Tag Archives: deficits

Politics

The results are in…

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Well…this one may be long and convoluted but I really wanted to get to the Michigan budget crisis now that there are real numbers to be put with the plans that were presented by Gov. Snyder…..I’m not going to bore you with listing specifics because those numbers are readily available elsewhere and I just don’t want to swamp you with minutiae. So, let’s get to it….business gets their 1.8 billion tax break….and let’s be clear right away…no study has shown that tax breaks, in the absence of a rise in demand, result in an increase in jobs. With the retained profits of companies already a their highest point in history, why would you think that giving them more profits would result in hiring of more workers? It just doesn’t work that way and yet the faith-based economics of the repubs continue to throw money at business that just ends up padding the wallets of those at the top. The right way to do it would be to ensure there is an increase in demand by tax incentives or higher wages for workers…folks, this is econ 101 stuff that everyone seems to know but the repubs and it exposes this governor’s plan as driven by ideology more than economics. Did you expect anything else from a governor whose only claim to fame was to take his golden parachute worth hundreds of millions while shipping all of the jobs at Gateway to China?

Now, let’s get to who is going to pay for these business tax cuts….the analysis out today, and it is in the right leaning Detroit News, is that the majority of the “shared sacrifice” comes from retirees and the working poor…those who are the least able to afford this huge tax increase…and, make no mistake, this is being done because the repubs always make people pay that have no power or influence…the tax effect for the wealthy here in Michigan would be an increase that is, on average, 77 dollars a year while that of the retirees an working poor would be in the thousands….this is morally reprehensible but true to form for these thieves. Next, let’s get to the the idea of the Michigan film tax credit, that Snyder has proposed be limited to 25 million dollars a year. Under the current plan, for every dollar of tax credit, Michigan sees 6 dollars of economic activity and has resulted in the only area of job growth in the state; diversifying our economy and starting many new businesses that actually employ people…not just giving more money to the rich. But, as we all know, the film industry is a little more liberal leaning than the general population and it is payback time here in Michigan….Snyder will do anything, just like the rest of the repubs, to crush the opposition even if it means putting people out of work and destroying one of the only bright spots in Michigan’s economy.

Okay, I’m running out of steam here but you can see from just these few instances that “shared sacrifice” means shared by the poor and working people, imposed by the rich, benefiting the rich, and everyone else can go to hell….geez…

Politics

This one’s a mish mash…

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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

Let’s end this Reagan as god nonsense….

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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.

Uncategorized

It’s pretty predictable…

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Well….as you know, the “bipartisan” group on the deficit leaked some of it’s initial recommendations the other day and I had to laugh with the predictability of them…these idiots feel that all of the financial problems that this country faces now and in the future are the fault of people like you and me…the people that worked all their lives and expect that the commitments made to you and that you paid for through taxes be kept. They go on to state that all of the social safety nets that make this a civilized country (and that have already been shredded by the repubs) need to be reduced or eliminated or we will never reduce the deficits. They also propose that the retirement age be raised to 69 since people are living longer…but they neglect to quote the statistics that clearly show that the only increase in life expectancy is in the group of upper income people…those of us in the rest of the classes have seen life expectancy stay flat or even reduce over the past decade.

You can look at this any way you want, but I see this as just another repub tactic to give cover to their plan to continue the redistribution of wealth upwards…since there was no mention of raising taxes on the rich or corporations but cutting their taxes more..even though their tax burden is the lowest its been in more than 50 years. If you listened to any of the rhetoric coming from the right during the election (before they were silenced by their handlers) their true plans were clear…they want all of the safety nets gone..they feel they are “socialism” and trick people into not taking care of themselves.

When are we going to fight back against this nonsense? A society is not a winner-take-all proposition where the rich and powerful get all of the rewards that the economy has to offer…it is supposed to be an entity where we take care of each other and revel in the success of the least advantaged….geez…

Politics

Manny Lopez is an idiot…still….

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Well….have to go off on this idiot Manny Lopez from the Detroit News again….he’s back with more of the crap that he has been spouting that if we criticize the repubs for opposing the extension of unemployment benefits it’s just Democratic politics…there is no substance to it. He continues to make light of Keynesian economics and pushes the voodoo economics that growth can come only through tax cuts and cutting spending. I understand he wants to repeat the Repub talking points but to ridicule J.M. Keynes; one of the greatest minds in economics, to make silly political points would be the same as if I would go to Miguel Cabrera and tell him that he is hitting all wrong. Manny, reading and talking about economics is not the same as being an economist…and, while I support your right to spout off and be wrong, I am going to call you and your repub cronies on your hatred for the middle class. You rail on about paying for the 30 billion for unemployment benefits, where the hell were you when the top 1% of the country was getting a TRILLION dollars in tax cuts. Let me get this straight, you have a problem with 2.5 million middle class getting unemployment benefits so they can eat, but you just love the idea of 3 million of the wealthy getting 30 times more? Why didn’t you call for these tax cuts, or the war in Iraq, or the subsidies for big business be paid for? It’s just another instance of cloaking your hatred for the middle class; the working class, in pretend values….geez….

Politics

A new low for these hypocrites….

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Well…I’m sure by now, you’ve heard the new repub spin on the failure to pass extensions of the unemployment insurance that has expired for millions of Americans…that it is the Democrats fault since the repubs will vote for it if they cut the money from somewhere else in the budget…which, on it’s face, doesn’t seem like a bad idea. But, the question I have to ask is, “why didn’t they have to cut other spending to finance the Iraq war?” Why didn’t they have to cut spending to pay for the trillion dollars of the Bush tax cuts? It is the sorriest sense of hypocrisy that deficits are so important to them now when they had no problem giving oil companies billions in subsidies when they were making record profits but they can’t allow any increase in the deficit to help American families continue to eat. And the Obama haters go on and on and on with their lies and distortions….I hope these idiots get laid off and then there will be no money to help them….

Politics

I think it’s a long con….

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Okay…I’m sure you’ve read about the concerted effort from the right to say that the most important thing for the economy right now is to address the deficits and the fear that inflation may be on the horizon. If you’ve studied economics at all, you know that in a recession, what needs to happen is that the government deficit spends to stimulate portions of the economy that the private sector can’t. This has worked in every recession/depression that the tactic was tried but what I see now is the repubs from David Brooks to Boehner and their ilk are calling for cutting government spending and have categorically rejected the latest call for federal funding to states and cities who are laying off people and cutting back services. Now, they may say that this is perfectly consistent with their conservative views but I see it as a plan for them to ensure that the Obama administration fails so they can go back to the tax-cutting, reward the rich policies that have led to where we are today. And they have done a great job of convincing the man on the street that government intervention for any reason is a bad thing. They use for the underpinnings of their argument that the stimulus package is not adding millions of jobs but only 41K in the last month but what they don’t say is that employment is always a lagging indicator, especially in a recession as severe as this one.

I’ll bet you didn’t believe I could work up any outrage today…I’m glad I could prove you wrong…
One thing I can believe is that these guys are using the misery of the unemployed for their own political gain…geez…

Politics

All deficits are not created equal

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Well…the latest rant from the righties is that Bush’s deficits were nowhere near as large or bad as the one’s that have come from the Obama administration. What most people of both right and left fail to realize is what I think is the core distinction between the two: The Bush deficits were done by the choice of his administration to give tax cuts when we were fighting two wars. On the other hand, the Obama deficits are, to some extent, inherited from the Bushies, but mostly are a result of the economics that anyone learns in econ 101: in the midst of a severe recession, one of the best ways to stimulate the economy and help end that recession is for the government to deficit spend. Is the problem that deficit spending will help keep the middle class working? It’s been clear for a long time that the Repubs don’t really care what happens to the middle class…and yet so many of them keep believing the lies they are being fed and keep voting for the same people that gave us Enron, Blackwater, and how many other instances of looting from our society. Geez…