Month: October 2017
Watch video of “Nuclear Weapons, War & Environment” forum held at UA
ARIZONA LEADERS WARN OF CLIMATE DESTRUCTION AND GLOBAL DISASTER
IF NUCLEAR WEAPONS ARE NOT ELIMINATED (press release)
(Tucson, AZ) — “Amidst growing tensions of global nuclear weapons and attack, including North Korea’s recent barrage of missile tests, keynote speaker Dr. Ira Helfand and Congressman Raul Grijalva joined local leaders convened today to raise awareness about the catastrophic impacts of a nuclear weapons exchange, risks of war and potential environmental impacts of a nuclear attack.
A video of the forum can be found here.
In a forum hosted by Physicians for Social Responsibility – Arizona Chapter, speakers discussed the important connection between climate change and nuclear war, and the grave threats they pose to human survival. There is evidence that use of even relatively small nuclear arsenals could cause long lasting, global damage to the Earth’s ecosystems.
They also addressed important approaches to preventing nuclear war, nuclear disarmament and the International Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons.
“The crises in Korea and Iran underline the extraordinary danger of nuclear war that confronts the world today. The U.S. needs to fundamentally change its nuclear policy and accept that nuclear weapons are not agents of national security but rather an existential threat to our survival,” said Dr. Ira Helfand, Co-Director of the International Physicians for the Prevention of Nuclear War. “We need to urgently pursue negotiations with the other nuclear armed states for a verifiable, enforceable agreement to eliminate these weapons before they are used.”
Climate change will place increased stress on human populations and may lead to global crop failure and massive migrations and conflict between states which are armed with nuclear weapons. Nuclear war would cause massive and abrupt additional climate disruption. Speakers at the forum urged the reduced reliance on nuclear weapons by all nuclear weapons states to create a more peaceful and secure world freed from the threat of nuclear annihilation.
“I urge ever Arizonan to take immediate action, as we all have a stake in the issue and are directly impacted by the threats of nuclear war,” said Dr. David Spence, Member, Physicians for Social Responsibility – Arizona Chapter. “Contact our Arizona U.S. Congress members and tell them to support the Markey/Lieu (S 200/ HR 669) legislation that would allow only Congress (not the President) to authorize a first-use nuclear strike.”
No, Mr. President, the Deduction for State Income Tax Is Not a Loophole
[Cross Posted from Inequality.org]
The one “loophole closing” Trump has proposed would actually reduce tax revenue — state tax revenue, that is.
The Trump-GOP tax plan, based heavily on tax cuts for corporations and the wealthy, would cost $2.4 trillion in lost federal revenue over 10 years, according to the nonpartisan Tax Policy Center. And the only “loophole” the plan closes to offset this enormous revenue loss is the deduction for state income tax paid by individuals.
Is that a loophole? Hardly. A loophole is a tax code provision that allows taxpayers and their advisers to game the system, typically through the generation of artificial deductions or credits that reduce tax. The deduction for state income tax doesn’t fit that description.
Your state income tax bill is a cost of producing income, just like the expenses a business pays to produce its income. And, unlike most business expenses, you have no control over your state income tax liability.
Above all else, the deduction for state income tax is fair.
Kansas is a cautionary tale for Arizona, and America
In 2012, Koch-bot governor Sam Brownback led a radical Tea-Publican legislature to enact the “Kansas experiment” out of blind faith in trickle-down economics. They enacted “a tax cut that eliminated state income taxes entirely for pass-through entities — such as sole proprietorships and limited liability partnerships — which are taxed at the owner’s individual income tax rate. The law also lowered individual income tax rates, cutting the top rate to 4.9 percent from 6.4 percent.” Kansas Tried a Tax Plan Similar to Trump’s. It Failed.
The tax package reduced state revenue by nearly $700 million a year, a drop of about 8 percent, from 2013 through 2016, according to the Kansas Legislative Research Department, forcing officials to shorten school calendars, delay highway repairs and reduce aid to the poor. Research suggests the package did not stimulate the economy, certainly not enough to pay for the tax cut. This year, legislators passed a bill to largely rescind the law, saying it had not worked as intended.
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[C]ongressional Republicans and President Trump are trying to take the experiment with pass-through preferences national, beyond Wichita and Topeka to cities with residents who measure incomes in seven, eight or nine figures.
The Republican tax rewrite unveiled this month aims to jump-start economic growth in part by establishing a 25 percent tax rate on small businesses and other firms that operate as pass-through entities, a cut from the top rate of 39.6 percent that such business owners pay now.
But the abandoned experiment in Kansas points to how a carve-out intended to help raise growth and create jobs instead created an incentive for residents, particularly high earners, to avoid paying state income taxes by changing how they got paid.
So how’s that trickle-down working out for Arizona?
The Arizona Capitol Times (subscription required) reports that Arizona Legislature’s budget analysts predict 2018 shortfall:
The Arizona Legislature’s budget analysts last Thursday predicted a budget shortfall that could top $100 million in the current and coming year as the impact of corporate tax cuts continues to overwhelm increases in sales, insurance premium and personal income tax collections.
Whaaa? You mean tax cuts don’t pay for themselves and are revenue neutral? (sarcasm).
Chief budget analyst Richard Stavneak told economists and state officials who make up the Legislature’s Finance Advisory Committee that the shortfall will hit $104 million. That’s out of an expected $10 billion in spending for the budget year that begins next July 1. A panel of state lawmakers also attended the meeting.
Excluded from that projection is $90 million in current spending that is labeled one-time but appears to be an ongoing commitment by the Legislature and Gov. Doug Ducey, Stavneak said. That puts the expected shortfall next year close to $200 million if that spending isn’t cut. The revenue picture could also brighten, but signals are mixed, he said.
Phased-in corporate tax cuts enacted under former Gov. Jan Brewer in 2011 have cut more than $600 million in yearly revenue since 2014. Rep. Don Shooter, R-Yuma, said it may be time to revisit the corporate tax cuts and predicted a budget battle next year.
“It’s going to be a free-for-all. We’re back to the cutting, I don’t see any other way,” Shooter said. “It’s going to come down to who’s going to bleed the least, what’s going to be the least painful, I guess.”