Well…if you remember back a few months, there was this long, drawn out negotiation that led to the debt ceiling being raised and the repubs agreed to cuts in the Pentagon budget while the dems agreed to some cuts to the social safety net…a necessary compromise to keep the government from defaulting on its debts. Now, though, we have the repubs in the House reneging on the agreement by proposing that the Pentagon cuts be restored and paying for them by taking an axe to programs like food stamps and others that help support the poor and middle class. When does the military/industrial complex have to sacrifice like the rest of us? And, when are the repubs going to think of the citizens of this country and not just the businesses that buy them their seats? It’s a matter of priorities and I think the repubs have theirs all wrong….cutting a few billion out of a bloated military budget won’t make us less safe…hell, we could save over 10 billion a month just by ending the Afghan war and bringing our troops home…so why don’t we do that instead of asking the poor and middle class to give up what little is left of their safety net? It’s this backwards thinking by the repubs that keeps us from rebuilding our roads and the rest of our country just so these chicken hawks can puff out their chests and scream “we’re number one”…..and you’ll get even more of that if more repubs are elected in the fall….geez…
Tag Archives: safety nets
What’s wrong with the rich?
Well….as I sit here and think about the news over the past few weeks a question comes to mind: “What’s wrong with the rich?” When did they become so greedy and self-centered that they lost any pretense of caring about anyone but themselves? This post was kind of spurred on by the recent report that the super rich in this country have an average tax rate that is below 17%. Let’s put that in perspective using my own situation as an example….I took 15 k out of my IRA last year just to pay my rent and keep food on the table and my tax rate was over 25%…yep, someone that is barely making ends meet is paying more percentage in taxes than billionaires, and this is on money that I earned and saved over my working career. But, you won’t hear me bitch about paying taxes; they are necessary to maintain our social contract and make this a better society for everyone…not just the rich. I find it so funny that these people will spend millions and millions of dollars buying repubs to write them favorable laws but will balk at paying for the infrastructure and military that allow them to make those outrageous sums of money. Why are they so un-American? But, it’s not just the rich that are at fault here…it’s our fault for voting for people that are nothing more than shills for business and that lie like they breathe….who don’t believe that there should be a shared responsibility for the welfare of our country…should we be surprised? Nope, most of the legislators we now have are millionaires that are there for one thing and one thing only…to line their pockets and tell us that a greater America is no longer possible; that the poor and middle class are leeches that will be better off if the safety nets that have kept millions of seniors and unemployed out of poverty are gone. Is that the vision that you or I share? I sure hope not…geez…