Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) has come up with a vivid new way to express his contention that the nation is spending way too much money it doesn't have.
"In just 50 days, Congress has voted to spend about $1.2 trillion between the Stimulus and the Omnibus," McConnell says. "To put that in perspective, that's about $24 billion a day, or about $1 billion an hour—most of it borrowed. There's simply no question: government spending has spun out of control."
How rich is it to have the guy responsible for:
A ten percent increase in the budget for Congressional operations ... because Senate Republicans wanted to retain previous staff levels despite having lost roughly 20 percent of their ranks in the 2008 elections.
There's a lot of talk these days about "class warfare". In its most common form, the story goes that taxing the wealthy is tantamount to turning the country into a socialist prison camp where the wealthy will be turned out on street corners bearing nothing but silver beggars' cups tarnished with the smudge of a capital gains tax.
Well if there is a class war, it seems an unequal fight. The less wealthy are losing to a better-equipped and funded foe. Over the past decade, the wealthy have carpet bombed the income scale with a fleet of brand new and very expensive B-2 bombers. In a short time, 90% of the nation's wealth has become concentrated in the top 5% of the population.
Dream Big, But Only If You're Rich
While corporate titans' pay and benefits have risen by double digits each year, the purchasing power of middle and lower income families has dropped and benefits have eroded significantly. Apparently, the American "dream" of doing better than one's parents only applies if your family lives in the Hamptons or Kennebunkport.
Here's the thing about class warfare. It isn't all about money. Contrary to popular belief, not everyone is pissed at the wealthy just because they make a lot of money. What smarts is that we've become a country where the old American ideal of a classless society is dead.
Advancing in American society is no longer something that requires had work and education. It's something that springs from the privilege offered to the top few. Each day there are CEOs committing legalized larceny with the taxpayers' money. Those same people get raises when they succeed, when they fail, or just because they are breathing. Take your pick.
Cut the Socialist Crap
Neither the upper nor the lower classes really think life is fair. The difference is that upper class folks think the unfairness should be in their favor, while the lower class most often sees unfairness as something to make their life more difficult, regardless of how hard they work or how smart they are.So let's cut the socialist crap. No one is asking that everyone work for the same pay. No one is suggesting the rich be soaked simply to redistribute wealth to the great unwashed. What people are demanding is that responsibility for our current tattered economy be shared. Everyone, regardless of class, made mistakes that created our financial crisis and we should all share the pain. I'd posit that a CEO redistributing tax wealth to his cronies as isn't exactly pained like a family who's put on the curb without even the silver beggars' cup.
But the real problem with faux class war is this. Huge income disparity has a long history of causing real war instead of class war and that will be the ultimate sharing of the pain, except someone is going to get hurt really bad.
Just look what happened to Marie Antoinette when she passed around the cake to the prols.
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NCAA expands March Madness to include 4,096 teams: http://www.theonion.com/content/video/ncaa_expands_march_madness_to
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Planet America
http://griperblade.blogspot.com/2009/03/planet-america.html
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Literally days after proclaiming that change had come to "signing statements" with a new policy, President Obama has issued a very Bush-like signing statement with his signing of the appropriations bill. The signing statement reserves the right to treat literally dozens of provisions as presumptively unconstitutional. http://jonathanturley.org/2009/03/12/obama-issues-signing-statement-only-days-after-negating-such-bush-statements/#more-8932
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As part of his deplorable legacy, one of the last things George W. Bush rushed through in his last days of power was a set of changes in environmental policy that basically gutted protections for endangered organisms. Our new president has been given the power to undo those changes in a recent spending bill.
Obama may now, with the stroke of a pen, rescind the Bush Administration's last-minute rules that:
forcibly removed global warming from the list of extinction threats to the polar bear (despite scientific opinion that global warming is the bear's chief extinction threat)
allowed oil and gas drilling in polar bear habitats
eliminated the need to consult with wildlife and marine scientists when allowing mining, building, logging and other destructive projects that might increase extinction threats to endangered species.
Make it so, President Obama.
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The case of the Brazilian child who was raped, impregnated, and then had an abortion has taken a predictable turn. Sensible, rational people saw this as a tragedy, but one with a simple partial solution: the abortion was necessary to save the life of a young girl who could not possibly bear the burden of an unwanted pregnancy. The Brazilian Catholic church saw it differently and excommunicated everyone associated with the decision. Then the president of Brazil took a public stand against the church's unjust decision. Now at last, we hear from the top of the Catholic hierarchy…and the Vatican sides with fetuses over children. No surprise there at all.
Somehow, a church that preaches about a god of love has turned into a tableaux of empty gilt robes, devoid of human compassion, dedicated only to the perpetuation of a dead dogma. The utilitarian argument that religion at least provides comfort to people in need ought to be extinct now.
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The financial terrorist gets some new digs.
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President Obama will be the first president since Grover Cleveland not to attend the Gridiron Club's weenie roast.
Good.
I don't know why anyone would have ever thought it was a good idea for "prestigious journalists" to "choreograph satirical skits," but I really wish they would not do such things, or at least would prefer that they never be filmed or indeed spoken of in any way. Likewise, the even more revolting White House Correspondents' Dinner needs to be canceled. Journalists and politicians already have plenty of opportunities to make idiots out of themselves in public. They don't need skits.
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You monumental dick. You still think this is about you, about who loves who more, about who has the most successful show. You still think that this is all just a big ironic joke, that this isn't actually real. You still think the money you talk about is what, like Monopoly money, just paper, just numbers, just stuff you can spout and not have to deal with any actual consequences. That's not Grandma's retirement or your dad's pension, it's just Jim Cramer having a wacky good time! Money's just like basketball or Britney, it doesn't really exist except in the magic box called the TV.
Top federal regulators say they were taken aback when they learned that a California congresswoman who helped set up a meeting with bankers last year had family financial ties to a bank whose chief executive asked them for up to $50 million in special bailout funds.Representative Maxine Waters, Democrat of California, requested the September meeting on behalf of executives at One- United, one of the nation's largest black-owned banks. Ms. Waters's husband, Sidney Williams, had served on the bank's board until early last year and has owned at least $250,000 of its stock.
What the hell is wrong with these people?
More than half the baby shampoo, lotion and other infant care products analyzed by a health advocacy group were found to contain trace amounts of two chemicals that are believed to cause cancer, the organization said yesterday.
Some of the biggest names on the market, including Johnson & Johnson Baby Shampoo and Baby Magic lotion, tested positive for 1,4-dioxane or formaldehyde, or both, the nonprofit Campaign for Safe Cosmetics reported.
Sean Hannity claims that Christianity is compatible with torture. Blogger claims that listening to Hannity is comparable with torture.
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Way to go, Barry!
Obama Justice Dep. defends Rumsfeld in torture case: http://rawstory.com/news/2008/Obama_Justice_Dep._defends_Rumsfeld_in_0313.html
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