Convenient Untruths Propel GOP Budget Charade

Republicans scream that unless they get a $61 billion tax subsidy for their rich cronies, they will shut down the U.S. government.  They want to cut $61 billion in services vital to every American because their billionaire buddies don't want to pony up their fair share for maintaining the nation that has blessed them with the greatest wealth in human experience.

The Republicans claim that all these services must be cut or the nation will drown in debt. In fact, the $61 billion in cuts is aimed at the discretionary spending portion of the federal budget, which represents a mere 12% of total government expenditures, and will have a negligible effect on paying down the federal debt.

The Republicans' hysterical shrieking over cuts to balance the federal budget is just one of their very convenient untruths. 

The cuts would not reduce the debt, but they would destroy millions of American lives.  Millions will lose access to medical care, hot meals, and education.  Of course, the Republicans, spendthrifts who put two foreign wars on the nation's credit card and bankrupted an entire global financial system for grins, don't care one whit about government debt. Their avowed goal is to ruin the Obama presidency, and destroying America is just icing on their plutocratic cake. In fact, the $61 billion in cuts has something for every plutocrat. The cuts would effectively shut down the Environmental Protection Agency, allowing GOP oil barons unlimited Deepwater Horizon disasters, along with the belching of unlimited veils of greenhouse gases and the dumping of unlimited torrents of toxic sludge.  The cuts would effectively shut down all federal banking and financial oversight, allowing unlimited pyramid accounting schemes, along with unlimited bank fraud rackets and unlimited credit trading scams.  The cuts would devastate education, effective creating unlimited legions of Republicans thugs out of poor whites home-schooled on hate and misrepresentations of the Bible.

The cuts would eliminate PBS, effectively preventing anyone from seeing unbiased news, science or arts programming. Republicans will do anything to keep people ignorant and fearful. 

None of the $61 billion in cuts has anything to do with balancing the federal budget, and has everything to do with destroying America's ability to protect its people from the depredations of the GOP's plutocrat masters.

The real reason for America's debt and budget shortfall is the result of another of the Republican's convenient untruths: that lowering taxes for the wealthy is the best way to create jobs.  No budget balancing will come from raising taxes on the Republicans' beloved plutocrats, because to do so would destroy jobs and any prospect for creating jobs.

This convenient untruth has been bandied about for generations, and is based on a partial truth.  Lowering taxes on lower- and middle-income people creates jobs, because lower- and middle-income families who get to keep a larger portion of their income would spend the money to buy food, and rent, and school supplies, and clothes for work, and a new car to get there.  The greater demand cranks up the economy, creating more jobs, creating more wage earners, and so on.

Lowering taxes on corporations and the wealthy, especially the very wealthy, has the opposite effect.  It incentivizes companies to exaggerate the bottom line by slashing payrolls and combining operations.  The grossly overgenerous profit margins means more money to be divvied up among ever more investors, encouraging mergers and acquisitions that seek to create even larger paper profits with even more cost cutting layoffs. Jobs that can't be eliminated entirely are off-shored to the lowest bidder.  Manufacturing and services are shipped out of America. Millions are idled, and the idle rich grow richer.

Once all the real jobs are gone, the very wealthy can then go to work on just making up imaginary profits with exotic financial instruments.  Billions of imaginary dollars are traded to real suckers who believe there's real money somewhere in all the chaff. The money changers grow rich, and a global economic system is crashed.

The convenient untruth that tax subsidies for the wealthy somehow creates jobs is the Republican's greatest boondoggle. Everyone wants to believe not paying taxes is a good thing.  No one realizes Republicans only care that the rich not pay any taxes. Most Americans pay far too much in taxes, eroding their buying power, while the rich pay far too little, eroding the nation's business and industrial base.

The clear solution is to raise taxes on the wealthy, the top 2% or 5% of Americans, and to cut everyone else's taxes.  Taxing the GOP's plutocrats would reverse the job-slashing layoffs and off-shoring, and, along with some prudent international trading rules, bring vital jobs back to America.

But that's an inconvenient truth, and we know how Republicans feel about those.

Republicans Are History's Whiniest Fascists

The Politico recently reported that the U. S. Department of Justice had dropped its direct legal defense of Bush Administration officials Donald Rumsfeld and Paul Wolfowitz from lawsuits by Jose Padilla, the Al Qaeda operative accused of plotting to set off a dirty bomb.

The DoJ hasn't left Rummy and the Wolfman twisting in the wind, mind you. Justice, rather U.S. taxpayers, is coughing up $200 an hour toward private legal counsel for the former Secretary of Defense and his neo-con minion.

It turns out that Republicans and their pundits are outraged that the Justice Department hasn't thrown its entire arsenal into defending two people regarded by many to be war criminals.  They're whining that $200 an hour isn't enough to buy Rummy and Wolfman the high-priced mouthpieces they deserve. Despite demanding $60 billion in cuts to the current budget for services to the sick and elderly, education, and protecting the environment, the Republicans are demanding that no expense, no resource, no effort be spared to defend the Bush babies from a civil action arising from Padilla's detention and torture.

K-12 education? Eliminate it. Social Security? Abolish it and give the money to Wall Street cronies. Medicare? Disband it and let people buy private insurance on the open market. Spend unlimited amounts to defend GOP thugs? Priceless.

Padilla wasn't even convicted of the dirty bomb plot, as the info about the plot was obtained by torture and had to be thrown out as inadmissible.  This is often an inconvenient consequence of suspending the rule of law and violating every tenant of civilized behavior.  Because the Bushies acted badly, we weren't even able to secure a conviction on the terror plot. Instead, Padilla, a U.S. citizen, was tossed into military confinement for two years as an enemy combatant and finally convicted of "conspiracy to murder, kidnap and maim persons in a foreign country." Many would point out those charges could apply equally to Rumsfeld and Wolfowitz.

Once again, Republicans behaved badly, and are livid that the whole world won't stop to kiss their owie. Inflate a rampant financial balloon then crash a global economy?  Republicans demand more money and free reign to crash it again. Bankrupt a nation while enriching themselves with egregious tax subsidies?  Republicans demand another portion equal to all the loot they've already stolen, plus another $60 billion on top of it.

Kidnap, torture, and imprison citizens according to Moammar Khadafy's "Dictatorship for Dummies" book? Republicans want the country to toss dump truck loads of cash into a bottomless pit to defend their actions.

Republicans often said torturing people was necessary in a "ticking time bomb" scenario when, to save lives, any means were justified. Republicans don't seem to understand that implies there should be some sort of accounting afterward. If you used torture to save lives, then your reward is the lives saved, not immunity from prosecution.

All of which, of course, should serve as a cautionary tale for any Republican who wants to suspend people's civil rights and blunder ahead in a mindless rampage: Mussolini didn't end up on a meat hook because he was a procedure wonk. But Republicans don't see it that way. Republicans consider themselves above the rule of law. Because they are plutocrats, they believe their wealth entitles them to omnipotence and universal fealty.

Republicans are rich brats who've never been told "no." They expect their every demand to be met, and they expect everyone should be happy to shoulder the consequences of their outrages.  That the Justice Department told these Republican thugs, "no," has brought on a shrieking, howling, kicking tantrum that says, "But, I want to torture! I want to torture! I want to torture!"

Considering the ruthlessness of their attacks on the sick and elderly and on children all over the world, considering the single-minded fervor of their drive to subvert justice and the Constitution, considering the rapacity with which they plundered the nation's wealth, the Republicans are the whiniest, most over-sensitive shrieking lilies in human experience.

Not only must no one deny their rants and rampages, they demand that everyone fawn over their every noxious effluent as the wisest, kindest, most brilliant thoughts and utterances in human experience. 

Republicans howl about Barack Obama being a foreign-born Muslim, then complain they're being ridiculed and made to look stupid for doing so. In just the past few days, Sarah Palin complained that comedians make fun of her, and Colin Powell complained people were unfair to Mike Huckabee just because he made outrageous claims that Obama had no U.S. college record and grew up in Kenya during the Mao-Mao rebellion.

President Obama edited the Harvard Law Review from Kenya? Using snailmail? During a civil war? Could we promote him to double-President?

There, I made Colin Powell cry again.

No matter how outrageously and inexcusably Republicans behave, no matter how wrecklessly they destroy an economy, a Constitution, or a nation, Republicans believe they are God's chosen golden children whose every whim must be indulged.

I realize most people believe you have to coddle these thugs with loving and nurturing.  It is time to realize that loving and nurturing doesn't work with every child, let alone every spoiled Republican plutocrat with visions of godhood.  Save the loving and nurturing for the kids who respond to loving and nurturing. Take these guys out to the woodshed and whup 'em.

Beltway Budget Noh Play Continues Unabated

The Budget noh play being performed on Capitol Hill trundled along interminably, all the actors blustering about the stage with stylized movements behind garish masks accompanied by the screeching cacophony of traditional music.

The government was supposed to be shut down March 4 if Republicans and Democrats couldn't agree to funding for the rest of the fiscal year, but, in finest noh tradition, a compromise promises the nation another two weeks of grinding incomprehensible drama.  For a mere $4 billion in cuts to the President's budget, the Republicans have granted that the government may function for two more weeks.

The Republicans plan to keep allowing the government to functioning in two-week increments, each increment costing an additional $4 billion in cuts to increasingly vital services, until the United States is destroyed, or the Republicans get their $60 billion in tax subsidies for their wealthy cronies, whichever comes first.

Throughout this process, at no point has the President or Congressional Democrats put forth the real solution to balancing the budget: revenue reform.

Unless the government addresses revenue, no amount of fiddling will balance the budget or pay down debts. America has simply been robbed of its wealth by rampaging plutocrats who refuse to pay their share for maintaining the nation that gave each of them such a comfortable life. The constant Republican harangue that America is broke is just a lie. The Koch brothers, Rupert Murdoch, and Donald Trump aren't broke.  Carly Fiorino still has her five private jets and three yachts. Meg Whitman still has the ill-gotten billions she wrangled herself at the expense of 30,000 U.S. jobs. 

A recent NBC/Wall Street Journal poll revealed 81% of Americans believed those making more than a million dollars should pay a tax surcharge.  Those Americans don't even realize that the vast majority of them shouldn't be paying any taxes, and virtually all of them should be paying significantly less (see Reich tax schedule sidebar).  All it takes is for the wealthiest few to pay their fair share.  And, as an added bonus, when the wealthy pay reasonable taxes, the lower- and middle-income earners, who would get much-needed tax relief, would help the economy by being able to buy more of the products and services their families need. It is the lower- and middle-income earners who spend the money for the groceries and shoes and school supplies and consumer durables that drive the economy. The high earners' Imelda appetites for Italian shoes and ice sculptures just doesn't drive a global economic powerhouse.

Now, there are those who will claim that the higher taxes on the upper income brackets would somehow disincent people from making more money. Those people have rocks in their heads. If anyone could make an extra dollar, he would, even if he has to give up 70 cents in the process.  Those who claim that higher taxes would stifle investment because there would be fewer profits to divvy up have a point.  Fewer investments after a company reaches a certain point of growth would mean the company couldn't get larger, couldn't leverage mergers and buy-outs, couldn't slash costs by combining operations and offshoring jobs.  Investors would have to put their money into competing companies, which would have to vie for market share on quality. Instead of one or two behemoths churning out generic, low-quality products and services from least-cost plants, there would necessarily be many smaller, regionally-based companies competing on quality. The many companies would mean many more plants and staffs and employees.

America used to be such a country.  Every city and every region of the country had small factories where well-paid, dedicated employees carefully made shoes and valves and clocks and potato chips they were proud of. Every city had an industrial base which gave the nation an economic strength that was the envy of the world and provided its people with a standard of living that was unparallelled in history.

That was the America, with its 99% tax bracket, that was the plutocrats' nightmare.  All those companies and all those employees represented inefficiencies of scale that choked off the kind of roll-in-it profits plutocrats love. Besides, everyone at all those companies had to work for a living, instead of just playing god in an ivory tower. Starting with Howard Jarvis and the knucklehead B-movie cowboy president, the GOP plutocrats set about slashing the democratizing tax brackets, and created a nation where excessive untaxed profits enabled gratuitous cost-cutting through mergers, layoffs, off-shoring and dismantling America's industrial strength. And playing god from ivory towers.

The plutocrats dominion is complete.  Although the nation has fallen to the point where steel for our warships has to be shipped in from China, and we cannot care for our sick or elderly, the plutocrats and their Congressional minions focus only on devouring ever-larger tax subsidies. While the rest of us worry over nurturing an America where we live and raise our kids, the plutocrats only allegiance is to the international monied elite that jets from Biarritz to Cannes to the Maldives.

The plutocrats have won this battle because they are ruthless and don't care who has to die so they could get one more platinum nose comb.

Americans must be at least ruthless enough to insist on a tax code that reins in the parasitic plutocrats while giving themselves a shot at rebuilding a great nation. Americans must be smart enough not to listen to the greed lust ravings of GOP money hoarders, and create the kind of America where everyone, including the plutocrats, can prosper once again.

Ruining America is Republican Priority

Republican Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker's union-bashing blitz has earned him the disapproval of 57% of the people of his state, according to a new poll released by Rasmussen.  Significantly, Rasmussen is the GOP's virtual in-house polling organ, which spun the poll result as '43% approve of Walker.' Republicans hope that thirty years of eroding the nation's public schools and all those abysmal math and science test scores means people won't know 43% is less than half.

Funny how ignorance and hate work out well for the GOP. 

And that, of course, is at the core of the Republican plan to ruin America.  Their plutocrats just want to steal all the money, mostly using accounting tricks, while their racist thugs just want to kill and enslave all the people of color. The Republicans can accomplish neither if people remain informed and aren't forced to fight among themselves over the few scraps of civilization the Republicans toss their way. Therefore, for Republicans, it is critical to dismantle public education, which socializes as well as educates. It is much easier to defraud with accounting tricks if people can't add or subtract.  Republicans know they must destroy any media (PBS) they cannot co-opt. It is much easier to disenfranchise people who are uninformed. Republicans know they must continue to carve up the government's ability to provide vital services and to assure the public's safety, as an orderly society is less inclined to surrender its freedom. Chaos is the Republicans' ally.  If they can distract and misinform and confuse the public, they can achieve their goal of destroying the nation. 

Then, the GOP plutocrats can enjoy the rampaging capitalism of Russian gangster oligarchs and Chinese autocrats.

The battles over collective bargaining in Wisconsin, Indiana and Ohio are crucial campaigns for the Republicans, but in the chronology of war, those battles are more akin to the final assault on Berlin at the end of World War II than the rolling of German tanks over the Polish frontier at the beginning of World War II.  The Republicans have already dismantled private sector unions and off-shored most organizable jobs.  This is why Republicans are able to point to the unionized state workers and say, 'those undeserving scum are getting all sorts of benefits you aren't!' People buy into the divisive hate, never considering that they too should be getting the same benefits, and that it's Republican plutocrats who are denying them those benefits.

And yet, recent polling has begun to show cracks in support for the Republicans' final assault on America. People seem to have begun to realize there's something fishy about the Republicans. They promised jobs, but they're doing away with jobs. They promised fiscal responsibility, but they continue to expand tax subsidies for their wealthy cronies while the nation's debts pile ever higher. And, people may have begun to realise that further cuts to vital services that have already been cut to the bone might have messy results.

The Republicans never cared about the American people, and now their attack on America is so far along they no longer need to fool anybody. Every sneak attack loses the element of surprise at some point, usually when the bombs start falling. Their sneak attack on America has caught people napping for thirty years. As sneak attacks go, thirty years without your enemy catching on is pretty good.

So, polls notwithstanding, Walker careens ahead with his plan to strip state workers of their collective bargaining rights, as well as giving away the state's power plants to his Republican masters, the Koch brothers. Aside from plunging his state into debt with billions in tax subsidies to wealthy GOP cronies, Walker flexed his Khadafy muscles by denying emergency responders access to the state capitol building when some people got stuck in an elevator, and by having his goon squad batter a Democratic lawmaker to the ground as he tried to go to his office.  To the GOP's undoubted chagrin, no one died from blocking the emergency responders, and the goons failed to provoke a resisting arrest charge.

As Republicans in state houses across the nation strip away the final vestiges of organized labor and plan the mass surrender of state properties to Republican plutocrats, and Republicans in Washington take the federal government hostage, offering a choice of government shut down completely or crippled into ineffectiveness, the GOP is feeling they are nearing the top of the hill in their final battle to destroy the country they most hate.  They feel that soon, very soon, all those hated institutions of democracy and good governance will be forever vanquished, ghosts of a distant past that will not trouble them again.

Republicans Are Autocrats for the Plutocrats

Another day, another poll showing Republicans blustering and bludgeoning their way toward a GOP plutocrat Nirvana in defiance of the American peoples' will.

A new NBC/Wall Street Journal poll revealed 60% of Americans feared the Republicans' rampant budget-slashing would harm their families. While most respondents expressed concern about federal budget deficits and growing debt, Americans oppose Republicans cutting education, Social Security and Medicare.

This comes a day after another NBC/Wall Street Journal poll showing 77% of Americans support Wisconsin state workers' right to collective bargaining, while Republicans blitz to strip those rights away

Despite the clear message that Americans oppose the GOP plutocrats' agenda, the Republicans are pushing ahead with their heinous schemes. 

While 74% of Americans (including one former Shell Oil Company CEO, John Hofmeister) oppose extending tax subsidies for the oil and gas industries,  Republicans voted unanimously to extend those tax subsidies. 76% of Americans want to ax unnecessary weapon systems, but lavish giveaways to their defense industry cronies is one of the few sacred expenditures Republicans will not touch.

And the 81% who favor raising taxes on the very rich would probably make some Republican death list, if the Republicans hadn't already decided the very rich would never be taxed, and people who think they should be are simply nonentities.

Oblivious to the hew and cry rising across the nation, Republicans continue to loudly drone their mantra of more tax subsidies for the wealthy, and more service cuts for everyone else.  Republicans lecture one and all that public sector workers unions are the cause of states' budget woes, even though it is obvious that the culprit is the Republicans' ever-spiralling tax giveaways to GOP plutocrats for their ever-expanding fleets of private jets and mega-yachts.

Republicans, like all autocrats, specialize in ear-splitting harangues completely dissociated from facts.  They say they want to address budget shortfalls and create jobs while pushing an agenda that would devastate the nation's economy and annihilate tens of thousands of jobs.  They stand smugly before TV cameras and continue to spout lies as obvious as Muammar Khadafy's claim that all Libyans love him, and that there are no protests in his country.

Clearly, Republicans are unconcerned about dictating policies contrary to the electorates' wishes.  Their actions would indicate they consider themselves above the democratic process. Their actions are consistent with those of autocrats who feel no need to act on behalf of their citizens. Are Republicans ready to do away with the electoral process altogether, or do they just know the voting machines have been rigged by their cronies at Diebold?

The Republican juggernaut careens ahead unimpeded, busting unions, crippling government, and devastating the environment certain that the wealthiest and most ruthless have absolute dominion over the world and all its people.

America Can't Afford Republicans

There are liars, damned liars, and Republicans.

Republicans say America can't afford to allow its state workers collective bargaining rights, even though the nine states that don't allow their workers those rights are actually running higher average deficits than states overall.

In Wisconsin, Republican Governor Scott Walker claims he has to bust the state workers' unions because the state has a $3 billion budget deficit.  In fact, it is common knowledge that Walker himself is the source of the budget shortfall, having inherited a budget surplus which he annihilated with billions of dollars of tax subsidies to his wealthy cronies.

As obvious as these lies are, Republicans smugly continue to prevaricate with impunity, backed by the incessant howling of their Republican-owned corporate media and the menacing scowls of their gun-toting racist thugs.

And so it goes. Republicans say America cannot afford schools, teachers, firefighters, or police.  Republicans say America cannot afford clean water, breathable air, untainted foods or safe products.  Republicans say America cannot afford to maintain its roads and bridges and dams and canals.  Republicans say America cannot afford to regulate banks, proscribe toxic pollution, outlaw predatory lenders, prevent systemic financial risk, or to investigate and charge Wall Street fraud and malfeasance.  Republicans say America cannot afford to care for our elderly, our sick, our injured, our wounded warriors, or our wayward children.

Republicans say America cannot afford affordable health care.  Republicans say America cannot afford to pay people a decent living wage and must offshore all our jobs.  Republicans say America cannot afford the freedom to assemble and petition our government. Republicans say America cannot afford to support innovation, invention, and the free exchange of ideas.  Republicans say America cannot afford to build a new generation of trains, or power transmission lines, or infrastructure for mass transit or fuel-efficient cars.  Republicans say America cannot afford to catch up with the rest of the world in designing and building wind turbines, solar panels, geothermal plants, carbon-capture systems and the industries those technologies would create.

Republicans say America cannot afford Public Broadcasting, or the EPA, or FEMA, or the Social Security Administration, or bank regulators, or food inspectors, or product safety specialists.  Republicans say America cannot afford air traffic controllers. Again.

Republicans say America cannot afford National Parks, or National Forests or National Monuments.  Republicans say America cannot afford to keep its wildlands free and clean and beautiful for generations to come. Republicans say America cannot keep its groundwater in the ground, let alone, pure, or clean, or nontoxic, or free of radiation and carcinogens. Republicans say America cannot keep its topsoil from blowing away. Republicans say America cannot afford wildlands, or wildlife, or even wildflowers.

Republicans say America cannot afford to pay for its citizens' retirement needs, and that all the money for Social Security and Medicare has to be given over to their pals and cronies so they can blow it all on more private parties on private jets with very private dancers.

Republicans say America cannot afford anything except to give all its money and resources and buildings and roads and infrastructure and institutions and forests and trees and minerals and lands and rivers and lakes and freedoms and hopes and health and vitality to their plutocrat cronies to squander on designer labels, noisome bourgeois excesses and all those very, very private dancers.

In fact, America can afford all those things, and much, much more.

What America cannot afford is its Republicans.