Well…the latest move by our gov here in Michigan is another slap in the face for the working people here…in case you haven’t heard, his latest proposal to transfer all of the tax burden here to the people of Michigan comes in the form of a proposal to pay for all of the road improvements that are sorely needed by raising the fee to register a car here by $160 per car. Yep, you heard it right…he wants to install another regressive tax on individuals in this state that can’t even afford what the fee is now…and this will be in addition to the current fees that can run upwards of $200 per car. All of this to raise 1.4 billion dollars that is necessary to fix our roads….all this after he raised the taxes of everyone but corporations…all of this after he gave away 1.3 billion dollars to corporations to create jobs…and guess who doesn’t own cars? So, all of the damage being done to the roads by trucks that carry to goods for corporations is going to be paid for by you and me? What does he want next….for us to build factories and offices for them? Oh, that’s right…we’re already doing that with the 1.3 billion in tax cuts that you and I are paying for….can you say class warfare again? Geez…
Well…was just sitting here looking at the F-1 website and a thought came to me…they do that sometimes, as you can see from me being 5 ahead for the month. What spurred the thought was the return of the discredited notion of “trickle down” economics that posits that if you give more and more tax cuts to the rich and corporations, that money will trickle down to the middle class through an increased number of jobs. The question I have to ask is “how is this different from increased tax revenue going to the government to create jobs?” At least when the money goes to the government and it is spent for infrastructure repair and development, the people have some say through their elected officials on where and how the money is spent and which jobs are created. Infrastructure jobs can’t be sent overseas like what has happened with the tax cuts to corporations and the huge wave of outsourcing that followed the tax cuts. I’d rather trust the government to do this kind of thing…corporations have shown that they will use tax cuts not to create jobs, but to enrich the 1% who have already stolen most of the country from the rest of us..geez…
Well…this one is pointed at all of you right wing idiots out there that say the OWS protesters are just a bunch of whiny losers that don’t know what they are protesting…according to a report out today done by the Congressional Budget Office…the non-partisan arm of congress that is charged with coming up with the cost of new legislation among other things…the income of the top 1% of people in this country has tripled….yep, tripled since 1979…with most of that growth coming after the Bush tax cuts in 2000 while the rest of the country’s workers income increased a paltry 80%….so, 300% to 80%…pretty easy numbers to understand even for the troglodytes on the right. How are you guys going to wave away this one? When you take into account the productivity gains over that same time period, real wages for the bottom 80% of us actually went down over the same time period….and the right wonders why the rest of us are so pissed off. It is just this kind of inequality where the top 1% takes no risks and has no risks…where they just sit back and rake in the cash through connections and rigging the system that is finally triggering a broad based revolt of the working people in this country….it’s about time…geez…
Well…I find it funny that ole Rick out of Texas is rolling out his “revolutionary” new flat tax plan to match up with ole Herm’s 999 plan and neither one of them understands that things have changed or are changing in this country….the media has started listening to this nonsense and the false equivalency that has rotted our media discourse is starting to be rolled back…and the American people are finally getting the truth behind these plans…that they are slanted to cutting taxes for the rich at the expense of everyone else. I hope the days of cutting taxes for the “job creators” who really aren’t are over….that the nonsense of giving more and more to business with the hope that they will create jobs will finally be reconciled with reality…that not one job will be created by tax cuts, that not one company will add one job unless the demand is there for the goods and services they produce, and the only way to create demand is by rising wages for the middle class. But, the repubs just don’t get it…they are still playing out of the 2010 playbook when no one was paying attention….now, with the OWS protests and a newly awakened media….there is shift back to reality based governance where facts have regained their superiority to the gut feelings that the right truly believes are equivalent….none too soon either…geez…
Well…just a short one on the ongoing pattern of the repubs that only believes that a law or agreement should be adhered to when it suits them. The latest example of this nonsense is the piling on that happened when Obama announced that all combat troops would be withdrawn from Iraq by the end of the year….and the republicans went nuts calling it a grave failure of diplomacy by Obama’s administration. I’m laughing right now with the absurdity of it all…after all, the agreement to withdraw the troops was negotiated and signed by ole GW….so now, all of the repub candidates and some others on the right are blaming this on Obama? And, they are proposing abrogating another agreement just for political points in an election? These people are the worst kind of panderers, people who will say anything to inflame their base, no matter the damage to the US’s international standing…just like the neocons did getting us into Iraq…it just proves that these folks have an inability to learn…or to live in a reality based world…geez…
Well…I wonder when the general public is going to wake up and get it that the repubs idea of fairness is to tax the poor and middle class while giving more and more breaks to the rich? The latest folly is ole Mitt’s idea of reforming the tax code by replacing it with a flat tax…and idea that came and went a long time ago that would be a tax cut for the rich while raising taxes on everyone else…just like ole Herm’s 999 plan. Why do the repubs hate the poor and middle class so much? That is evidenced here in Michigan by the scramble of the repubs to take away the last vestiges of the safety net by throwing people off welfare and limiting unemployment and food stamps for the newly poor. And those moves were supported by a sense of urgency, like the entire state will disappear if we don’t save a few million dollars by attacking the least of us. But, when it comes to cutting their own benefits to help with the state budget deficit…like the lifetime healthcare legislators get after just one term in office, that can wait until 2014 when most of this current crop of thieves will already be retired…just more and more of the “I’ve got mine, the hell with everyone else” attitude that has been the repubs mantra for the last thirty years….when are we going to get tired of this nonsense?
Well…it was an interesting article by ole Nolan in the Detroit News this morning where he decries the lack of civility and bi-partisanship that is coming from the Obama administration on a range of issues….and he goes on and on citing examples where Obama has ratcheted up his rhetoric against the repubs plans for the economy. Nolan, Nolan, Nolan….Obama tried bipartisanship and got nothing from it but being kicked in the teeth by you and your repub buddies, he tried conciliation and compromise but your thug party did nothing but try to shut down the government to get what Boehner called “90 percent of what the repubs wanted”. I think ole Nolan is having the same reaction that all bullies have when their victims stand up to them..they go running home to mama complaining that it’s not fair…how does that one feel Nolan? It’s just another example of the thugs in the repub party who have no solutions for the middle class, no solutions for unemployment, and no solutions for this country and they know it…so they have to do the only thing they know how to do; gin up some phony attack that will distract the voters and keep their rich buddies from paying their fair shares….geez…
Well…I am not surprised with the now concerted effort to vilify and demonize the “Occupy” movement that is spreading across the world that is coming from the right…after all, they have a vested interest in keeping the status quo where 20% of the country who are rich and connected take, and take, and take while the rest of us keep butting our heads against this money and power. Now, some of the golden oldies of division that the repubs trot out any time they feel threatened with the truth are weaving their way into the daily talking points and are getting constant airing on Fox News…that the movement is overrun by “commies” and anti-semites and propose that “Occupy” is just a cover for socialists trying to force everyone into labor camps and confiscate the wealth of the rich for redistribution. I mean, really? The rich have been confiscating the wealth of everyone else for the past two decades by the purchasing of the government through the repubs and that is okay? Oh, I get it…it’s okay to redistribute wealth up but not down. I finally have a glimmer of hope that the rich and connected have overplayed their hand by bringing their naked theft into the open and not caring who knows about it…starting in Wisconsin and continuing with the Cain 999 plan that would cut taxes for the top 5% while raising taxes on the rest of us. Keep it up “Occupy”…the screaming you hear coming from the right is fear and the repubs understand the use of fear better than anyone else…geez…
Well…read an interesting little tidbit in one of the papers this morning that I thought I’d write a short comment about….if corporations are “people” according to the supreme court, why haven’t any of them been sentenced to the death penalty in Texas? There have been many cases of negligence by corporations that have resulted in human deaths there, but not once have they been held accountable as a human would have been. So, what is it Rick? You revel in the fact that you have put more people to death than any other governor in history but when it comes to holding corporations accountable, you just turn a blind eye to make sure your campaign money keeps rolling in. It is such an egregious pattern of allowed lawbreaking by the repubs that puts the rule of law second to political gains and allows felons like Dick Cheney to walk away from breaking both domestic and international law with impunity….oh, I get it…it’s George Orwell at work from “Animal Farm”….”all pigs are equal but some are more equal than others..” Geez….
Well….it’s a good thing that, finally, the media is starting to catch up with the story of how connected to the Koch brothers Herman Cain is…and if you like what Scott Walker did in Wisconsin (the first governor from Kochland) you will just love what ole Herman has in store for all of us. Isn’t it enough that almost all of his campaign staff has worked for the Koch brothers or one of their front companies over the years and whose strings are still being pulled by the Koch’s? Or should we instead just look at his performance on “Meet the Press” this past Sunday? This man is an idiot, another repub who thinks that just repeating things makes them true, and who truly believes that just because something is simple (like his 999 tax plan) it has to be correct. I marveled when he said that the new 9% national sales tax couldn’t be added to the state sales taxes we already have….so now the repubs don’t believe in math? We already have enough stupidity in Washington, let’s not add to it…geez…