Fair and Equitable

While Governors and state legislators across the country are conspiring to rip from its carcass the meager remaining flesh that holds the middle class together...firing and pauperizing police, firefighters, nurses, teachers, any and all public service employees...while simultaneously cannibalizing public education from pre-K through graduate schools, slashing funding for sewage treatment, water supplies, roads, bridges and etc, etc, etc...there does exist a very special and favored sector of our once thriving economic machine that is not only exempt from these draconian, suicidal slashes, but that has actually profited at the expense of the rest of us:

The Great and Powerful Multi-national Corporation!

This press release from the only remaining Senator with a conscience,
Bernie Sanders (I-VT), pretty much says it all. Please go read it.
Here's a bitter, projectile vomit-inducing taste:

Congress returned to Capitol Hill on Monday to debate steep spending cuts. Sen. Bernie Sanders said it is grossly unfair for congressional Republicans to propose major cuts to Head Start, Pell Grants, the Social Security Administration, nutrition grants for pregnant low-income women and the Environmental Protection Agency while ignoring the reality that some of the most profitable corporations pay nothing or almost nothing in federal income taxes. Sanders compiled a list of some of some of the 10 worst corporate income tax avoiders.

 “We have a deficit problem. It has to be addressed,” Sanders said, “but it cannot be addressed on the backs of the sick, the elderly, the poor, young people, the most vulnerable in this country.  The wealthiest people and the largest corporations in this country have got to contribute. We’ve got to talk about shared sacrifice.”

Here are the top three corporate sociopathic welfare queens:

1) Exxon Mobil made $19 billion in profits in 2009.  Exxon not only paid no federal income taxes, it actually received a $156 million rebate from the IRS, according to its SEC filings.  

2) Bank of America received a $1.9 billion tax refund from the IRS last year, although it made $4.4 billion in profits and received a bailout from the Federal Reserve and the Treasury Department of nearly $1 trillion.

3) Over the past five years, while General Electric made $26 billion in profits in the United States, it received a $4.1 billion refund from the IRS.

 But, of course new taxes have fallen off the legislative table into a black memory hole, so I guess it's us that has ta pay pay pay, while the wealthy and powerful play and play.

Have you had an abortion? Did you keep your receipt?

The Conservative assault on Women's rights has escalated yet again.
Talk about a nanny state!

From Mother Jones:

Under a GOP-backed bill expected to sail through the House of Representatives, the Internal Revenue Service would be forced to police how Americans have paid for their abortions. To ensure that taxpayers complied with the law, IRS agents would have to investigate whether certain terminated pregnancies were the result of rape or incest.

Thomas Barthold, the chief of staff of the nonpartisan Joint Tax Committee, confirmed that one consequence of the Republicans' "No Taxpayer Funding for Abortion Act" would be to turn IRS agents into abortion cops—that is, during an audit, they'd have to detemine, from evidence provided by the taxpayer, whether any tax benefit had been inappropriately used to pay for an abortion.

 OK, let's review the Conservative policy punch list:

• Destroy the middle class, check
• Eviscerate safety net for the poor, sick and elderly, check
• Attack and defund ACORN, Planned Parenthood, Public Education, NPR and any and all arts, cultural and educational institutions favored by anyone who is not a white, radical right winger, check.
• Return women to the status of herd animals, check
• Further enrich obscenely wealthy campaign donors and voracious corporations, check
• Create jobs and maintain critical infrastructure...well you can't do everything!

Waterboarding for Bon Vivants

Ted Rall sez it all:

The Message

Oregon Senator Jeff Merkley, posting at Daily Kos, says what every Democrat should be repeating fifty times a day, to the exclusion of any comment on any other topic.

[Caveat Emptor: the likelihood of more than a handful of Dems uniting behind this message has a probability approaching negative infinity. Ah well...we all have our dreams.....]

Kill the GOP Plan to Kill Jobs

by Senator Jeff Merkley

Millions of Americans remain unemployed and countless families are losing their homes to foreclosure. So why are House Republican leaders proposing to torpedo the economy?

We all agree that reducing our deficits is essential for long-run economic health, preparing the path for growth and prosperity.  But instead of recognizing deficit reduction as one piece of a strategy to get our economy on track, Republican leaders are using the deficits – which largely derive from the Republican policies that supported unfunded wars, unfunded subsidies for the richest Americans, and an economic disaster driven by the deregulation of Wall Street – to wage a war on working Americans.  Far from helping hard-working, middle class Americans who have borne the brunt of the Great Recession, the House Republican budget targets those very same Americans.

The extremist House budget will kill jobs and slash funding for education, job training programs, student loans, and health care services for women and their families, among many other things.  According to Mark Zandi, who advised John McCain’s presidential campaign and who now works at the non-partisan Moody’s Analytics, the GOP’s proposed budget cuts will destroy 700,000 American jobs. That is worth repeating: The GOP budget plan will destroy 700,000 jobs.  The last thing our nation can afford right now is further job losses. We need to be creating jobs, not destroying jobs.

There are common-sense budget cuts that could reduce our deficits without wrecking the economy or attacking working families.  We can start by cutting back on the bonus tax breaks for millionaires and billionaires that Republican leaders insisted on just ten weeks ago.  We could end tax subsidies for oil companies and save tens of billions of dollars in the process.
Republican House Speaker John Boehner summarized his perspective on the Republican budget as follows: if people might lose their jobs, “so be it.” You might think the House Republican leaders would show some humility after their failed agenda turned record surpluses into massive deficits in 2001, or after their policies reduced the wages of working Americans during the modest expansion in the middle of the decade, or after they burned down the economy with unregulated derivatives and predatory mortgage securities in 2008.

Apparently not.  Their proposals are exactly the same: give massive tax cuts to the wealthiest, shred the safety net, and eliminate investments that would help restore American economic leadership.

Budgets are nothing if not statements of priorities.  A budget should be judged by whether it creates a foundation for the success of American working families striving to buy a house, or to send their kids to college, or to save a little for retirement and, if they’re lucky, a vacation.  The budget promoted by the Republican leadership fails this test and must be defeated.

Amen to that Senator.

And speaking of The Message....Almost thirty years ago, Grandmaster Flash gave us a preview of the Dystopia awaiting us if the Republicans manage to enact their evil, inhuman budget.