apple juice

The Washington Post has a great infographic comparing the Republican and Democratic tax plans.

Remember my last post about unequal distribution of wealth?

Not the clothing manufacturer…

the United States now arguably has a more unequal distribution of wealth than traditional banana republics like Nicaragua, Venezuela and Guyana.

Let’s just get this straight. Who will really benefit from the tax cuts Republicans are pushing? I’ve got a 1 in a 1000 bet that it won’t be you.

The richest 0.1 percent of taxpayers would get a tax cut of $61,000 from President Obama. They would get $370,000 from Republicans, according to the nonpartisan Tax Policy Center.

So if the average american worker makes $30,000 / year. That $370,000 tax cut would allow the richest 0.1% percent to hire 12 personal assistants! Talk about an economic stimulus! The average income of the richest 0.1%? Nine-million dollars a year.

if Republicans are worried about long-term budget deficits, a reasonable concern, why are they insistent on two steps that nonpartisan economists say would worsen the deficits by more than $800 billion over a decade — cutting taxes for the most opulent, and repealing health care reform? What other programs would they cut to make up the lost $800 billion in revenue?

The quotes are from this article by Nicholas Kristof: Our Banana Republic

This is apolitical and important:

Bill Moyers: “Welcome to the Plutocracy”

Democrat or Republican, you should pay attention to the central thesis of this speech… Money has already absolutely corrupted the political process, and unless real campaign finance reform is introduced, and Supreme Court cases are reversed that allow unlimited anonymous donations to political action committees, we are done as a nation.

The Tea Kettle Movement

“how can you take seriously a movement that sat largely silent while the Bush administration launched two wars and a new entitlement, Medicare prescription drugs — while cutting taxes — but is now, suddenly, mad as hell about the deficit and won’t take it anymore from President Obama? Say what? Where were you folks for eight years?”

Exactly.

Yeah, I’m thinking about politics again…

“…the biggest problem in this country is…they’re big babies. I mean, people keep saying they don’t want any tax increases, but they don’t want to have their Medicare cut, they don’t want to have their Medicaid [cut] or they don’t want to have their Social Security touched an inch. Well, it’s about time someone tells them, you can’t have it, baby…You have to make a choice. And I fear that—and I always thought, you see, that that was the Conservative position. The Conservative is the Grinch who says no. And, in some ways, I think this in the long run, looking back in history, was Reagan’s greatest bad legacy, which is he tried to tell people you can have it all. We can’t have it all.”

–Andrew Sullivan on Fareed Zakaria

Let me just remind everyone that it was Clinton who last had a balanced budget and made debt payments.

If you really want to scare yourself, check out the Wikipedia entry on the United States Federal Budget

There are different ways to solve these problems. We have limited resources, and we have choices to make.

What are your priorities?

 

Two things totally freaking me out:

Can a municipal service like a library hold so central a place that it should be entrusted to a profit-driven contractor only as a last resort — and maybe not even then?

Anger as a Private Company Takes Over Libraries

and…

U.S. Tries to Make It Easier to Wiretap the Internet

Several privacy and technology advocates argued that requiring interception capabilities would create holes that would inevitably be exploited by hackers.

Steven M. Bellovin, a Columbia University computer science professor, pointed to an episode in Greece: In 2005, it was discovered that hackers had taken advantage of a legally mandated wiretap function to spy on top officials’ phones, including the prime minister’s.

“I think it’s a disaster waiting to happen,” he said. “If they start building in all these back doors, they will be exploited.”

Two incredibly bad ideas, in my opinion.

As quoted in daring fireball:

“Those who would give up essential liberty to purchase a little temporary safety, deserve neither liberty nor safety.” – Ben Franklin

i’d be concerned when guys like this are losing…

Inglis, who boasts (literally) a 93 percent lifetime rating from the American Conservative Union, received the wrath of the tea party, losing to Gowdy 71 to 29 percent. In the weeks since, Inglis has criticized Republican House leaders for acquiescing to a poisonous, tea party-driven “demagoguery” that he believes will undermine the GOP’s long-term credibility. And he’s freely recounting his frustrating interactions with tea party types, while noting that Republican leaders are pushing rhetoric tainted with racism, that conservative activists are dabbling in anti-Semitic conspiracy theory nonsense, and that Sarah Palin celebrates ignorance.

Confessions of a Tea Party Casualty