Any minute now, those tax cuts for business and the filty rich are going to produce employment. These welfare recipients have had ten years to think about it.

Last week I e-mailed my own deficit hawk, Evan Bayh, my opinion of the estate tax. This morning I received my reply. Not a single mention of the estate tax, just the usual bullshit about how hard he’s working for middle class families.

Bayh’s father, former Sen. Birch Bayh, is getting on in years. I’m sure Evan is salivating at the very thought of the millions he will inherit, thus adding to his own millions. The circle goes unbroken.

The Laffer Curve has been laffing at us chumps since 1981.

Have had to smile at seeing relatives of the wealthy deceased this year referred to as the ‘people of interest’.

Income of very richest shot up by 281% since 1979

but the real problem is democrats continue framing this discussion exactly the way to lose the debate

we do NOT want to “raise taxes on the wealthy” what we want to do is “get the middle class assets back given to the wealthy, marketed as an investment into our economy that has instead brought our economy to it’s knees”

now if obama REALLY wanted to get the tax structure back into a productive model THOSE are the words he would use to get us there

But surely it is the job of Congress to protect the wealthy and the corporations against the ravages of the poor and working elite. If that were not so the SCOTUS would not have endorsed the outright purchase of Congressional seats.

Here’s a good one-liner: the Reagan tax cuts were supposed to pay off the deficit.

10 Years without a Leader

Good morning, pups. It’s Collins and Kristof today. Ms. Collins says “The Kids are All Right,” and that Chelsea Clinton’s approaching wedding day gives us occasion to celebrate successful children from recent first families. Mr. Kristof has a question: “1 Soldier or 20 Schools?” he suggests we take a chunk out of our bloated military budget in Afghanistan and use it to invest in building schools there instead.

Here they are.

The coffee and tea are ready, the cold drinks are in the fridge, and I’ve got toasted Thomas’ English muffins and your favorite jam. Today is my Friday, since I’m taking tomorrow off. We’re only allowed to carry 40 hours of time off over from year to year, and I’m damned if I’m going to give mine back, so I nibble at it with long weekends. Have a great day.

if you offer your food to the hungry
and satisfy the needs of the afflicted,
then your light shall rise in the darkness
and your gloom be like the noonday.
11 The Lord will guide you continually,
and satisfy your needs in parched places,
and make your bones strong;
and you shall be like a watered garden,
like a spring of water,
whose waters never fail.
12 Your ancient ruins shall be rebuilt;
you shall raise up the foundations of many generations;
you shall be called the repairer of the breach,
the restorer of streets to live in.

http://bible.oremus.org/?passage=Isaiah+58:6-12

Its never time to read the Bible?

We could use schools here, too. But anything is better than throwing more lives away, any lives.

Last Sunday night’s Dateline NBC featured hunger in southeastern Ohio. People that have lost their jobs and benefits, and turned to the local food bank. The food bank is stretched to the limits, feeding so many.

What a sad country we live in when people go hungry while the ultra-wealthy fight tooth and nail to keep from paying a few extra thousand in taxes. And our elected representatives apparently think this is ok.

I wonder how many jobs the Steinbrenner family will create.

In my experience, Bayh (and Donnelly) respond with form letters and often they don’t mention the issue you’re emailing about. They are both a waste of oxygen.

endorsed the outright purchase of Congressional seats.

And in case that isn’t enough, they’ve perfected the art of stealing elections.

Good morning all.

((((Kent))))

I figure he needs some luvin’ as well as money. Can’t have too much of anything.

Funny thing about money and the inverse relationship between its quantity and the degree of humanity of those who possess it.

Geez, on my TV Whitehead is telling FBI head Mueller he (Whitehead) wants Mueller’s opinion on the record about what to do about cyberattacks. I guess Whitehead is interested in the FBI’s opinion on that because the FBI is soooo good at constructing computer systems. /s

Hey, I’ve known some nice rich peeps. (I’ve known several of the other variety also.)

Sure, there is some scatter in the relationship, but in general it holds true. Especially at the extreme end.

Poverty isn’t a ticket to St. Peter’s Golden Gate, but it does tend to keep one out of trouble. Most can’t afford to be bad as they’d like.

Speaking of rich peeps, saw a headline the other day that said that Chelsea’s wedding (on Saturday, at Astor Court in Rhinebeck, NY if your invitation was late in arriving) is estimated to cost between $3 and $5 million. That’s a pretty disgusting symbol of the problem.

Leave Chelsea ALOOOOOONE

actually, think much of this is made up, much of the locale is friends’ houses, and probably much of it being gifted by them.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y72cWf59Alo

Fire him…remember the Public Option? Kent Comrad. No reason to do business with NDAK while he has a seat in the Senate…..

Paying their fair share is the slogan you want.

Those rich people wouldn’t be rich if not for the infrastructure and support of society, they need to do their share to support it, or it falls down. It is as simple as that.

It is like they are refusing to feed the milk cow, their cream will dry up. They do not realize it, but it is in fact in their best economic interest to pay more in taxes.

Agreed.

http://www.layofflist.org/

http://www.flickr.com/groups/fuck-u/pool/

Also.

“The past is a foreign country not just because of all that we have forgotten, but also because of the enormous events we so well remember. It is easy enough to consult the historians, who will tell us that, in the ebullient, doomed summer of 1914, squads of Belgian soldiers hauled machine guns toward the German border on small carts towed by dogs; (1) that, as the inflation of the ’20s threw respected families from their homes, bourgeois residents of the German cities went out to the farms to trade jewelry and fine rugs for eggs and to steal food when no trade could be had. (2) There are old photographs of children making kites from worthless banknotes and tellers valuing blocks of them by weight; there are accounts of days when the morning paper cost 50,000 marks and the evening 100,000, and when two shoelaces cost more than a store full of shoes once had. (3) In 1924 only the shrewdest players in the currency riot survived, and you might have relieved a little of your fury in the “China Store” in Berlin’s Lunapark, by hurling a hard ball at the crockery on the shelves and smashing all you could; (4) by 1929 many people praised Hitler for his loving heart. Clouds seemed to disperse for his rallies so often that sunshine was called “Hitler-weather,” (5) and on Ruegen Island in 1931, families spelt their names in pinecones on the ramparts of sand fortresses, and embellished them with swastikas. (6) Two years later, the aging anarchist Erich Muhsam, the middle of the three Revolutionaries (II/11/12) in August Sander’s photograph of 1929, was arrested; his teeth were bashed out with a rifle butt and a swastika was branded on his scalp with a red hot iron. (7) Execution notices appeared on the poster columns of Berlin among the advertisements for restaurants and films, but the summer of 1933 was also remembered for its beauty. The vintage of that autumn, they say, was treasured by connoisseurs for years to come. (8)”

http://www.americansuburbx.com/2008/01/theory-august-sander-mask-behind-face.html

“They do not realize it, but it is in fact in their best economic interest to pay more in taxes.”

- Maybe yes & maybe no. I’m not so sure anymore if they obscenely wealthy do really need to support the infrastructure (both human and otherwise) of the USA to continue raking in the buck$$ and leading the good life.

I’m totally in support of raising the tax rates on the obscenely wealthy, but someone who posted yesterday pointed out that the mega-rich is now in the position of picking and choosing which peons to grind under internationally & which corrupt gov’ts to bribe in order to grind under their peons.

Do the uber-rich *really* need the middle class here anymore? I’m not so sure. I could be wrong (hope I am), but I suspect that’s what the obscenely wealthy are banking on. Plenty of peons elsewhere to grind under, to take advantage of, and to sell their **** to.

It’s beyond sad to being revoltingly disgusting, but our elected leaders (mainly in the guise of the Republics but with the connivance of the Demorats, who I don’t ever hear countering these disgusting claims) would have that the lazy sloths of southeastern Ohio have no one by their own lazy, drug-addicted selves to blame for their situations. And if they would just stop being such lazy drug addicts expecting the nanny state to take care of them, why then: they’d all have jobs instantly.

I keep hearing Republics SAY stuff like this, and I never hear or see it refuted anywhere… certainly not by Democrats.

And citizens rush forth to “buy” this line of thinking. I have had several friends of differing politcal persausions say stuff like this to me recently. Never ceases to amaze me.

As the song goes: nobody loves you when you’re down & out. Amen.

Right on as usual. Who will defend the oppressed?