adviser, and who is now co-director of the Brookings Center on Children and Families. “In that sense, welfare reform has been a success.”

But as Haskins acknowledges, the reforms have never managed to address the barriers confronting a small subset of welfare recipients with very limited education, significant physical and mental health problems, or unhealthy children, preventing them from entering the workforce.

The share of people who both live in poverty with no reported income and lack welfare assistance has changed significantly since welfare reform. In 1996, 1 in 8 single mothers fit this profile, according to Zedlewski. By 2008, the most recent year for which this data is available, that figure had climbed to 1 in 5, she said.

In the early days after welfare reform, many states enacted stricter time limits, Arizona included, and beefed up programs offering subsidized child care — a crucial component for single mothers required to work. The budget crisis assailing states has prompted many states to effectively roll back these programs.

States around the country are slashing cash benefits, reducing time limits and, in some cases, imposing strict work requirements on welfare applicants, said LaDonna Pavetti, an expert on welfare who works at the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities. The practices also make it very hard for parents already dealing with a job crisis, a disability or other complications to qualify for cash aid, she said.

In the 2000s, states also began shifting federal funds that could be used for cash benefits for single mothers to cover other costs. Some of the money went to cover the cost of child care or transportation assistance. But large shares were also used to fund state child welfare agencies, which frequently don’t get all the resources they need from states.

In 1997, the first year the reforms took effect in most states, Georgia used 73 percent of its federal welfare block grant to provide cash aid to poor families, according to data the state reported to the federal government. By 2009, the most recent year for which complete data is available, Georgia spent just 11 percent of its block grant on cash aid. Spending in Florida, Texas and Arizona plunged by similar margins.

The impact of these cuts is easy to discern: Far fewer poor families are being given cash assistance. In 2009, Georgia and Texas each provided cash aid to less than 10 percent of poor families, according to the Urban Institute report.

“You have so many people who were pushed off welfare who didn’t find work in the beginning, and today there are so many people who can’t get welfare at all,” said Peter Edelman, a Georgetown University law professor who resigned from a senior position in the Clinton administration to protest the President’s decision to sign welfare reform into law. “As an anti-recessionary tool, welfare as we know it today is useless.”

Edelman compares the paltry expansion of the nation’s welfare rolls during the recession — from about 3.9 million families in 2007 to about 4.4 million families in 2010 — to what happened to the food stamp program. During the same time period, food stamp program participation rose from about 30 million households to 44 million, reflecting real levels of economic need.

“What we’ve done is make things worse,” Edelman said. “There are now people who cannot find work, and who can not get welfare.”

Click here for the full report from The Huffington Post

How Many Americans Don’t Pay Taxes?

August 23rd, 2011

The Atlantic

By: Derek Thompson

Half of American tax payers owe no federal income tax, and most of those filers actually net tax benefits from federal income taxes, according to analysis from the Joint Committee on Taxation in a letter to the Republicans on the Senate Finance Committee.

This is the kind of statistic that is bound to get traction as Osama news subsides, and here are two ways to look at it.

THEY’RE STILL PAYING TAXES (MOST OF THEM, ANYWAY)

The majority of households who pay no income tax still pay net taxes to the IRS. Federal income taxes account for about 40 percent of total government receipts. Most of the rest comes from payroll taxes, which workers of all income levels do pay. Since every dollar up to $106,800 is subject to taxes, a typical middle class family pays payroll taxes on all its income while a millionaire employee pays payroll taxes on only a tenth of his income.

At the same time, there are Americans — millions of them — who really do pay practically zero overall taxes. About fifteen million American households, or 10 percent of all taxpayers, receive more cash from the IRS than they contribute in federal income taxes and payroll taxes. That’s thanks to “refundable credits,” tax credits that can bring your tax bill into negative territory. To some, these 15 million are low-income Americans benefiting from smart and targeted welfare run through the tax code. To others, they are unacceptable free riders, citizens with a vote but no stake in federal government.

THE TOP 20% EARNS 50% OF THE INCOME

The richest 20 percent of the country pays more than half of income taxes for two simple reasons: America’s wealthiest 20 percent earns half the nation’s income and their income is taxed at a higher rate. The Wall Street Journal brings the visuals:

The wealthiest quintile’s share of federal taxes has grown more rapidly than their share of income. This suggests that the rich are facing steeper taxes. Not so. Effective tax rates at the top have fallen in every decade since 1970. But since effective tax rates also fell for every other quintile, the share of taxes paid by the rich has increased.

I have a feeling we’re going to hear variations of the question: How can the rich be paying too much while income inequality is at an 80 year high? I think it’s better to see both stats as a part of the same story rather than two conflicting narratives. In the last 30 years, incomes have grown faster at the top than the middle. Over the same time, effective tax rates fell for every family. And because a four percentage-point tax cut means a 50 percent tax cut for the poor but only a 10 percent tax cut for the rich, the share of overall taxes paid by the middle- and lower-class has decreased faster than their share of pretax income.

Click here for the full report from The Atlantic

Corn Sugar vs. Cane Sugar

Recently, the President of the Corn Refiners Association left a comment on KTRadioNetwork.com defending their stance on high fructose corn syrup.

First of all, who is the Corn Refiners Association?  It is an association that gets their money from all the corn refiners and corn producers. They give this association a mandate; do everything you can so that we can continue to sell huge amounts of high fructose corn syrup. Their goal is to increase the sale and usage of high fructose corn syrup. That is what they were set up to accomplish.

Click here to read the comment and Kevin’s response: http://bit.ly/qUR055

Yours in health…
KT

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