CNNMoney

NEW YORK (CNNMoney.com) — More than 80% of U.S. school districts are expected to eliminate jobs and more than half will likely freeze hiring during the upcoming school year, an education organization said Tuesday.

Based on a survey of school administrators from 49 states, a total of 275,000 education jobs are expected to be cut in 2011, according to the American Association of School Administrators.

“Faced with continued budgetary constraints, school leaders across the nation are forced to consider an unprecedented level of layoffs that would negatively impact economic recovery and deal a devastating blow to public education,” said AASA Executive Director Dan Domenech.

While the jobs picture begins to stabilize across the broader economy, in its previous survey, the AASA projected job cuts in the education field between 2009 and 2011 to exceed the jobs created by the government in that same period.

In the survey released Tuesday, AASA said job cuts in the 2010 to 2011 school year alone would nearly negate the estimated 300,000 jobs saved or created by the government.

“This survey complements the results of our latest economic impact survey to truly illustrate that schools have yet to feel the economic relief and stability that is appearing in other sectors,” said Domenech.

Of the projected job cuts, about 54% are teacher positions, 9% are support personnel, such as nurses and guidance counselors, 5% are administrative and 31% are classified, a category including maintenance employees and cafeteria workers.


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Capitol Confidential

It’s amazing to watch the civil libertarians hide when Democrats propose the most sweeping intrusions of privacy in generations. In addition to the litany of bad policies contained in the Dodd Financial Reform bill is this nugget on pages 1039-1040. In short, it extends government reach to every deposit account of every citizen.

Subtitle G of the Dodd discussion draft bill requires that records be maintained and reported “for each branch, automated teller machine at which deposits are accepted, and other deposit taking service facility with respect to any financial institution, the financial institution shall maintain a record of the number and dollar amounts of deposit accounts of customers.”

What’s worse, banks will be required to submit these records to the new super regulatory agency called the Consumer Financial Protection Agency (page 1041). The CFPA will be allowed to use this information for any purpose “as permitted by law” under CFPA rules—rules set by CFPA themselves.

So, lets get this straight—the law requires banks to snoop on its customers MOST PERSONAL INFORMATION and submit it to another government agency so it can be used anyway the CFPA see’s fit.

So, if the CFPA Czar see’s fit, information about your deposit account activity could be shared with the IRS, immigration officials, state officials, or any other entity that the Administration and their various Czar’s think beneficial.

But CFPA will impact your life even before they give away your personal data. Remember that part of the excuse for including this authority is to make policy recommendations. So, be careful not to run your credit limit too high above the amount of money you are depositing in the bank or the CFPA will know you can’t pay your bills and make the appropriate “policy recommendations”.

This is exactly why conservatives have fought so hard against things like national ID cards—if the government is authorized to collect and utilize data, there is no way to prevent the government as a whole or certain individuals within the government from using the information against the citizens.

But passage of the CFPA will settle the whole ID card thing once and for all. There will be no need for them because if you have a bank account, you already have a number and the CFPA will have it.

The breadth of sweeping new powers given to the federal government by these three pages is astonishing. Yet we have heard nary a peep about this provision.

After capitulation and surrender, Republicans will have a chance to amend the legislation when it comes to the floor of the Senate and protect the private details of your banking account.

But if they don’t, smile the next time you go to the ATM because Big Brother will be watching.

Source

By CHARLES BABINGTON
AP

WASHINGTON – President Barack Obama suggested Wednesday that a new value-added tax on Americans is still on the table, seeming to show more openness to the idea than his aides have expressed in recent days.

Before deciding what revenue options are best for dealing with the deficit and the economy, Obama said in an interview with CNBC, “I want to get a better picture of what our options are.”

After Obama adviser Paul Volcker recently raised the prospect of a value-added tax, or VAT, the Senate voted 85-13 last week for a nonbinding “sense of the Senate” resolution that calls the such a tax “a massive tax increase that will cripple families on fixed income and only further push back America’s economic recovery.”

For days, White House spokesmen have said the president has not proposed and is not considering a VAT.

“I think I directly answered this the other day by saying that it wasn’t something that the president had under consideration,” White House press secretary Robert Gibbs told reporters shortly before Obama spoke with CNBC.

After the interview, White House deputy communications director Jen Psaki said nothing has changed and the White House is “not considering” a VAT.

Many European countries impose a VAT, which taxes the value that is added at each stage of production of certain commodities. It could apply, for instance, to raw products delivered to a mill, the mill’s production work and so on up the line to the retailer.

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Money News

President Barack Obama’s Democratic allies in the Senate promise to cut the deficit by almost two-thirds over the next five years, but their budget plan could threaten about 30 million people with tax increases averaging $3,700 in 2012 and after because of the alternative minimum tax.

The alternative is tax increases elsewhere in the revenue code averaging up to $100 billion a year after 2011 to continue alternative minimum tax relief and also curb taxes on people inheriting large estates.

The Democratic plan released Wednesday by Senate Budget Committee Chairman Kent Conrad of North Dakota relies on such boosts in revenues to carve the deficit from $1.4 trillion last year down to $545 billion by 2015.

The minimum tax, or AMT, was enacted four decades ago to make sure wealthy people couldn’t avoid taxes altogether.

But it wasn’t indexed for inflation in people’s incomes, so it gets “patched” every year or so in order to prevent people from being surprised by multi-thousand-dollar tax bills at tax time.

Estates larger than $7 million would also be threatened with higher taxes after 2011 if Conrad’s plan is carried out.

Conrad says lawmakers will have to find revenues elsewhere in the budget to pay for AMT and estate tax relief after 2011, which could require tax increases averaging up to $100 billion a year elsewhere in the code if Congress is going to keep its promises under tough new budget rules.

Conrad says he hopes the dilemma will force Congress to overhaul the complicated and inefficient U.S. tax code. The Tax Policy Center, a joint project of the Brookings Institution and the Urban Institute, says that 33 million taxpayers would face the AMT in 2012, adding $3,700 on average to their tax liabilities.

Extending AMT and estate tax relief would cost $300-$400 billion over 2012-2015, Conrad said. Many observers say it’ll be virtually impossible for Congress to produce offsetting revenues to extend the tax relief. GOP Sen. Judd Gregg of New Hampshire predicted that when Congress confronts the problem in two years it will blink and simply borrow the money as it has done in the past.

The looming tax hikes result from the structure of President George W. Bush’s 2001 and 2003 tax bills, whose provisions generally expire at the end of this year. Obama promises to fully extend them except for individuals earning more than $200,000 a year and couple making $250,000 a year. They include lower income tax rates, a $1,000 per-child tax credit, and tax breaks for investments and reductions in the estate tax, and their five-year cost of almost $800 billion would be covered by adding to the nation’s $12.8 trillion debt.

But in the case of the AMT and estate tax, congressional Democrats have broken with Obama and promise that after two years of deficit-financed alternative minimum tax and estate tax cuts, Congress will have to come up with the money.

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Tara Perkins

Globe and Mail update

Finance Minister Jim Flaherty says he will be adamant about opposing a bank tax, even after the IMF has come out in favour of one.

“Canada will not go down the path of excessive, arbitrary or punitive regulation of the financial sector,” Mr. Flaherty said.

He said the government does not want to see financial institutions in this country penalized because of their relative success and their stability during the course of the crisis.

The Finance Minister’s comments, which he made in Toronto Wednesday morning at a Euromoney conference, show that he is prepared to battle his G20 counterparts over the creation of a bank tax even as support for the idea grows.

Mr. Flaherty noted that the idea of taxing banks has gained support among many European countries and in the U.S.

Their view is that the levies would penalize institutions that triggered the global recession and create a cushion against future crises, Mr. Flaherty added. The idea is to create a pool of funds that could be tapped to help pay for future bailouts.

Mr. Flaherty said he agrees that taxpayers should not be on the hook for the costs of bailing out financial institutions.

But he says a tax is not the best way to ensure that. A tax could weaken banks’ ability to absorb loan losses, and could also result in excessive risk-taking because of the perception of a government guarantee against bank failures.

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Larry Elliott, Jill Treanor and Patrick Wintour
The Guardian


Tough proposals to cut the world’s biggest banks down to size by taxing their profits and pay were outlined by the International Monetary Fund tonight in an attempt to spare taxpayers another massive public bailout of the financial sector.

In measures more stringent than Wall Street and the City had expected, the fund called for the introduction of a twin-track approach to the three-year banking crisis that would both force firms to pay for any future support packages and raise new taxes on their profits and remuneration.

The report, prepared by the Washington-based institution for the G20 group of developed and developing nations, was seized upon by Gordon Brown as evidence that his push for an international crackdown on the banking sector was gaining support.

Leaked in advance of the fund’s meeting this weekend, the blueprint emerged as the investment bank Goldman Sachs released better than expected first quarter revenues and admitted its bonus and pay pool had reached $5.5bn (£3.3bn) in the first three months of 2010.

The anticipated study called for a financial stability contribution (FSC), which should be paid by all financial institutions, not just banks, and used to bail out weak and failing firms. It would initially be paid at a flat rate but eventually be tailored to suit institutions’ size and riskiness.

While banks had been braced for the FSC plan, they were caught unawares by the proposal for a financial activities tax (FAT), which would be based on the profits and the pay structure of the firms.

Anti-poverty campaigners had been pinning their hopes on the IMF endorsing a so-called Robin Hood tax under which a small levy would be placed on all financial transactions. However, the fund said such an approach “does not appear to be well suited to the specific purposes” set out by the G20 in its mandate. The fund said the financial sector had become too big as a result of being taxed too lightly, and said this could be addressed by the FAT, which it compared to VAT.

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Reuters

POLITICO (Washington) – President Barack Obama and congressional Democrats are promising a climactic clash with Wall Street, but there’s a complication in their battle plan: The Democratic Party is closer to corporate America — and to Wall Street in particular — than many Democrats would care to admit.

Former White House counsel Greg Craig has just signed on as an institutional Sherpa for Goldman Sachs, the iconic financial firm facing fraud charges from the Securities and Exchange Commission.

Former House Democratic leader Dick Gephardt lobbies for Goldman Sachs, Visa and the coal industry. Former Senate Democratic leader Tom Daschle — Obama’s first choice to head Health and Human Services — is an adviser for a lobbying firm that represents Charles Schwab, Comcast, Lockheed Martin, Verizon and a host of other corporate interests.

Attorney General Eric Holder once lobbied for Global Crossing — sometimes described as the Democratic Enron — and White House chief of staff Rahm Emanuel made eight figures in a little more than two years as the Chicago-based managing director at Wasserstein Perella & Co. between jobs as a senior aide in President Bill Clinton’s White House and as the congressman representing Illinois’s 5th District.

And the Democrats rode to their majorities in the House and the Senate on a wave of cash Emanuel and New York Sen. Chuck Schumer helped them raise from Wall Street. Earlier this month, a hedge fund manager at the center of the Goldman Sachs fraud case held a fundraiser for Schumer in New York.

“It’s pathetic,” Sen. Bernie Sanders, a liberal Vermont independent who caucuses with the Democrats, said of news that Goldman Sachs has hired Craig. “But it’s what goes on around here.”

The Republican Party is still emphatically aligned with business, but in most cases unapologetically so. For Democrats, the dance is trickier: How do you reap the financial rewards of corporate America without offending your core political beliefs — or your party’s committed base?

Democrats say their willingness to tackle Wall Street with a tough regulatory reform bill is the best evidence that they aren’t compromised by their corporate connections. But the regulatory reform push is also evidence that they know just how hard the political winds have shifted against a pro-business wing of the party that gained influence when Democrats were out of power.

The sensitivity is so great that, when a little-known aide to House Financial Services Committee Chairman Barney Frankjumped ship for K Street earlier this month, Frank took the unusual step of vilifying him in public.

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