Category Archives: Politics

Politics

Michigan, it’s a scam….

Leave a comment

Well…I have a couple of predictions on the new budget proposals that have been put forth by the “CEO of Michigan”, and the idea that to keep our state solvent, we all need to “share the sacrifice” in lessening of services, higher taxes on individuals, and lowered expectations. Of course, the right wing press and the Chamber have come out salivating that one of their own is now governor and the proposals reflect their input…my question is: where was the people’s input? When did these folks talk to anyone but business? The answer is, they didn’t because they just don’t give a damn about you and me. This is just another example of the “long con” that the repubs are working on the people of Michigan and the rest of the US that purports to have the best interests of the people in mind, but any thought of the middle class is just a smoke screen to allow business to steal the rest of the country that they and their rich buddies don’t already own. For example, as I said yesterday, the proposed budget here in Michigan gives business a 1.8 billion tax break while raising taxes on individuals that same amount, another huge transfer of wealth from the workers to the rich, but that’s not the worst part of it. The new budget and the governor also say that they are going to phase out tax credits to retain and lure businesses to Michigan. But you and I both know that is a lie….the first time a business bitches about losing these credits, the repubs are going to fall all over themselves trying to give them more, more, more; so business taxes will continue to fall to zero while we’ll all pay for it. The repubs do nothing but lie, lie, lie, why would anyone believe them now?

This is an organized scam where business and the repubs have mapped it all out over a few year span…play on the patriotism of the people of Michigan to get them to buy into the “shared sacrifice” and then pay off business with larger and larger tax breaks and higher and higher profits so these repub legislators will have their next jobs assured after term limits force them to stop stealing from the people here….geez…

Politics

The hypocrisy disease has spread to Michigan…

Leave a comment

Well…I hope you got the chance to read some of the news coming out of Michigan today…Gov Rick Snyder unveiled one of the primary ways he proposes to balance the budget here…and guess whose backs that one is going to be carried on? While proposing the repubs cut taxes on corporations here, his new proposal raises taxes on every retired person in Michigan by raising taxes on pensions, IRA’s, and Social Security. Nope, I’m not making this up folks, the tax cuts for the rich party, who blew a gasket when Granholm proposed higher taxes as a part of the deficit solution, now propose that people that worked their whole lives to get their meager pensions subsidize business by paying more taxes. And, that is exactly what this is, you and I and the rest of us workers are being asked to build better roads, utilities, and other infrastructure for business to take advantage of while they get to retain more of the highest profits in the history of the world as they continue to send jobs overseas and ask for more, and more, and more, concessions from you and I. Where is the outcry from the right who constantly spew that taxes are too high and who sabotaged the Granholm administration for 8 years ensuring we’d end up with an untenable financial position?

I hope this bunch of hypocrites are seen for what they truly are, lying shills for business who will be taken care of by business when they leave…..to make millions from the companies they have just rewarded…geez…

Politics

This one’s a mish mash…

Leave a comment

Well…I’ve got a bunch of things running around in my head today and they are stating to itch so I thought I’d get a few down here in what I call a mish mash of ideas and thoughts. First, I am really surprised at the industry of revising history that has arisen around ole GW….the latest idea that is being floated is that Mubarek leaving in Egypt can be attributed to GW’s policy of freedom and democracy for the Arab world. I am stunned by the gall of these folks, what’s next, are they going to take credit for the snow melting here in Michigan? For the record, the Egyptian uprising was not, and I’ll repeat, was not a result of anything that GW or his cronies did…I think it was set back by their inept and simplistic foreign policy and can only be the result of the Egyptian people saying enough and having the social media tools that allowed them to move faster than the Egyptian government could. No cigar for GW….

Next…you should be appalled at the focus of the cuts in government that are coming from the repub house…as always, these are going after the poorest and least powerful with these cuts…where is there proposed cut to the subsidies for the oil industry that total almost 20 billion dollars a year? What about the subsidies for the factory farms out there and the one for ethanol? They cry and cry about letting the market control this stuff but when it comes to doing whats right, money talks and you and I get screwed. People need to wise up to these lies…and I don’t mind cutting wasteful spending, but let’s not cut early childhood education and subsidies for college students while the rich keep getting theirs….they are setting us up for long term failure as a nation where only the rich will be able to afford the education we need to compete….okay, that was only two topics…don’t think that qualifies as a mish mash…I will have a couple more later….have to have lunch first…

Politics

How can one guy be wrong all of the time?

Leave a comment

Well…I do hate to pick on one person all of the time..no that’s not true, I love to call out the idiocies and inconsistencies on both the right and left…but if you’ve been here before, you’ve noticed I do tend to to go after those on the right more…but I should because they are the ones that have taken idiocy to a new level that I could not have imagined a few years ago. This morning I was reading the Detroit News again (I know, why should I keep reading that right wing rag?) and our boy Nolan Finley is at it again…taking the president to task for going to the chamber and asking them to take part in the recovery by hiring. Well..old Nolan goes on either to lie, or to show his ignorance of economic reporting saying that companies are not going to hire until they are profitable when, as you and I and almost everyone else in the US knows, retained corporate profits are at their highest level in the history of the world. He goes on to assert that they are not hiring because of the repub talking point about uncertainty keeping business from being able to plan and know what their costs are going to be down the road. Nolan, Nolan, Nolan….the only uncertainty that business cares about it whether or not the billions they spent buying a republican house is going to give them free reign to steal more from the pockets of workers. You guys have created the uncertainty about the healthcare law….spending almost all of your time since the new congress started trying to repeal the law when you know it won’t happen and snowing your business buddies that the money they gave you is going to get them something; all the while collaborating with them to keep from hiring to make sure you have a new talking point.

But that’s not the worst of it….here in Michigan the earned income tax credit for lower income folks is being eliminated while business is given a huge tax cut…this is a tax increase no matter how the right tries to spin it…and these guys are held up as fiscally responsible when any time the previous governor asked for more taxes to help cut the deficit she was tarred as a tax and spend liberal. I guess it’s okay if you raise taxes on those that have no money, power or lobbyists…another example of the hypocrites that reside in the modern repub party….geez…

Politics

Why not here?

Leave a comment

Well…in reading all of the press about the events in Egypt, one thought just came to me…these people are protesting the theftocracy that has been running their country for the last 50 years and the media is all gung-ho about covering it…but, the question that immediately popped into my head was “why not here?” When it has been determined that it is noble to fight against the entrenched power and the cronyism that has stolen so much from the Egyptians, I see a parallel to what is going on in the US right now and the media just ignores it; and our politicians call it capitalism. The rich, connected and business are doing exactly the same thing here that has gone on in Egypt for the past 50 years…maybe in a more subtle way….if it is so noble for the Egyptians to fight, why are we that fight for the same thing here in the US called socialists, communists, or worse…un-American? Is it different here that the wholly owned subsidiary of business, the Republican Party, works every day to take away from the middle class and give more to the rich and business when the ruling party in Egypt does the same thing? Show me the difference between Egypt and us.

We need our own Tahrir Square where business and the thieves that run them are called out, where the workers that built this country are given the voice that has been silenced by money and power…until that time we are just a more developed Egypt…waiting for the smoldering embers to become a flame…geez….

Politics

What happened to shared sacrifice?

Leave a comment

Well…finally found a trend that has re-started the fires of outrage somewhat and it should do the same for anyone who believes there should still be a middle class here in America. This latest attack on the workers here in the US is led by the repub governors that were elected in the last election and who have made it an unstated, but nonetheless all too real purpose of their administrations to break the public sector unions. As a financial realist as opposed to an agenda driven repub, I too understand that there are costs in many of the states that are unsustainable…but this is not an act of god as the repubs would have you believe but is a direct result of the misguided (or I should say planned) repub bowing at the altar of tax cuts to ensure that they ‘starve the beast” since they don’t believe there is a need for government at all. The spurious numbers they use to support their contentions that slashing the pay here in Michigan is that public sector wages have gone up in the last 10 years while in the private sector, wages have been stagnant or falling. I think their logic is flawed but consistent with their overall goals; to destroy all unions and the one bright spot for the middle class in an environment where the richest have seen their compensation double in the same time period. So, why no cry that these folks are overpaid and should give back to the states where they reside? To ask middle class folks to give back when the rich are given tax breaks at the expense of you and I is morally reprehensible but goes to the agenda of the repubs….they will never be happy until the rich have it all and the rest of us are left to feed off the scraps that fall from their tables….

All of us should just say stop…let’s expose this agenda and start working together to ensure that you, I, and our children only share in the sacrifice to get this country moving again…not make all of it…geez…

Politics

Let’s end this Reagan as god nonsense….

Leave a comment

Well….if you’ve read the papers or turned on the tv lately, you’ve no doubt seen the increasing deification of Ronald Reagan that has surrounded the 100th anniversary of his birth. You would think this guy was the second coming the way his legacy is being scrubbed and polished by the right as they bow to the altar of tax cuts. There is only one thing that this mediocre at best president should be remembered for and that was his fervent belief in tax cuts for the rich and the whole trickle-down economic voodoo that has been foist upon the country by the repubs ever since. The one thing these idiots don’t want anyone to remember is that those tax cuts that exploded the deficit in the 80′s never resulted in any additional growth in jobs or standard of living for the vast majority of Americans; exactly the same thing we saw with the Bush tax cuts…no job growth and an exploding deficit that the repubs now say is a bad thing when, up to the last year or so, they chanted the mantra that “deficits don’t matter” only to change their tune when the dems took the White House. I hope you remember that this whole tax cut nonsense was based on theories by the disgraced economist Arthur Laffer….and his “Laffer Curve” that proposed that cutting taxes would increase revenue….never happened and yet the repubs are still clinging to those old, thoroughly discredited ideas and trying the same thing again expecting different results.

So, let’s stop this nonsense that he was one of the best presidents in history…best for his party, maybe, but for the vast majority of Americans he was and still is a failure. One note of disclosure here…I voted for this guy…now I cringe at that thought.

Politics

Just a short one….

Leave a comment

Well…just had a thought and I may have shared it before but I’m going to get this down again since I think it’s an important one. Did you notice that while the repubs are always screaming about “activist” judges and courts, it is the first place they turn when they don’t get their way? And, they always make sure that their lawsuits will get heard by judges that can be relied upon to tread the repub line when they are supposed to follow the law and precedent. This crap started with Bush V. Gore and continues to this day with the healthcare law that most of the people in this country don’t want repealed. But, the repubs want to undue the will of the people for their corporate masters, as always….I think they should be sued for malfeasance in office and have them have to pay damages to you and me…

Politics

Lying is alive and well here in Michigan…

Leave a comment

Well….I had hope that with a new governor who ran on the premise that he was going to be the “CEO” of Michigan and was going to tell the truth, we were going to get something different than the standard issue repub. That hope is now gone with the issuance of his financial road map for Michigan’s future and the blatant skewing of statistics that is being used to attack the unionized public sector workers here. I don’t think these guys are going to be happy until everyone here in Michigan is working for minimum wage and then they’ll take that away. So, let’s get to the lie…and it is a whopper….to prove that the public sector workers are the biggest part of the budget problem here, they compared these full time workers with some benefits to the population as a whole that includes part time and under employed workers and then shouted from the rooftops that “see, these people are overpaid by almost 20%” compared to the general population. No effort to normalize by age, education, or even to using similar private sector jobs.

But, as you know, these are the same, tired old tactics that the repubs always use…and now Snyder is trying to walk back from the comments, just like they always do….say something really outrageous and then the merely unreasonable appears to be a compromise while they stand up and say how terrible the other side is because the repubs have offered to move on the issue. Liars all….

Politics

Manny, Manny, Manny….

Leave a comment

Well….I just don’t get it…don’t these morons on the right think we have memory? Let’s get right to it again…over the past few years, the repubs have repeated, and repeated, and repeated that they think the federal government is too large and intrusive…led by ole Manny Lopez here who has said many times that he thinks it would be better if the state was just left to go it’s own way and to hell with the federal government…and any time that Governor Granholm went to Washington to try to get help for the state, it was a an extension of the welfare state mentality. But, today, in the Detroit News, Manny goes on that it is a wonderful thing that our current governor went to Washington to ask for money for the state going so far as to say that the previous Democratic governor never did that; a statement that is breathtakingly disingenuous. He then goes on to applaud the current governor for going 5 times to business leaders to get their advice, stating that is something that governor Granholm never did. Gee, I wonder why Manny? Could it be because governor Snyder is one of them….and puts their welfare above that of the workers of the state and just rolls over to whatever they want since they bought the election for him? C’mon Manny…at least try to be a journalist….oh, that’s right, you’re not….my mistake…geez…