Food Stamps Cut – What You Can Do To Improve the Situation

By Grassroots DC, on November 7th, 2013

[re-posted from the Washington Peace Center’s weekly “Activist Alert” e-newsletter]:

Last week, more than 40 million people’s food stamps benefits were cut. As wealth continues to concentrate and poverty continues to grow, Congress has decided that it’s acceptable to reduce the monthly allotment for food stamps (or SNAP benefits) more than thirty dollars a month for low-income individuals and families.

Over and over again, we’re reminded that many, if not most, of our elected officials are more interested in getting reelected than empathy. More interested in maintaining tax shelters and keeping donors than the safety and well being of their constituents. Not to mention, the rhetoric that they’re putting out – about private charities making up for the gap – is misguided at best. The nation’s food banks are already struggle to meet the needs of their clients, and a reduction in food stamps is just going to make the problem worse.

Charitable organization’s can’t be expected to make up for the lack of resources that are aggravated by a broken financial system. It feels hopeless a lot of the time, but fortunately here in DC, there are folks working towards employment justice. Now’s the time to get involved with a local campaign that we have a good chance of winning. Then, we can show the feds how to do it!

Join the Paid Sick Days Rally on Friday to make our collective voice louder – folks deserve living wages, and to be able to take care of themselves — whether that means feeding their families of taking time off to get healthy.

In Solidarity,

Kat, Ryn, Candice, Sonia & Dany

 

 

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LRAA Final Call to Action!

By Guest Contributor, on September 13th, 2013

Yesterday DC Mayor Vincent Gray caved in to pressure by Big Business and vetoed the Large Retailer Accountability Act. We are not surprised but yet we are very angry and disappointed. Let’s focus our energies on making sure we get the 9th vote we need to override the Mayor’s spineless veto.

The final step for the campaign is focused on getting the 9th vote from Tommy Wells, Ward 6 Council member who theoretically supports a living wage bill and is running for mayor. There are three things that people can do to help move Tommy Wells to vote for the interests of the people of DC and not for Big Business.

Call Tommy Wells and get others to do the same. 888-264-6154 Tell him to support the living wage bill and vote to override the veto. Attend Tommy Wells’ Town Hall meeting scheduled for this Sunday at 2:00 pm. The event is to focused on public safety but we’ll respectfully insist that he publicly address his position on the LRAA before the override vote on Tuesday, September 17th.

When: Sunday, September 15 | 2:00 pm Where: Anacostia Playhouse 2020 Shannon Pl SE, Washington, DC 20020

And finally,

Attend rally and press conference on the date of the Council override vote and show your support!

When: Tuesday, September 17 | Noon Where: At the steps of the Wilson Building 1350 Pennsylvania Avenue, NW.

Cross-posted with permission from the AFL-CIO.

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Bonds: What You Don’t Know Can Hurt You

By Liane Scott, on May 17th, 2013

CLICK HERE to take action today! Tell the DC Council to stop protecting a tax shelter for millionaires!

The Fair Budget Coalition has put out another action alert through the progressive list serves. Apparently, the Mayor and many City Council members are fighting to protect tax exemptions on out-of-state bonds. Being not wealthy enough to own stocks and bonds, I don’t even know what a bond is. So, I looked it up.

A bond is a sum of money that an investor loans to a company or the government. For example, U.S. citizens were encouraged to buy war bonds from the Federal Government during World War II. In this way, the government was able to raise the money needed to pay for the added cost of The War. What did the citizens who bought these bonds get out of the deal? The same thing that a bank or your local payday lender gets out of you when you ask for a loan. Interest. The company you buy the bond from will agree to pay back the money you’ve loaned them with interest. Generally, bond holders get an interest payment twice a year and then get the full amount they loaned to the company or government entity on an agreed upon date (the maturity date), which is usually some years after the original purchase.

In short, like a bank, buying a bond allows an investor to loan out some money, get the money back and a bunch of interest to boot. This is one of the ways middle-class folks with extra money and really wealthy people with a lot of money, accumulate more money without actually having to work for it. But it gets better. Or worse generally depending on where your income falls.

The mayor and many on the city council are proposing that the income that investors “earn” from the bonds they buy from out-of-state companies should not be taxed. Why?! According to the Fair Budget Coalition’s Action Alert this will cost the city $30 million in revenue. Hm? What could the city do with $30 million dollars? Help get the families living in DC General into homes of their own perhaps? Fund DC’s subsidized child care program so that parents who want to work or go to school can afford to do so, maybe?

To be fair, there are some DC residents with low or moderate incomes who rely on the interest from their out-of-state bonds to help make ends meet. So the Fair Budget Coalition supports offering the tax exemptions to those residents with low or moderate incomes. But giving up $30 million, so that folks who are already wealthy can just get wealthier is beyond me. We should not have to foot the bill for a millionaire’s tax shelter, especially when it depletes the money available for social programs.

The Fair Budget Coalition’s Action Alert goes on to say:

The DC’s Office of Tax and Revenue revealed that over three-fourths of tax-exempt interest income earned by DC residents goes to households who have income of $200,000 or more beyond what they earn from tax-exempt bonds. In fact, 43% of all tax-exempt interest earned on these bonds are earned by a small percentage of DC households who in 2010 made an average of $2 million from that interest.

But right now ALL millionaires who owned Out-of-State bonds before the tax took effect in 2011 still don’t have to pay taxes on their bonds. When the tax was originally passed by the Council, they added a “grandfather clause” to only put the tax on any new bonds but not existing ones. As we tell the Council NOT to repeal the Out-of-State bond tax, we must also tell them to extend that tax to ALL millionaires.

So TAKE ACTION TODAY to demand that Council choose to fund human needs and NOT a millionaire’s tax shelter!

CLICK HERE to take action today! Tell the DC Council to stop protecting a tax shelter for millionaires!

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