We dodged another shut-down bullet, but only until November 18. That’s when the next temporary bill to keep the government going runs out. House Republicans want more budget cuts as their price for another stopgap spending bill.
Among other items, Republicans are demanding major cuts in a…
Relevant to my interests.
Wisconsin is in a showdown. Washington is headed for a government shutdown.
Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker won’t budge. He insists on delivering a knockout blow to public unions in his state (except for those, like the police, who supported his election).
In DC, House Republicans won’t…
Representative Gordon Hintz (D-Oshkosh) tearing the Republicans in Wisconsin a new one.
Submitted by mowgli3
That is some Weiner-Quality Rage there.
That, ladies and gentlemen, is a fucking elected representative. Right there. That’s how it’s done.
Hintz, you’re awesome. Keep fighting.
Let’s be clear: Whatever fiscal problems Wisconsin is — or is not — facing at the moment, they’re not caused by labor unions. That’s also true for New Jersey, for Ohio and for the other states. There was no sharp rise in collective bargaining in 2006 and 2007, no major reforms of the country’s labor laws, no dramatic change in how unions organize. And yet, state budgets collapsed. Revenues plummeted. Taxes had to go up, and spending had to go down, all across the country.
Blame the banks. Blame global capital flows. Blame lax regulation of Wall Street. Blame home buyers, or home sellers. But don’t blame the unions. Not for this recession.
[snip]
In English: The governor called a special session of the legislature and signed two business tax breaks and a conservative health-care policy experiment that lowers overall tax revenues (among other things). The new legislation was not offset, and it turned a surplus into a deficit. As Brian Beutler writes, “public workers are being asked to pick up the tab for this agenda.”
This is the real story here, and the Corporate Media is failing, again, to report on it. This is an old page from the GOP playbook: cut taxes on the rich to create deficits, then claim that the only way to be “responsible” is to “share the pain” and “live within our means” by destroying the already-thin (and laughable by any first world standard) social safety net that the poor and middle-class rely upon. There is a very real and obvious war being waged on the poor and middle-class in America, and it astonishes me that millions of Americans aren’t fighting back.
The only way Americans will take our country back from the Oligarchs is with massive, sustained, non-violent protests like we’re seeing in Wisconsin (and are about to see in at least 5 other states). We need to stand up to the ultra-rich, because those pig fuckers in Congress sure as hell aren’t doing it.
“The problem is that things are out of control, and unless you accept that you can have federal government doing less things, like unless you accept the philosophic principle that education should be handled by the states and localities, they don’t know where to cut,” Paul said. “Or unless you accept the principle that military spending will have to be cut. They don’t have enough money to cut. They can cut all of the non-military discretionary spending and not balance the budget.”
Jesus our priorities are so fucking backwards and ignorant. Universal health care is evil because it’s “socialism” (also socialist: “roads”) but we can’t even consider cutting a military that is 40% of the entire world’s military expenditures.
Wanna throw up in your mouth a little? This is what a graph of the top 5 looks like:
Meanwhile we’re cutting education (cause who needs brains when you have brawn) infrastructure (tanks don’t need roads, amIright?) preventative medicine (those insurance industry profits aren’t going to make themselves) funding for science (we already know where the oil is and who makes the best TVs) and a whole host of things that no one who makes more than 100k a year would ever even know existed.
“So be it,” right?
But we can’t touch that sacred military budget, because then the commies might come back…or the muslims…or the terrorists…or some xenophobicly fear-based buzzword group that we can freedom bomb back to democracyland.
Apparently our “preventative medicine” is a naked body scan and our universal health care plan is a bullet to the brain; ‘cause in the USofA bullets are fully covered no matter what country you live in.
My friend Meggan took her three-year-old son, Oliver, to the protests in Wisconsin. Upon arrival at the Capitol building, Meggan wrote, “Oliver just told me, ‘Me want to pwotest.’”
This kid fucking rules the universe. Oliver has restored my faith in humanity, along with the tens of thousands marching, chanting, and protesting in Madison.
This bill will strip away the rights of thousands of state workers. Meggan is a grad student at the University of Wisconsin. Little known fact: Grad students are unionized, like other state employees.
Oliver, Meggan, you’re both working class heroes.
‘Apocalyptic’ Budget Plan Sends Waves of Fear Across Texas Higher Education - Government - The Chronicle of Higher Education (via curate)
Unsurprisingly, the people who will be affected by this the most are poor people trying to get an education. Kill the grant program that helps many low-income students attend college without taking on tens of thousands in debt. Kill the small schools which serve thousands of low-income students. Then blame these same people for not pulling themselves up by their bootstraps, getting college educations, and being able to compete in a job market where increasingly, jobs that are available to people without a college education are sent overseas or are given to undocumented persons who can be exploited to work at much lower wages. Way to create a permanent underclass!
(via robot-heart-politics)
The “hanging’s too good for them” brigade should read an eye-opening piece from last Friday’s Washington Post, co-written by Newt Gingrich, the former Republican speaker of the House of Representatives, and Pat Nolan, former Republican leader of the California State Assembly. They pointed out that the U.S. currently spends US$68-billion on corrections — 300% more than 25 years ago — and the prison population is growing at 13 times faster than the general population.
“Our prisons might be worth the current cost if the recidivism rate were not so high but, according to the Bureau of Justice Statistics, half of the prisoners released this year are expected to be back in prison within three years. If your prison policies are failing half the time, and we know there are more humane, effective alternatives, it is time to fundamentally rethink how we treat and rehabilitate our prisoners,” they concluded.
Even Mr. Toews wouldn’t accuse Texas of being soft on crime, yet the Lone Star State has instituted reforms that have strengthened its probation system, reduced its prison population and freed up money to be redirected into community treatment for the mentally ill and low-level drug addicts. Since the reforms were launched in 2004, the crime rate has dropped 10% to its lowest level since 1973.
The Conservative tough on crime drive may be good politics but it’s tough on taxpayers and bad policy.
At a time when every department in government is experiencing budget cuts, Canada should not be embarking on an expensive prison-building program. Rather it should be following U.S. states like South Carolina, which is reserving costly prison spaces for violent criminals and dealing with lower level offenders in more imaginative ways.
True, the document talks about the need to cut spending. But as far as I can see, there’s only one specific cut proposed — canceling the rest of the Troubled Asset Relief Program, which Republicans claim (implausibly) would save $16 billion. That’s less than half of 1 percent of the budget cost of those tax cuts. As for the rest, everything must be cut, in ways not specified — “except for common-sense exceptions for seniors, veterans, and our troops.” In other words, Social Security, Medicare and the defense budget are off-limits.
So what’s left? Howard Gleckman of the nonpartisan Tax Policy Center has done the math. As he points out, the only way to balance the budget by 2020, while simultaneously (a) making the Bush tax cuts permanent and (b) protecting all the programs Republicans say they won’t cut, is to completely abolish the rest of the federal government: “No more national parks, no more Small Business Administration loans, no more export subsidies, no more N.I.H. No more Medicaid (one-third of its budget pays for long-term care for our parents and others with disabilities). No more child health or child nutrition programs. No more highway construction. No more homeland security. Oh, and no more Congress.”
