Tax cuts for the rich
Obviously the red hot topic this week, and since noone know for certain what will happen I have only got three articles on this subject .....could be dozens!
Paul Krugman on the trap Obama has got himself in with this deal [A], an analysis of the political forces behind the current bill [B], and why the majority of Americans are so disconnected from the games and BS in Washington [C].
But the proposal being pushed by Obama and the Republicans, and resisted by the Democratic House and Senate, is really bad for the country. It adds $700 billion to the debt in tax cuts for the wealthy which will be borrowed from the Chinese and the oil Arabs, the estate tax is reduced to 35% for estates over $5 million [32,000 families will pay much less than before], and $150 billion is given away to corporations in tax breaks on new investment with no insistence that the investment be in the US - they could use this to build a new plant in China and we would be paying for it.
My opinion, for what it's worth - if this bill passes and it probably will despite the brave efforts of a few of our politicians who still naively believe in the middle class, this country will accelerate the decline it's in already, the middle class as we know it will be gone in a few years, and the hopeless corruption that permeates our government will solidify......we'll never get it clean.......
Canada looks good, doesn't it.......
A/ Paul Krugman.....on why this is a trap for Obama and the Democrats.....
This political reality makes the tax deal a bad bargain for Democrats. Think of it this way: The deal essentially sets up 2011-2012 to be a repeat of 2009-2010. Once again, there would be initial benefits from the stimulus, and decent growth a year before the election. But as the stimulus faded, growth would tend to stall — and this stall would, once again, come in the months leading up to the election, with seriously negative consequences for Mr. Obama and his party.
You may say that economic policy shouldn’t be affected by partisan considerations. But even if you believe that — how’s the weather on your planet? — you have to consider the situation likely to prevail a year from now, as the good parts of the Obama-McConnell deal are about to expire. Wouldn’t there be pressure on Democrats to offer Republicans something, anything, to improve economic prospects for 2012? And wouldn’t that be a recipe for another bad deal?
Surely the answer to both questions is yes. And that means that Mr. Obama is, as I said, paying for the release of some hostages — getting an extension of unemployment benefits and some more stimulus — by giving Republicans new hostages, which they may well use to make new, destructive demands a year from now.
One big concern: Republicans may try using the prospect of a rise in the payroll tax to undermine Social Security finances
B/ Robert Creamer on the Realpolitik behind the tax deal.......an intellectual analysis of the nasty political forces driving the Obama administration and also the Republicans......
But the outcome of the election had also made the prospects that the new Congress would pass new economic stimulus remote. The Republicans who would control the House had no interest whatsoever in providing more economic stimulus. That's not mainly because they have a different economic philosophy. It's primarily because they have no political interest in near term economic recovery. It's just fine with them if the economy continues a slow slog, and the jobless rate is 8 percent or 9 percent in November 2012. After all, no president has been reelected in the last century when the unemployment rate was above 7.2 percent.
..............................
Without a major infusion of more stimulus, the Obama administration saw very little to convince it that the U.S. economy would defy that history. The president's major bottom-line self interest: more stimulus to spur economic growth and job creation.
The Republican bottom-line self interest is very different. While the president's self interests align directly with those of the vast majority of the American people, the Republicans' self interests do not. Not only do they have a short term political interest in low levels of job creation. Their core constituency -- the tiny sliver of super-wealthy Americans -- has been completely insulated from the effects of the long term effects of the Great Recession. Corporate profits and Wall Street bonuses have now exceeded pre-recession levels. The stock market is back. And the fact that there are five job seekers for every available job drives down wages. In fact, it's all a "robber barron's dream."
Over the long run, a low wage economy with high unemployment is not sustainable and will do enormous damage even to the biggest corporations. But short term, greed tends to block out long term concerns, so the wealthy -- and their Republican Party -- aren't so much concerned about long term economic growth.
C/ Fascinating theory - many Americans are the "silent majority", alienated from Washington but pretty sure what we want, which is our government to represent us. The current tax issue was not, not a driver of the results of the recent elections, but for the Republicans it's their obsession because their handlers, the oligarchs, want it.
The article says Obama could be [but isn't right now] that person.... and that we will keep looking for a leader who resonates with our needs....
Long article, and well worth a read....
There wasn't even a whisper, it seemed, about the Silent Majority's cry for jobs and growth. Then, without even skipping a beat, it was announced that the trillion-dollar tax giveaway to the wealthiest Americans was being extended, adding hundreds of billions to the deficit that had been such a crisis the day before. And what was the sudden justification for this deficit-busting plan? Jobs and growth! Stimulus!
The American majority must be suffering from whiplash. It's not just the sudden reversal on the deficit. Now the story of the day is taxes - which was a top priority for only one voter in fifty.
What else does the "new silent majority" stand for, besides jobs, protecting Social Security, and taxes for the rich?
- 72% want the government to crack down on Wall Street more than it has.
- 81% want the government to do more to reduce poverty.
- Eight out of ten oppose cutting Medicare.
Despite the widespread support for these views by members of both parties (bipartisanship at last!), the political and media landscapes are dominated by journalists and politicians who keep telling us these positions are "extremist" and politically unrealistic
2/ You read this article and wonder why this kind of legal travesty gets to the point where an obviously innocent man is about to be executed....and it's not Texas, but California.....
“California may be about to execute an innocent man.”
That’s the view of five federal judges in a case involving Kevin Cooper, a black man in California who faces lethal injection next year for supposedly murdering a white family. The judges argue compellingly that he was framed by police.
Mr. Cooper’s impending execution is so outrageous that it has produced a mutiny among these federal circuit court judges, distinguished jurists just one notch below the United States Supreme Court. But the judicial process has run out for Mr. Cooper. Now it’s up to Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger to decide whether to commute Mr. Cooper’s sentence before leaving office.
3/ The Black Eyed Peas with "I've got a Feeling".
Fergie and will.i.am in one of the sexier videos out there......actually a really good song too......
4/ An international and well respected organisation tested students from 65 countries and the results showed Shanghai students were significantly higher than any other set of children. The US unfortunately was way down the list in every category, especially math and science......hmmm....is this a surprise?.
“I know skeptics will want to argue with the results, but we consider them to be accurate and reliable, and we have to see them as a challenge to get better,” he added. “The United States came in 23rd or 24th in most subjects. We can quibble, or we can face the brutal truth that we’re being out-educated.”
In math, the Shanghai students performed in a class by themselves, outperforming second-place Singapore, which has been seen as an educational superstar in recent years. The average math scores of American students put them below 30 other countries.
PISA scores are on a scale, with 500 as the average. Two-thirds of students in participating countries score between 400 and 600. On the math test last year, students in Shanghai scored 600, in Singapore 562, in Germany 513, and in the United States 487.
In reading, Shanghai students scored 556, ahead of second-place Korea with 539. The United States scored 500 and came in 17th, putting it on par with students in the Netherlands, Belgium, Norway, Germany, France, the United Kingdom and several other countries.
In science, Shanghai students scored 575. In second place was Finland, where the average score was 554. The United States scored 502 — in 23rd place — with a performance indistinguishable from Poland, Ireland, Norway, France and several other countries.
5/ And on similar topics, America's declining performance, Thomas Friedman with an excellent column on how deep in the hole we are.....and we're still digging.....
More than ever, America today reminds me of a working couple where the husband has just lost his job, they have two kids in junior high school, a mortgage and they’re maxed out on their credit cards. On top of it all, they recently agreed to take in their troubled cousin, Kabul, who just can’t get his act together and keeps bouncing from relative to relative. Meanwhile, their Indian nanny, who traded room and board for baby-sitting, just got accepted to M.I.T. on a full scholarship and will be leaving them in a few months. What to do?
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Like our mythical family, we need a plan, not just more sugar treats. Surely the cynical quote of the week — courtesy of The Daily Beast — goes to Dan Bartlett, the former George W. Bush administration spokesman who was speaking about the tax cuts for the wealthiest Americans that Bush “temporarily” put in place a decade ago: “We knew that, politically, once you get it into law, it becomes almost impossible to remove it. That’s not a bad legacy. The fact that we were able to lay the trap does feel pretty good, to tell you the truth.”
Bartlett offered no thoughts as to how these budget-busting tax cuts will address our country’s deficiencies today — just a high-five that in the politics of sports, the G.O.P. just scored a goal on Obama.
We don’t seem to realize: We’re in a hole and still digging. Our educational attainment levels are stagnating; our infrastructure is fraying. We don’t have enough smart incentives to foster both innovation and manufacturing; we’re not importing enough talent in an age when we have to compete for jobs with low-wage but high-skilled Indians and Chinese — and we’re still piling up debt.
6/ A boy tragically dies playing with his huge pet python - Onion News has the story....sad.....2 minutes....
7/ Ice cold in Georgia - how southerners aren't used to temperatures in the 20's in December.....y'all.....but in Georgia they don't believe in climate change....or evolution.....Glenn Beck told them so, so it must be true......
That is not to say the weather is not unusual. Temperatures are running 15 to 20 degrees below normal, and forecasters predict a particularly cold winter in the Southeast. In Atlanta, for example, people usually Christmas shop in pleasant weather that hovers in the 50s. In south Georgia, the daytime temperature is normally in the 60s.
So nighttime temperatures in the 20s and daytime temperatures barely reaching into the 40s can really mess up a Southerner.
8/ Antarctic cruise ship in trouble - the Clelia II - formerly the Renaissance 4, about 4000 tons.....Heavy seas smashed the bridge windows and the main engines failed for a short while....this video is showing her with one engine back up helping her limp back to port.....You never want to be on a ship in this kind of rough sea......ewwwww....1 minute....
9/ Florida....
A/ You may have read last week how Florida schools, 49th out of 50 states, did a lot better on comparative testing.....but it was all lies and BS.....our schools are still awful.....they just changed the tests....
In fact, 71 percent of the schools in Florida got an A or a B. Last year, it was only 41 percent.
Hooray!
All across Florida, people were happy and said it shows we are making progress. Headlines trumpeted it.
"I'm very proud of our students for stepping up to the challenge that was put up by the state of Florida," said the state education commissioner, Eric J. Smith.
The Pinellas County school chief, Julie Janssen, called the new grades "a defining moment in the improvement efforts of our schools."
Now, what does all this have to do with apples and oranges?
Only this:
This year's grades were calculated on a different formula from last year's.
B/ Oh Florida .....a story on the incoming President of the Florida Senate Mike Haridopolos, who has a few ethics issues along with his solid Christian conservative agenda and his "holier than thou" attitude...........
In other words, he pulled a Charlie Rangel, the former chairman of the U.S. House Ways and Means Committee, who passed off the errors on his financial disclosure forms as nothing more than an inadvertent, simple clerical error.
Haridopolos said he never bothered to carefully review the financial forms, simply signing off on them year after year. That is the public official who gets into a pickle's version of the dog ate my ethics.
Of course, the unspoken implication here is that Haridopolos is so busy, so important, so preoccupied with his duties as a big shot stable boy for Tallahassee special interests, he simply didn't have the time to do his due diligence with respect to his own financial paperwork.
Or put another way, if the Florida Senate president exhibited all the keen-eyed attention to detail over his own finances of Sgt. "I know nothing!" Schultz, what confidence can anyone have he even bothers to read the legislation drafted by lobbyists?
Todays video - incredible Tango routine.....
Todays Newfie joke
What To Do When It Snows In Newfoundland ...
One winter morning a husband and wife in Conception Bay South were listening to the radio during breakfast. They heard the announcer say, "We are going to have 8 to 10 inches of snow today. You must park your car on the even-numbered side of the street, so the snowplows can get through, eh."
So da good wife went out and moved her car.
A week later while they are eating breakfast again, the radio announcer said, "We are expecting 10 to 12 inches of snow today. You must park your car on the odd-numbered side of the street, so the snowplows can get through, eh."
The good wife went out and moved her car again.
The next week they are again having breakfast, when the radio announcer says, "We are expecting 12 to 14 inches of snow today. You must park...." Then the electric power went out. The good wife was very upset, and with a worried look on her face she said,
"Honey, I don't know what to do. Which side of the street do I need to park on so the snowplows can get through, eh?"
With love and understanding in his voice, that all men who are married to good Newfoundland women exhibit, the husband replied, "Why don't you just leave it in the garage this time?"
Todays dating joke
A woman meets a man in a bar.
They talk; they connect; they end
up leaving together.
They get back to his place,
and as he shows her around his
apartment she notices that one wall
of his bedroom is
completely filled with soft, sweet,
cuddly teddy bears.
There are three shelves in the
bedroom,
with hundreds and hundreds of cute,
cuddly teddy bears carefully placed
in rows, covering the entire wall!
It was obvious that he had taken
quite some time to lovingly arrange them
and she was immediately touched
by the amount of thought he had
put into organizing the display.
There were small bears all along
the bottom shelf,
medium-sized bears covering the
length of the middle shelf,
and huge, enormous bears running
all the way along the top shelf.
She found it strange for an
obviously masculine guy
to have such a large collection of
Teddy Bears,
She is quite impressed by his
sensitive side.
but doesn't mention this to him.
They share a bottle of wine and
continue talking and,
after awhile, she finds herself
thinking,
'Oh my God! Maybe, this guy
could be the one!
Maybe he could be the future
father of my children?'
She turns to him and kisses him
lightly on the lips
He responds warmly.
They continue to kiss, the passion builds,
and he romantically lifts her in
his arms and carries her into his bedroom
where they rip off each other's
clothes and make hot, steamy love.
She is so overwhelmed that she
responds with more passion,
more creativity, more heat than she
has ever known.
After an intense, explosive night
of raw passion with this sensitive guy,
they are lying there together in
the afterglow.
The woman rolls over, gently
strokes his chest and asks coyly,
'Well, how was it?'
The guy gently smiles at her,
strokes her cheek,
looks deeply into her eyes, and says:
'Help yourself to any prize
from the middle shelf!'
Todays PTA jokes
NO PARENT LEFT BEHIND.....
I promise you cannot read these and not laugh out loud. These are real notes written by parents in the Memphis school district. Spellings have been left intact. 1. My son is under a doctor's care and should not take PE today. Please execute him. 2. Please exkuce lisa for being absent she was sick and I had her shot. 3. Dear school: please ecsc's john being absent on jan . 28, 29, 30, 31, 32 and also 33. 4. Please excuse gloria from jim today. She is administrating. 5. Please excuse roland from p.e. For a few days. Yesterday he fell out of a tree and misplaced his hip. 6. John has been absent because he had two teeth taken out of his face. 7. Carlos was absent yesterday because he was playing football. He was hurt in the growing part. 8. Megan could not come to school today because she has been bothered by very close veins. 9. Chris will not be in school cus he has an acre in his side. 10. Please excuse ray Friday from school. He has very loose vowels. 11. Please excuse Lesli from being absent yesterday. She had the shits. 12. Please excuse tommy for being absent yesterday. He had diarrhea, and his boots leak. 13.. Irving was absent yesterday because he missed his bust. 14. Please excuse jimmy for being. It was his father's fault. 15. I kept Billie home because she had to go Christmas shopping because I don't know what size she wear. 16. Please excuse Jennifer for missing school yesterday. We forgot to get the Sunday paper off the porch, and when we found it Monday. We thought it was Sunday. 17. Sally won't be in school a week from Friday We have to attend her funeral. 18. My daughter was absent yesterday because she was tired. She spent a weekend with the marines. 19. Please excuse Jason for being absent yesterday. He had a cold and could not breed well. 20. Please excuse Mary for being absent yesterday. She was in bed with gramps. 21. Gloria was absent yesterday as she was having a gangover... 22. Please excuse Brenda . She has been sick and under the doctor. 23. Maryann was absent December 11-16, because she had a fever, sorethroat, headache and upset stomach. Her sister was also sick, fever an sore throat, her brother had a low grade feverand ached all over. I wasn't the best either, sore throat and fever. There must be something going around, her father even got hot last night. Now we know why parents are screaming for better education for our kids |
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