Category Archives: Economy

Let Them Eat Horse!

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According to new studies, 1 in 3 Americans believe that hamburger tainted with horse meat should be given to the poor. In essence, they’re saying, “I wouldn’t eat it, but it’s good enough for the poor.”

Of course, in the minds of Teapublican deficit hawks, the poor are merely freeloaders who don’t deserve what the hard-working job creators enjoy. But why stop with horse meat? Why not subject the poor to other indignities?

For example, we could give them all of our outdated and spoiled food. Instead of paying rent for community food shelves, we could just throw the food in dumpsters and turn all of the poor into dumpster-divers.

Why waste perfectly good medicines on the poor? This is a perfect opportunity to get rid of expired medicines and avoid polluting the environment at the same time. And you know all of those medicines that have been deemed unsafe for consumption? If we gave those to the poor, we’d eventually have less poor – especially if we quit wasting money on MedicAid and hospitalization.

We could save even more money by throwing all of the poor out of public housing. And why waste money on educating poor children? If they learn too much, they’ll just call for class warfare. Finally, why not build a fence around our nation’s poorest land and let the poor create their own country (it worked for Native Americans). We could surround it with video cameras and broadcast it on a network channel as the hottest new reality show.

We could call it Les Miserables America.

Does Mitch McConnell Deserve The Title “Leader?”

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Following President Obama’s dinner with Senate Republicans, the invitees were asked to comment on the evening. All said it was productive and one stated that he was surprised to learn that the president had previously offered a variety of spending cuts to prevent sequestration.

Really?!!!

This is surprising on a couple of fronts. First, the president’s proposed budget cuts have been chronicled in the national media for many months. They even have been listed on the White House website for anyone with enough curiosity to read. Second, it would appear that Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell is guilty of sabotaging the budget negotiations by failing to communicate with members of his own party.

How can the president hope to negotiate deficit reduction when the Minority “Leader” fails to lead?

Of course, McConnell’s failure should come as no surprise to anyone who has followed his “leadership” the past four years. In the days immediately following the election of President Obama, McConnell famously stated that his number one priority was to assure that Obama would be a one-term president.

Try as he might, McConnell even failed at that.

Despite a record number of filibusters, stonewalling, caterwauling, and every other form of obstruction, President Obama was re-elected in a landslide. Now it seems McConnell has even failed to keep his budget sabotage secret.

McConnell’s failures should not only assure defeat in his own re-election efforts. He should be locked out of any further negotiations. By ignoring McConnell and Speaker John Boehner, Congress might actually get something done.

Tax Cuts For The Rich, Budget Cuts For The Poor.

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Following are a few numbers that clearly show the results of more than 40 years of Republican economic policies:

1 percent of Americans now control more than 40 percent of the nation’s wealth, while the bottom 40 percent of Americans control 0.2 percent of the wealth.

46.2 million Americans are living in poverty. 3.9 million working Americans are paid at or below the minimum wage. 12 million Americans are unemployed. 650,000 Americans are homeless. 50 million Americans, including 17 million children, don’t know where their next meal is coming from. 48.6 million don’t have health insurance.

Naturally, Teapublicans in Congress want to protect these people from further harm. I’m referring, of course, to the 1 percent! Even though taxes for the wealthy are at historic lows, Teapublicans believe they’re overtaxed. They absolutely refuse to consider asking these people to pay one more cent of their enormous wealth.

Those other people, according to Teapublican leaders, are merely the freeloaders who rely on the federal government for assistance. 

Is it any wonder, then, that Congress is locked in a budget standoff with the president? The austerity cuts resulting from sequestration will cut 9 percent from unemployment checks and $175 million from energy assistance for the poor. Sequestration will cut rental assistance to 125,000 low-income families. It will put 100,000 previously homeless back on the streets. It will cut 70,000 kids from Head Start. And it’s projected to cost up to 750,000 jobs.

But these cuts are less cruel than the Teapublican demands to end sequestration. They want to cut SNAP food assistance for the poor. They want to cut Medicaid health assistance for children and low-income families. They want to cut Medicare, Social Security and more.

But don’t worry about the poor. They’ll get by. After all, they still own 0.2 percent of our nation’s wealth.

The Real Hunger Games.

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What’s your definition of a third world country?

When I was a child (far too long ago) third world countries were defined as those that didn’t produce enough food for their own citizens. I remember photographs of these faraway places…photos of people with blank stares and bellies bloated by starvation. If I failed to clean my plate, I was reminded that children in China were starving. (I never quite understood how my cleaning a plate helped the Chinese, but I felt sorry for them anyway.)

Today, many of those going hungry are right here…in the United States!

According to the directors of a new film, A Place at the Table, 50 million (1 in 6) Americans, including 17 million children, don’t have reliable sources of food. 1 in 2 American children will need food assistance in their lifetimes.

These aren’t the lazy layabouts who suck off the government teat that Teapublicans want you to think they are. More than 80 percent are from working families. The parents simply don’t earn enough to pay for rent, for clothes, for day care, for school books, for transportation and for food.

How is this possible in America?

It’s made possible by politicians who continue to cut taxes for the wealthy and powerful; by corporations that pay millions to CEOs and poverty level wages to workers; by politicians who refuse to raise the minimum wage even though it has lagged far behind inflation; by politicians who believe in corporate welfare but not human welfare; by politicians who want to balance the budget by cutting food stamps and access to medical care rather than our bloated defense budget.

We can change this.

We can donate to food shelves. We can volunteer to help those in need. We can support government programs to help raise families out of poverty. We can make certain that anyone who is willing to work can afford a roof over their heads and food on the table. We can demand that our politicians prioritize people over corporations. We can demand that they put people above partisanship; children above debt reduction.

We can end hunger in America. 

Since Most Americans Want Compromise, Why Elect Those Who Don’t?

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A variety of polls show that the overwhelming majority of Americans want their elected officials to compromise. Yet the US House of Representatives is controlled by those who view compromise as a weakness.

Speaker Boehner can’t even bring himself to say the word!

As a result, President Obama was forced to sign an order implementing the most ill-advised, ham-handed budget cuts in history. $89 billion will be indiscriminately cut from every federal program except critical national defense and Social Security. If allowed to stand, these cuts will have devastating effects on our nation – especially those who are out of work, the working poor and others struggling to survive.

These cuts have been made because traditional Republicans are afraid of the Tea Party nitwits within their own party. They’re afraid to end tax loopholes that allow multinational corporations to stash money offshore. They’re afraid to end tax loopholes for the wealthy who are enjoying tax rates that are near historic lows. They’re afraid to compromise with the president for fear of being “primaried” and replaced by even more teabaggers. 

Although, I admit the prospect of even more angry teabaggers in Congress is frightening, it’s time for traditional Republicans to grow a pair.

It’s not that President Obama hasn’t reached across the aisle to avoid sequestration. After stabilizing our economy in the first year of his administration, the president has cut the deficit each year. In fact, we have already seen the largest deficit reductions since the years immediately following World War II. Yet that isn’t enough for the extreme wing of the Republican Party. Teapublicans have refused offers of $2 to $3 in cuts for every $1 of revenue created by eliminating tax loopholes.

Still there is no compromise from the radical right. They refuse to negotiate with the president and they refuse to listen to the American people. Of course, they won’t suffer as the result of their actions. We will.

I hope voters remember that next election.

Supreme Attack On Voting Rights.

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Today, the Supreme Court took up a challenge to the Voting Rights Act of 1964 which was renewed in 2006. If you’re not familiar with the Act, it was passed by Congress to prevent many of the states of the old Confederacy from denying African-Americans representation and the right to vote.

For many years, in the Jim Crow South, blacks were denied the vote through a combination of literacy tests, poll taxes, outright violence and intimidation. To end, or at least reduce, those practices, Congress demanded that southern states present any changes in voting procedures and redistricting to the Department of Justice for prior approval. Frustrated by the restrictions, Shelby County, Alabama challenged the law in court with the backing of the Republican Party.

It’s no surprise that Republicans would want to repeal the Voting Rights Act so they can better gerrymander congressional districts and suppress minority votes. After all, African-Americans voted overwhelmingly for President Obama.

Why wouldn’t they? Barack Obama is the first president with African-American heritage in our nation’s history. Moreover, since the Republican Party embraced the Southern Strategy, it has consistently supported policies that discriminate against minorities. GOP economic policies have been particularly damaging to minorities.

According to a new study by the Brandeis Institute on Assets and Social Policy, the wealth gap between blacks and whites has accelerated since the early days of Trickle Down Economics in 1984. Over a 25-year period, the median net worth of white households has grown to $265,000 compared to just $28,500 for black households!

If Justice Scalia has his way in deciding the Voting Rights Act, things are bound to get worse.

During oral arguments before the Court, Scalia said the act represents the “perpetuation of racial entitlement!” Say what? Exactly how does this pompous right wing apologist think African-Americans are entitled? Entitled to less representation than they already have? To be denied the right to vote? To even less wealth?

After hundreds of years of slavery and discrimination, it is likely to take many more generations of protections for African-Americans to level the playing field. At the time of emancipation, very few were literate and most had no property or assets of any kind. They were denied adequate wages for back-breaking jobs. They were segregated into slums with inferior schools. They were denied the right to vote. More recently, they have seen multinational corporations ship their jobs overseas.

Unfortunately, African-Americans and other minorities still need help to end the cycle of poverty and violence. They still need help achieving equal representation. And they need help to fend off win-at-any-cost politicians from marginalizing their representation and denying them the right to vote.

What they don’t need is a fat white man in a robe making insensitive and racist comments before voting to limit the few protections they have.

A Fair Solution For The Debt “Crisis.”

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For the past four years, we’ve heard a lot of whining about the federal deficits and debt, primarily from red states.  Although quiet during the prolific spending spree of the Bush administration, once President Obama took office, Teapublican anger swelled throughout the old South and in states like Arizona.

Ironically, many of those who scream the loudest receive Social Security and Medicare. And many others take advantage of other federally-funded social programs such as food stamps, unemployment insurance and the GI Bill.

That caused me to wonder how the contributions of the most vocal states stack up compared to the largess they receive from the federal government. Certainly, given their angst, you would expect that they pay far more in federal taxes than they get back.

You would be wrong.

In 2007 (the most recent data I could find), Arizona contributed $35,485 million in federal taxes and received $48,012 million back in federal spending. So the state received $1,976 more per person than it contributed. In other words, it’s a state of “takers.”

In fact, of the 28 states that receive more than they contribute, the vast majority are reliably red!

On the other hand, the vast majority of the “giver” states are reliably blue. The top five (Delaware, Minnesota, New Jersey, Connecticut and New York) are all blue states, contributing $4,500 to $12,285 per person more than they receive.

Of the 22 states that pay in more than they get back, only Arkansas, Georgia, Nebraska, and Texas are red states.

So here’s my solution for the federal deficit: Let’s give red state Teapublicans what they want. Let’s balance the federal spending in those states to the amount they pay in federal taxes. All states can share the cost of national defense, natural emergencies, etc. But when it comes to the cost of highways, roads, bridges, universities, health care and retirement programs, each state is on its own. That means red states will have to raise taxes or dramatically cut services.

Then we’ll see if they still think the federal government is the enemy.

The Worse-Than-Do-Nothing Congress.

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In 1948, President Harry Truman labeled the 80th Congress the “Do Nothing” Congress since it refused to pass most of the bills of the Franklin D. Roosevelt administration and the Truman administration. Instead, it focused on passing a few bills to benefit big business.

Believe it or not, the recently ended 112th Congress was worse!

Not only was the 112th unproductive. It was counter-productive. At several points in the last two years, its approval rating among voters was 10 percent. That’s right, 10 percent! That makes it even more unpopular than communism which has an approval rating of 11 percent in the US.

Among the 112th’s few accomplishments was lowering the credit rating of the US government for the first time in history. By blustering and balking at raising the debt ceiling and threatening to pay debts that Congress had already spent, it nearly collapsed the world economy. And instead of focusing on creating jobs and improving the US economy, it spent most of its time trying to discredit President Obama.

It passed no bills to build infrastructure, to increase exports, to bring jobs back home from overseas, to reform immigration, to regulate the type of military-style weapons used in the Newtown massacre, or to bring fairness to our tax codes.

Indeed, the 112th passed the fewest bills ever.

The 112th rabidly talked of lowering the deficit and reducing the national debt, but it succeeded only in kicking the can down the road for 11 months. In doing so, it created an artificial “fiscal cliff” that nearly dragged us back into recession. Teapublicans in the 112th bragged that they didn’t know the meaning of compromise. Dominated by a rabid Tea Party caucus led by likely escaped mental patient Michele Bachmann, the 112th even refused to follow its own leadership.

Incredulously, it even refused to vote for financial aid for the victims of Hurricane Sandy! An inaction that prompted several of its national leaders to say that if you donate to GOP campaigns, you must be “out of your mind.”

So goodbye, 112th! You will be forgotten, but not missed.

UPDATE: Following its failure to negotiate a long-term solution for the “fiscal cliff,” Congress’ approval rate is now in the single digits. Understandably, Congress is less popular than head lice and cockroaches! 

“Fiscal Cliff” Bill Includes More Largess For Wall Street.

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Avoiding the “fiscal cliff” should have been a simple matter of extending the Bush tax cuts for 98 percent of Americans. After all, this was the central issue in the presidential campaign. But the GOP (Guardians Of Privilege) have never passed up an opportunity to take from the poor and give to the rich.

So buried in the bill are a few very expensive gifts for the rich and the powerful.

For example, Section 322 is a $9 billion provision that allows banks and multinational corporations to defer taxes when they engage in “active financing.” Their lobbyists claim it’s necessary to help them compete overseas. But critics say that it’s a merely another windfall that encourages the banks and manufacturers to create more jobs overseas.

Yet another payoff to Wall Street is Section 328 which extends tax-exempt financing for the area around the former World Trade Center for another year. Originally intended to help fund reconstruction following 9/11, much of the financing has been used to build luxury apartments, instead. It even helped finance the construction of Goldman Sachs’ new headquarters (as if they actually needed the help).

Of course, news of the bill’s passage sent the Dow Jones Industrial Average soaring. As a result, hedge fund managers and the other Wall Street executives can rest assured that they’ll be in line for seven figure bonuses again this year.

So congratulations, fellow taxpayers. Thanks to lobbyists and the GOP, we just gave the wealthy and the powerful a late Christmas gift.

And all we got in return was the shaft!

From The Age Of Enlightened Minds To The Age Of Dimwits.

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The so-called Tea Party “Patriots” are fond of comparing themselves to the Founding Fathers in order to promote their self-serving, narrow-minded philosophy. Indeed, they named themselves after those courageous souls who dared to stand up to the British at places such as Boston Harbor, Lexington and Concord.

Yet today’s teabaggers couldn’t be more different from the likes of Thomas Jefferson and Benjamin Franklin.

The Founding Fathers were committed to education, to science and reason. By contrast, the Tea Party is committed to superstition, faith and brutish behavior. The Tea Party believes in slashing funding for education. Its followers dismiss science, and they consider those who are well-educated to be anti-American elitists.

According to Jon Meacham’s wonderful biography Thomas Jefferson, The Art of Power, Jefferson was an avid student of history and philosophy. He believed that “…reason, not revelation or unquestioned tradition or superstition, deserved pride of place in human affairs.”

Tea Party adherents, on the other hand, reject reason and cling to an inaccurate version of history in order to make our nation fit their narrow-minded ideology. An ideology based on the Articles of Confederation rather than the Constitution which replaced them, and on a plutocratic interpretation of Adam Smith’s An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations that seems to reject government intervention in the free market. Yet many scholars reject that interpretation, pointing to the fact that, time and again, Smith warned of the dangers of businesses forming cabals and monopolies in order to fix the highest price “which can be squeezed out of the buyers.”

In order to realize the best possible future for our nation, who are we to follow? George Washington or Eric Cantor? Benjamin Franklin or Sarah Palin? Thomas Jefferson or Michele Bachmann?

You decide.