The War On The Poor, cont...

Dec 12th, 2011

It's often the timing of two seemingly unrelated stories that gets to me. Yesterday, Robert Miga reported for the AP on the likelihood of a terrible Winter for our nation's vulnerable citizens, seniors in particular:

"Thousands of poor people across the Northeast are bracing for a difficult winter with substantially less home heating aid coming from the federal government.

"They're playing Russian roulette with people's lives," said John Drew, who heads Action for Boston Community Development, Inc., which provides aid to low-income residents in Massachusetts."

This should surprise no one. We've been hearing the doomsayers in D.C. all year as they have ranted about how everything has to be on the chopping block.

"Several Northeast states already have reduced heating aid benefits to families as Congress considers cutting more than $1 billion from last year's $4.7 billion Low Income Home Energy Assistance Program that served nearly 9 million households.

Families in New England, where the winters are long and cold and people rely heavily on costly oil heat, are expected to be especially hard hit. Many poor and elderly people on fixed incomes struggle with rising heating bills that can run into thousands of dollars. That can force them to cut back on other necessities like food or medicine.

"The winter of 2011-12 could be memorable for the misery and suffering of thousands of frigid households," New Hampshire's Concord Monitor newspaper said in an editorial. "Heating oil prices are expected to hit record highs, and federal fuel assistance may reach a record low for recent years."

Defenders of these moves would have us believe that such austerity is our only option. They behave as if we can't possibly find any other way to cut from the federal budget.

For the moment, let's put aside the question of how such an exceptional nation can't find an alternative. Let's also skip the debate over why we refuse to limit predatory commodities speculation which has displaced traditional supply and demand as the driving force in energy markets.

Instead, let's look at another little gem that hit the wires last week. Reporting for Business Insider, Robert Johnson wrote:

"We produce so much military equipment that inventories of military robots, M-16 assault rifles, helicopters, armored vehicles, and grenade launchers eventually start to pile up and it turns out a lot of these weapons are going straight to American police forces to be used against US citizens.

Benjamin Carlson at The Daily reports on a little known endeavor called the "1033 Program" that gave more than $500 million of military gear to U.S. police forces in 2011 alone."

The Pentagon is so overstocked that they're literally giving stuff away. They are doing so in a program that provides heavier hardware for our own police to aim at us. Of course, it does serve to deplete those stocks from the ledgers the Pentagon takes to the Armed Services Committee. That way we can order more. It's worth noting that the "1033 program" is estimating a 400 percent increase in such transfers next year.

Anyone who can look at these stories back to back and not admit there is an obvious solution has no place in government. Period.

Preparing To Fight The Hawks

Dec 2nd, 2011

As substantial (not to mention long overdue) cuts the U.S. defense budget loom, Kevin Drum takes aim at one of the more dubious arguments against them.

"Defense hawks like to insist that we should judge the Pentagon budget as a percentage of GDP. The Bill Kristol contingent, for example, claims that we should never allow defense spending to fall below 4 percent of GDP. But is this a sensible way of looking at things? For some programs it is. Social Security and Medicare, for example, are both inherently tied to population growth and living standards, so as those go up so will outlays. But in other areas this doesn't make so much sense. Do we need more embassies overseas just because our GDP has grown? Not really. There will be some increase in wages that's tied to economic growth, but that's about it."

Paul's Pout

April 13th, 2011

While perusing some of the reactions on the right to today's Presidential budget address, I came across this little gem from Rep. Paul Ryan (R-WI).

From TPM:

"House Budget Committee Chairman Paul Ryan (R-WI) attacked the partisan bent of the speech, then characterized it as "a political broadside from our campaigner in chief."

This is an abject lesson in how to make an ass of one's self. How can we take seriously a critique of the President's proposals as over-politicized when the critique itself resorts to petty political name calling?

The President's Budget Address

April 13th, 2011

We will be adding our two cents in the coming days. The full text of the President's prepared remarks is below the video.

Visit msnbc.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy

"What we've been debating here in Washington for the last few weeks will affect your lives in ways that are potentially profound. This debate over budgets and deficits is about more than just numbers on a page, more than just cutting and spending. Its about the kind of future we want. It's about the kind of country we believe in. And that's what I want to talk about today.

Paul Ryan's Recipe For Misery

April 4th, 2011

As we await the full release of Rep Paul Ryan's (R-WI) "budget" proposals enough has leaked out to know that it's more of the same serve-the-rich nonsense that has been inflicted upon ordinary Americans for years. It just takes those policies and puts them into overdrive.

From TPM:

"Ryan's plan will also propose tax reforms that lower corporate and upper-income tax rates, while eliminating certain loopholes. The details of that part of his plan are unclear, but if they adhere to his Roadmap for America's Future, the GOP budget will propose to overhaul the tax code in a way that reduces the burden on the wealthy and increases it on the poor and middle classes."

The Right Wing: Having It Both Ways

March 22nd, 2011

"You can't fire both teachers and Tomahawk missiles."

The Daily Show
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First Things Last...

Jan 24th, 2011

The LA Times ran with news today of looming Republican slash and burn proposals for the arts. Early in the piece is this:

"Any way you want to describe it, the Republican Study Committee, made up of about 165 GOP members of the House of Representatives, on Thursday announced a budget-cutting plan aimed at slashing federal spending, and it calls for the elimination of the nation's two leading makers of government arts grants: the National Endowment for the Arts and the National Endowment for the Humanities."

What's buried at the very end of the article is this:

"A small federal investment that's important to the health of the nonprofit arts sector helps sustain its 5.7 million jobs and the $30 billion in annual returns to federal, state and local coffers that those workers pay in taxes.”

What's a direct threat to 5.7 million jobs, give or take, when you have a chance to strike a blow against culture?

Have They Even Read The 1st Amendment?

Dec 28th, 2010

F. Grey Parker

Although it's meaning is clear to almost anyone who has read the very first line of The Bill of Rights that "Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion," it seems The Kentucky Tourism Development Finance Authority holds themselves to be well above such petty limitations on governmental overreach as proscribed. 

They are preparing to potentially underwrite up to a quarter of the costs for building the creationism theme park proposed for construction there.

From TPM:

"The Kentucky Tourism Development Finance Authority has granted preliminary approval for a creationist theme park to get up to $37 million in tax incentives, the Lexington Herald-Leader reports.

The theme park -- dubbed Ark Encounter -- is backed by both Kentucky Gov. Steve Beshear (D) and Answers in Genesis, a Christian organization that also built a similar attraction, the  Creation Museum.

In the news release announcing the plans, Beshear touted that the park would create around 900 jobs and bring 1.6 million tourists to the state in its first year. Those numbers were based on a feasability study, commissioned by Ark Encounters LLC -- a study that state officials, including Beshear, reportedly never actually saw."

Let's be clear, the early reports of Gov. Beshear's public support of the park were controversial enough. The Governor's office being used to promote so specific an interpretation of a major religion runs contrary not just to Jeffersonian tradition but to a simple understanding of being the servant to all of the state's people. The fact that the project is now poised to be financially supported by the taxpayers of Kentucky during the national debate over the financial crisis and calls for fiscal restraint is abominable.

Kentucky is facing a 500 million shortfall and Gov. Beshear has told all state agencies to plan for a 4% budget cut. In the last year, the Republican dominated state legislature has made sweeping restrictions on state Medicaid recipients' services which could lead to potentially dangerous early hospital discharges and has imposed furloughs and wage cuts on state workers. Over the past two years, Kentucky has cut aid to it's local school districts as well as it's public colleges and universities directly causing an average in-state tuition increase of 5.2%. 

Even if the backer's own projections on job creation prove to be any more accurate than their view of the miracle of creation itself, this is a bad investment. Think the numbers through. For all of the cherry picking by the right wing over the cost of the jobs created by the still divisive stimulus package, it would seem that a state with such obvious budget difficulties allocating roughly $45,000 in revenue offsets per hire for an army of "carnys" is rather extravagant.

It's not only Constitutionalists and the budget conscious who should be alarmed at the KTDFA's postion. Christians themselves should be appalled. The vast majority of self identified Christians in America, of whom I am one, don't believe in Biblical literalism. For one thing, it has been conclusively proven that the skies above us are not actually a solid, preventive flood gate. Which brings us to the proposed Noah's Ark exhibit. In the interests of teaching children the tale of the Great Flood, their Ark is going to include dinosaurs (they are calling them "dragons") and unicorns.

Joe Sonka, of the dynamite blog Barefoot and Progressive, notes with dismay:

"Thanks to Steve Beshear, Kentucky is no longer just known as the state whose governor endorsed and gave $40 million in tax breaks to people who want to tell children that science and history explain that a 600 year old man herded dinosaurs onto a big boat 4,000 years ago.

No, Kentucky will now be known as the state whose governor endorsed and gave $40 million in tax breaks to people who want to tell children that science and history explain that a 600 year old man herded dinosaurs, fire-breathing dragons and unicorns onto a big boat 4,000 years ago."

One must wonder if the Governor and the park's backers are as unfamiliar with the Book of Matthew as they are with the 1st Amendment.

"No one can serve two masters, for either he will hate the one and love the other, or he will be devoted to the one and despise the other. You cannot serve God and money." -- Matthew 6:24

Republican Budget Cut Proposal Idiocy

Dec 28th, 2010

It doesn't get much better than this. From the NY Times:
"Note to the incoming Republican majority in the House: Eliminating government programs that do not exist does not save money. 


Of the few specific cuts that Congressional Republicans have proposed in their promised assault on annual budget deficits, one of the biggest by far would save $25 billion over 10 years, they claim, by ending an emergency welfare fund. The Republican Study Committee, which includes more than 100 of the most conservative House Republicans, promoted the idea in a statement this week, saying, “With the national debt quickly approaching $14 trillion, Washington needs to get serious about cutting spending.”

Well, seriously, the fund expired Sept. 30."

We have 2 years of this to look forward to. This is a reminder of what President Obama is up against.