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What do you call people who use their power to line their own pockets by taking from people who can’t protect themselves?  “Bullies?” “Thieves?”

What if they also lie about it and attempt to cover their tracks with irrational nonsense that would make Jabberwocky seem like a reference manual? Would they be “liars?” “Thieving liars?” How about “lying, thieving bullies?”

Judging by what’s happening today in American politics, the answer is inescapable . . . we’d all be forced to just call them Republicans.

Congressman Paul Ryan, the new chairman of the House Budget Committee recently released the Republican budget for 2012, and it subsequently passed through the House with all but four Republican members voting in its favor. Labeled the “Path to Prosperity,” the Ryan plan is touted to cut $6.2 trillion from President Obama’s budget over the next decade. But while this may sound promising on the surface, even a cursory look at the details leaves a person asking, “To whose prosperity does this path lead?

According to Ryan, the Republican proposal is “guided by the timeless principles of the American idea,” but unless he was referring to the principles upheld by the Robber Barons of the 19^th Century, Ryan must be talking about another America. If the congressman was indeed talking about the United States, a nation that was founded on the notion of a government empowered by the “consent of the governed” to “form a more perfect union” that would “promote the general welfare,” then the only explanation is that the man is either ignorant of the facts of our founding, or he’s just an unethical self-serving liar!

The fact of the matter is that Ryan’s “Path to Prosperity” is a full frontal assault on working Americans. It makes a mockery of our Constitution by subverting the federal government for the benefit of the wealthy at the expense of everyone else. In short, the proposal that Ryan refers to as the “new House majority’s answer to history’s call,” will end Medicare as we know it, replace Medicaid with block grants, make the Bush tax cuts permanent, and lower both the top individual and corporate tax rate to 25%.

Indeed, Ryan and the other social cannibals of the Republican Party like to talk about being adults while paying lip service to shared sacrifice, but as is evidenced by their budget proposal, the truth of their actions is a different matter. The Republican plan not only attempts to slash social programs to pay on the debt created by years of excess military spending, tax cuts for the rich, and banker bailouts, but it does so by first making matters worse.

In what has become SOP for the GOP, the Ryan plan will trim the tax bill of the wealthy by 29%, bringing it to its lowest level since 1931, and it will attempt to cover the loss in revenue by hacking at the discretionary services  relied upon by everyone else.

So, the Republican plan is to address spending by gutting education, allowing our infrastructure to further decay, and slashing $1.6 trillion total from domestic discretionary spending, while shifting the burden for the high costs of healthcare onto seniors instead of addressing the root causes, and also ripping the heart out of Medicaid, which expends 87% of its costs to serve children, the elderly and the disabled. All told, the Ryan budget will reduce spending by $4.3 trillion over 10 years, but even though the justification for all of these draconian cuts is based on the deficit, Ryan and the snake oil peddling Republicans will actually give $4.2 trillion of that total back in tax cuts.

That’s right, according to the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office, the Ryan plan will reduce the deficit by all of $155 billion over 10 years. But what the heck, the deficit is really nothing but a policy bludgeon created and used by Republicans anyway. Since Ronald Reagan took office, the Republicans have been dedicated to increasing military spending, while cutting taxes, and as a result consistently ignoring the deficit and adding to the debt. The Ryan budget is no exception.

Just why the beltway press has referred to Ryan as “courageous” for proposing what appears to be standard fare for the Republican Party is more than a little curious. The truth of the matter is that the release of the Ryan plan may have been much more “careless” than it was “courageous.” Like the realtor who inadvertently reveals that the field behind that bargain-priced Tudor is slated for a chemical factory, the Ryan budget leaves no doubt regarding the true motives of the Republican Party.

Fortunately, this time around, people are paying attention. Blinded by their own lack of integrity, Republicans evidently believed that by grandfathering everyone 55 and over into the traditional Medicare system, they wouldn’t receive much pushback at their attempt to screw everyone else. But they were wrong. As it turns out, seniors who have learned that the Ryan plan will replace Medicare with a voucher system that will cause future retirees to reach into their own pockets for an estimated $12,500 each year for insurance, have reacted as if the change affected them personally.

Hurray for American seniors! In one town hall meeting after another, Republicans returning to their home constituencies are getting an earful about their illicit attempt to stuff their pockets with money gained by throwing future retirees to the wolves that run the profit-rich medical insurers.

Of course, the big-money Republican damage control apparatus is already underway trying to spin the dismantling of Medicare. Spending millions on bullshit television ads, the voucher system that Paul Ryan euphemistically refers to as “premium support,” is now being presented as a Republican attempt to “preserve Medicare.” Sadly, that preservation would be in name only, preserving the program in much the same way as a classic car is preserved by sending it through a car crusher. But hey, in the Bizarro World of Republican spin doctoring — rhetoric is reality.

So, where does this go from here? Nowhere. There is absolutely zero chance that the Ryan plan will pass the Senate and be signed by the president, which makes it all the more painfully obvious how ridiculously disconnected the Republican Party is from the reality of life in America. Why House Republicans would actually reveal their true agenda, knowing that it would never become law, is anybody’s guess. It’s like a thief giving his victim advanced warning — in writing. But be that as it may, the genie is out of the bottle, and he’s got “Republican doom” tattooed on his forehead.

Milwaukee’s ordinance requiring businesses to provide paid sick leave would be voided under a bill Assembly Republicans sent Gov. Scott Walker on Tuesday.

Walker said he is likely to sign the measure. The city’s sick leave ordinance was overwhelmingly approved by voters in 2008 but has never gone into effect because of legal challenges. The Assembly voted 59-35 to ensure it would never be implemented.

Patrick Marley, Journal Sentinel

Image by DonkeyHotey via Flickr

So let’s see, Milwaukee voters use the rights given them in an American democracy to effect legislation. The initiative is passed and then immediately subjected to judicial review and is left standing, so it becomes law. But then the “small government” Republicans in Madison decide that they don’t like the law, so they scramble to pass legislation that will effectively nullify the will of the people . . .

Isn’t democracy grand?

We presently live in a nation where the “haves” have everything. They don’t worry about paying rent or putting food on the table; they have healthcare; they have the wealth, with the top 1% having more than the bottom 95%. If they happen to get sick, they’re not concerned — they will likely be paid for the time away from work, and if not they have the resources to weather the storm.

But for the 98% of Americans who are the “have nots,” those of us who essentially live month to month, the story is quite different. Our incomes have been stagnant for more than 30 years; millions of us are unemployed or underemployed, with real rates currently over 22%; there are presently 52 million of us without healthcare insurance and millions more who are covered but still can’t afford treatment. When we get sick, we are worried about any loss in pay because we need every cent earned just to make ends meet.

So, the good people of Milwaukee, Wisconsin take the initiative to use their democracy to pass a law that would at least provide a solution for one of the many issues pressing on the working people of our nation. They didn’t fight for higher pay or even for healthcare; they didn’t ask for paid time for leisure — no, they just want to be paid when they get sick, but even that’s too much too ask for in the Bizarro World of profits-over-people American conservatism.

As stated by Rep. Christine Sinicki (D-Milwaukee), “This [Republican] bill is a slap in the face to the people of the City of Milwaukee.” But alas, Darth Walker and his hoard of Republican stormtroopers don’t really give a flying flip about the people, about their democracy or about anything resembling ethical behavior. They have the power, so they will assert their rule of the land. The will of the people be damned! The aristocracy has spoken.

All working Americans will be well-served to pay close attention to what’s going on in Wisconsin and other states being overrun by newly elected Republican majorities. They all talk about small government and pay lip service to jobs and workers, but at every opportunity they use the power of government to trash the rights of the many for the benefit of the elite few.

Wake up America! Wake up and learn that in the Republican vernacular, “small government” simply means government that serves a very “small” minority. 

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Read the entire Article at the Journal Sentinel  

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Do you think there are many great athletes amongst those who don’t care for sports? How about capable accountants who don’t like numbers? Surgeons who are turned off by blood or teachers by kids?

Regardless of a person’s profession, in order to excel, in order to even become competent, there must be some interest on the part of the individual that will motivate them to perform. Great musicians love music; great scientists are inspired by science; engineers find reward in design and creation, nurses in providing care, and programmers in writing clever code. In order to have effective government, it’s absolutely essential that our elected officials are motivated to “govern,” because those who can’t govern — politic.

This sad truth is the real story behind the cavalier attitude held by the House Republican majority now pressing for a shutdown of the federal government. They have abandoned their constitutional responsibility to fund the government in favor of seizing an opportunity to forward their political agenda, and they’re holding millions of Americans hostage in the process.

As required by legislation, President Obama fulfilled his duty and presented the Congress with a budget for fiscal 2011 in February of 2010. That budget was supported by Democrats in Congress but was blocked by Senate Republicans who would not agree to pass long-term funding. When the new fiscal year started in October of 2010, the government had to be funded or else face shutdown, and the response was bipartisan agreement to pass emergency funding in the form of a “continuing resolution” or CR.

Since that time, the federal government has been funded through a series of CRs, six in all, with the last remaining in effect until midnight tonight. A great outcome for Republicans, who appreciate the fact that the CRs essentially freeze spending at 2010 levels and prevent the implementation of the new healthcare law and financial reform bill. But for the state and local agencies that don’t receive funding under the temporary measures, or for anyone else interested in a functional government, it’s indicative of a failure to govern.

So, with time running out, the debate has surrounded the depth of spending cuts to be passed. The Republicans responded to the President’s $3.64 trillion budget proposal, with a proposal of their own that contains $61 billion in cuts all coming from the $441 billion slice of the budget consisting of non-defense discretionary spending. These cuts are all directed at programs that benefit the needy and the nation as a whole. From billions in cuts to education and HUD and more than $3 billion from the EPA, to nearly $1 billion from energy efficiency efforts, over $1 billion from FEMA First Responders, and nearly $2 billion from job training. Over half ($33 billion) of the Republican’s planned cuts are at the expense of  labor and transportation/housing.

Desperate for a compromise solution, President Obama and the Democrats have countered the Republican proposal with an additional $33 billion in heavy spending cuts to social programs. According to Senate Majority Leader, Harry Reid, they even upped the ante to $38 billion, in exchange for Republicans dropping all policy riders (i.e. specific policy positions, like cuts to EPA, etc.). But Republicans, led by Speaker John Boehner are still refusing to compromise, with the last remaining bone of contention apparently the $317 million in federal funding for Planned Parenthood.

Of course, Boehner still contends that the debate is over “spending.” So, according to his map of the world, the $23 billion difference in spending cuts, a whopping 6-tenths of 1% of the federal budget, is worth shutting down the government of the United States.

A shutdown would mean disruption of government services, including pay for military personnel. It would delay processing of applications in several federal programs, close national parks and museums, and require furloughs for 800,000 federal workers. Nobody knows how much a shutdown would cost American taxpayers, but the toll of closing the parks alone is estimated to be $32 million per day, with the lion’s share impacting small businesses in local economies.

So, whether you buy Boehner’s spin on the divide or not, the fact of the matter is that there will be a price to pay for a shutdown, and regardless of the Speaker’s true motivation, the rider to defund Planned Parenthood is still in the mix.

Republicans, and especially Tea Partiers, have painted a target on Planned Parenthood as the national bastion for abortion. According to Senator John Kyl (R-AZ), abortion services amount to “well over 90 percent of what Planned Parenthood does. The truth is that they actually account for only 3% of services, with the other 97% being centered on preventative assistance. The real focus being reproductive care for women who can’t afford alternatives, Planned Parenthood provides millions of breast exams, Pap smears and other services to a population where 75% of those treated live below the poverty level.

In the end, if there’s any legitimacy in Boehner’s claim that “the big fight is over the spending,” then the Republicans need to end their assault on Planned Parenthood. Federal law has prevented the use of federal funds for abortion since 1976 anyway, and $317 million of the federal budget is less than we spent in a single day bombing Libya.

Rep. Paul Ryan (R-WI) has already rolled out the Republican proposal for the 2012 budget. That’s where the fight on spending cuts needs to move. After all, fiscal 2011 is already half over.

Right now, Republicans need to drop their “government is the problem” position and pretend for a minute that they’re actually interested in governing. They need to recognize that the Democrats have already compromised to the tune of 62% of what’s been demanded. They need to understand that good governing isn’t based on winner-take-all.

They really need to set aside their partisan agenda long enough to put the wellbeing of our nation ahead of their political gain.

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President Obama sent his budget proposal for 2012 to Congress yesterday, and before the ink was even dry, Republicans were swarming like piranha. According to Rep. Paul Ryan (R-WI), “It would be better doing nothing than if we were to actually pass this budget.” Sen. Jeff Sessions (R-AL) said that the budget was based on “gimmicks,” and claimed that passing it would “be a national tragedy.”

White House estimates put the savings of the proposed budget at $1.1 trillion over 10 years, with two-thirds of the savings coming from spending cuts. Republicans have unanimously rejected that total, with Sen. Richard Shelby (R-AL) labeling it a “timid response to a grave challenge.” Shelby added that the proposal “ignores the will of the American people,” which is more than a little odd coming from somebody who supported the extension of the Bush tax cuts for the rich and openly shared his lunatic idea to fix Social Security by increasing the retirement “age every several years” — both positions being opposed by the majority of Americans.

But it’s easy to understand why Republicans are so vehemently opposed to the President’s budget proposal. While it does make substantial cuts, actually eliminating or reducing the funding for 200 federal programs, the spending reductions total only $33 billion for 2012, which is far less than the Republican’s draconian proposal to cut $60 billion in 2011. But more importantly, the White House budget also ends the Bush tax cuts for the rich, increases taxation on multinational corporations, eliminates $46 billion in subsidies for oil, gas and coal interests, and cuts $78 billion from the right’s most sacrosanct bucket — the Pentagon.

There is a choice to be made regarding the future of our nation, and the American people need to wake up and pay attention. Our national debt is currently over $14 trillion. The interest alone on that debt amounts to around $250 billion per year. The simple truth is that it doesn’t matter if we cut the deficit by $30 billion or $60 billion, or even the $100 billion promised by Republicans, or more — we will still be diving deeper into debt.

Take your pick, the President’s budget or whatever counter is offered by the Republicans — it doesn’t really matter, the spending cuts you’ll find will be largely symbolic. Arguing the merit of either proposal based on the depth of cuts is pure political theater. Either option will be kicking the can down the road. The substantive difference, the criteria upon which the proposals should be judged, lies in their differing methodologies.

Republicans contend that our economic problems are all the result of excessive spending, and their budget proposals reflect that belief. Democrats counter that the issue is more complex and propose a solution that addresses both revenue and expenditure. The result is that, while both parties talk about the sacrifice that will be needed going forward, only the Democratic position strives to ensure that it’s shared.

The fact of the matter is that adherence to the Republican method for addressing the debt will place ALL of the sacrifice on those who can least afford it. Their solitary focus on spending cuts combined with their unwillingness to address a bloated defense budget leaves no alternative. Those fortunate enough to remain wealthy in post-Recession America will not suffer from the proposed federal spending cuts. They only share in the sacrifice by paying higher taxes. And with military spending off the table, cuts to the remainder of the discretionary budget will only harm the poor, impede upward mobility and further weaken the middle class.

President Obama’s budget proposal may not go far enough, but at least it presents a method for shared sacrifice that can be expanded. It combines cuts to social programs with a slight trimming of defense and adds a bit of revenue through modest tax increases. The Republican alternative is more an effort best represented by an M.C. Escher impossible reality. The bottom line being that the budget simply cannot be balanced solely within the proposed Republican framework.

The situation may be complicated, but the math really isn’t. With a $14 trillion hole, only about $440 billion in discretionary spending outside of defense, and annual interest payments of $250 billion, the Republican plan set forth by Rep. Ryan doesn’t balance the budget until the 2060s and piles on $62 trillion in debt during the process. Republican fiscal responsibility is a fairy tale, sort of a contemporary version of the Goose that Laid the Golden Eggs.

But as insane as this GOP plan may appear, like an iceberg, there’s more to it than what we see on the surface. As House Majority Leader Eric Cantor (R-VA) promised, the Republican budget will be “a serious document that will reflect the type of path we feel we should be taking to address the fiscal situation, including addressing entitlement reforms.” In GOP parlance, that means more pain for everyone but the wealthy, pain that will include a full frontal assault on our nation’s social safety nets.

The writing is on the wall. Because the Republicans refuse the responsible path of both increasing revenue and putting ALL spending on the table, they must attack the entitlements. This is possibly the GOP’s most egregious tactic and without doubt one of their favorite arenas for yarn spinning (a euphemism for telling bald-faced lies). Republicans would have everyone believe that Social Security is seriously broken, and that it’s partially to blame for the deficit — sadly, it doesn’t matter to them that both assertions have no basis in reality.

Republican spin on Social Security is nothing but more fable peddling. As evidenced in economist Dean Baker’s letter to Sen. Richard Shelby, sent after the Senator told a nice whopper about the program, even “if nothing is ever done, then Social Security would pay full benefits through the year 2037.” It would also be able to pay around 80% of benefits well into the second half of the century. With small tweaks, the program will remain vibrant for its entire 75-year horizon and beyond. But this narrative doesn’t fit the GOP model for fueling Wall St. profits through privatization, so the truth must be set aside and a tale must be spun.

Part of that Republican tale is the myth of a broken system, but even more disingenuous is their contention that we must fix Social Security in order to address the deficit. This is pure, unadulterated hogwash — grade-A falsehood — a freaking lie! The fact of the matter is that Social Security is not included in the deficit. It is both funded and expensed outside of the budget; it is an off-budget program, and it has a surplus balance of some $2.5 trillion. The truth of the matter is that Social Security hasn’t negatively impacted the deficit — it’s actually helped to mask its true magnitude.

Medicare is another story. Being included “on-budget,” shortfalls in Medicare funding do impact the budget, and program solvency will require much more than tweaking. But even in the case of Medicare, the Republican position is fraught with dishonesty. The problem with both Medicare and Medicaid is not inherent in the government programs but rather a function of the rising cost of healthcare. With Medicare the problem is exacerbated by the increasing number of elderly Americans, but unless we’re okay with just denying them medical services, we still need to seek a real solution.

Of course, a real solution for skyrocketing healthcare costs runs headlong into the Republican priority of maximizing corporate profits. So, never mind that nationally our spending on healthcare is approaching one-fifth of our GDP; forget about the fact that we spend more than double the OECD average yet achieve far worse health outcomes — and whatever you do, please ignore the man behind the curtain — the one atop any of the 10 largest medical insurers who saw their profits leap by 250% during the past decade. This is all SOP for the GOP. Their response to this upside-down scenario is not to reduce costs but to limit access with Medicare vouchers. Hurray for the red, white and blue!

Americans need to pull their heads out of the sand, open their eyes and come to grips with the fact that we’re being plundered by our nation’s economic elite. The Democrats are definitely complicit, but the Republicans are the soothsaying demons of the illicit extraction. Regardless the issue, they have but one position: protect the monied interests. Healthcare costs are soaring, so limit access. The defense budget expands 250%, from $333 billion under Clinton to $847 billion in 2010, and it’s off the table. Federal revenues drop from 21% of GDP in 2000 to 15% in 2010, and the answer is to cut taxes.

The Republican position is always simple because it is single-minded. It doesn’t have to consider the complexities of the economy, the nuances of trade policy, the impact of spending cuts, the most effective means to stimulate job growth, or the ethical implications of any of the above. No, the Republican Party’s laser-like focus on fending for the wealthy makes all decisions easy.

If they were truly concerned about cutting spending, they’d put their knife to defense: the largest and most wasteful of discretionary programs. If they really cared about healthcare costs, they strive to create competition with solutions like a public option. If they were truly concerned about jobs, they’d drop the nonsense about job-killing taxes and admit that tax cuts don’t create jobs. If they gave a flying flip about the average American, they’d drop the charade about having “a spending problem” and tell the truth about taxation.

That truth would include sharing the fact that in spite of a record $1.66 trillion in profits for 2010, revenue from corporate taxes was a meager $191 billion — a rate of around 11%. In full honesty, the GOP would also have to fess up about how overtaxed we aren’t. They’d have to admit that federal taxes are at historic lows. In fact, as a share of our nation’s economy, they’re at their lowest level since 1950. And if they really sought to inform instead of manipulate, they’d make sure that everyone understood that we have the third lowest total tax burden of all OECD nations, higher than only Mexico and Chile.

But honesty is far from being the GOP’s strong suit, and the wellbeing of average Americans is low on their list of priorities. So, we can all expect more distortion of facts, more narrowly focused policies, and more pain for the American people. But cheer up, there is a bright side: so long as you’re in the top 1 or 2 percent of Americans, you can rest assured that the GOP has your back. Of course, if you belong to the other 98%, watch out — because your back makes a real nice target for their budget knife.

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If somebody told you that they wanted to lose weight, but they wouldn’t increase exercise or cut their caloric intake, would you believe they were being earnest? How about a friend who says he seriously wants to get out of debt but has no plan to increase income and is only willing to trim the most marginal of expenses? If these cases seem to be obviously insincere, then why does anyone believe that House Republicans have any real interest in addressing the deficit?

Reuters reported shortly after 4:00pm EST on Friday that House Republicans have sharpened their pencils with further slashing in their spending-cut plan that will now total $60 billion. But even at this higher level, which is nearly double their total announced earlier this week, how serious is a plan that will trim the $14 trillion debt by only 4-tenths of 1%? The Republicans are already patting themselves on the back, but since $60 billion in cuts amounts to less than 3 months of interest payments on the debt, should Americans really join the celebration?

The specific problems with the Republican plan are many, but they really all emanate from the conservative framework on which the plan is based. First, and most obvious, is their ridiculous premise that the deficit must be addressed while simultaneously lowering taxes for everyone, including the very wealthy. This is analogous to that person who claims they want to lose weight but won’t exercise — they’ve cut the options in half and in turn doubled the stress on what’s left. With all trimming reliant upon appetite control, dieting starts to look a lot like starvation.

This is far from the way America handled this issue in our glorious past. While climbing out of the Great Depression, our country was hit with the expense of World War II. The economy was invigorated (from forced government spending) and unemployment turned to overemployment. But the national debt, which had been around 43% of GDP, did climb to more than 121% by the end of the war. Undeterred, a united America shared the burden and that debt was steadily paid down post-war, with the debt reduced every year through 1974 (except a slight bump in 1949).

Federal debt bottomed in 1981 at below 32% of GDP, and the remarkable recovery was achieved almost entirely without cuts in spending. In fact, federal spending has increased in all but 4 years since 1947. The solution to the huge debt brought about by WWII was not austerity, but exactly that which Republicans have removed from the table — high top marginal tax rates. The 24% rate in effect when the market melted down in 1929 was raised to 63% in the early 1930s and sat at 81% when the nation went to war. It spent many years over 90% and never dropped below 70% until 1982.

The notion in post-war America was that those who benefited most from our society should give back accordingly. It was an ethic based on the premise of unity, of patriotism and the greater good. The wealthy were taxed heavily on their top marginal dollars, but contrary to the scary scenarios of economic ruin predicted by contemporary Republicans, the economy flourished.

Our economy boomed into the mid 1970s, bringing about a sort of golden age of American capitalism. During that period the GDP multiplied many times over, the middle class swelled, unemployment remained low, and prosperity was shared by most Americans. The rich still got richer, but not at a rate significantly faster than the rest of the populace. Massive concentration of wealth was avoided, and the bottom 90% of Americans enjoyed their peak income year in 1973. Through it all, we remained a country united.

But the sense of unity that had thrived for more than 30 years was lost in the early 1980s. The oil crisis of the 1970s, coupled with a massive influx of imported goods, brought about extremely high inflation and resulted in the heavy loss of jobs. This confluence of events caused the American people to lose faith in the government programs that had given us decades of prosperity, and laid the groundwork for the presidency of Ronald Reagan.

Reagan was elected president by running on a government-is-the-enemy platform. He cut taxes, slashing the top rate first to 50% and later to 38.5%, while also dropping the bottom rate from 14% to 11%. Unemployment was slowly improved, averaging 7.5% for his eight year term, and the economy did recover. But before Reagan left office, he made the unprecedented move of lowering the top tax rate to 28%, while simultaneously raising the bottom rate to 15%.

So began the era of Reaganomics. Hacking the top tax rates while raising the bottom, along with huge increases in military spending and cuts to Medicaid, food stamps, education and the EPA, the pendulum had swung. America became a nation divided between the haves and have-nots, and the national debt began to swell. While the federal deficit had never climbed over $80 billion prior to Reagan, it never dropped below $128 billion during his term. After decades of paying down the debt, it soared from $1.1 trillion under Reagan’s first budget to $2.9 trillion for his last.

Deficit spending had existed under previous presidents, but for Reagan, it was the core of his budget policy. When Reagan left office, he left behind the budget framework for the new Republican Party. That framework is still being followed by John Boehner’s Republican House: lower the top rate, feed the corporations, cut the estate tax, deregulate anything and everything, protect defense spending, and cut whatever else remains. It is under the umbrella of these mutually exclusive objectives that Boehner’s House has created their plan to address the deficit.

The problem with the Republican budget planning process is not just that it exacerbates the deficit problem by insisting on tax cuts for the top 2% of Americans; it’s also the narrow slice of expenditures that they will even consider to subject to their budget knife.

Our federal budget for 2011 amounts to $3.64 trillion. That total is split between $247 billion of interest payments on the debt, $2.1 trillion in mandatory spending (consisting mostly of Social Security, Medicare, and pensions), and $1.2 trillion of discretionary spending. Since the vast majority of mandatory spending comes from entitlements, which are by definition funded outside of income tax revenues, this leaves the substantially smaller discretionary pie from which to cut — and once the Republicans protect their sacred cows, few slices are left on the table.

At approximately 58% of discretionary spending, the price tag for the military accounts for the lion’s share of the pie. This includes around $550 billion for the Department of Defense and another $170 billion for the Nuclear Security Administration, Homeland Security, Veterans Affairs and related programs. Add another $159 billion for “Overseas Contingency Operations” (our Middle East wars), and the Republicans have stashed away all but 4 pieces of that 10-piece pie before it gets served up for cutting.

So, using the Republican framework for deficit reduction, the process starts with tax increases and military cuts pulled completely off the table. That leaves around $441 billion in government spending that’s subject to the Republican axe. Remove from that other Republican pet pots, like the $20 billion or so in oil company and other corporate subsidies, and it becomes evident how much the Republicans are like that person who allegedly wants to lose weight but won’t exercise. It is true that they’re willing to do some dieting, so long as they don’t have to give up any carbs or fat.

The result is a Republican budget proposal that leaves their campaign benefactors happy and instead cuts deeply into programs that benefit the needy and the nation as a whole. Their latest plan cuts billions from education and HUD, slashes more than $3 billion from the EPA, cuts from the FBI, reduces state and local law enforcement assistance, cuts from the FDA, trims nearly a $1 billion for energy efficiency efforts, cuts into science funding, NASA, the GSA, IRS and Treasury, trims the Army Corp of Engineers, slashes over $1 billion from FEMA First Responders, takes nearly $2 billion from job training, and drains billions more from the DOT. At a time of high unemployment and a decaying national infrastructure, over half ($33 billion) of the Republican’s planned cuts are at the expense of  labor and transportation/housing.

This is Republican economics at its finest. Their practices seem more consistent with some sort of Bizarro World Robin Hood, where the hero is actually a villain, and he steals from the poor to give to the rich. This is not the ethic upon which America was conceived. It is precisely the evil of elitist selfishness that the Founding Fathers strived to defeat.

Our present economic woes are not the result of over-taxation or excessive regulation. No, the causes of our nation’s ills are exactly the opposite. Our ailment is rampant greed and a steady decline in the middle class that stems largely from the massive concentration of wealth that’s occurred over the past 30 years. Today, the top 1% of Americans holds more financial wealth than the bottom 95%, and this Republican budget plan is nothing but another dose of the poison that brought us this disease.

Americans do need to be concerned about the federal debt, but the way to address it isn’t on the backs of the poor, working and middle classes. Our shared debt has been much larger as a portion of GDP in the past, and the formula for recovery and prosperity has already been proven. The Republicans refuse to follow that formula because their plan isn’t about the debt. If it was, tax increases and cuts in military spending would still be on then table.

The wellbeing of our nation is at stake, and the Republican House has proven itself to be either disinterested or completely incapable of prescribing the necessary action. It’s time for the American people to stand united and tell these thieves that we’ll no longer stand for their hypocritical nonsense. If they believe the deficit to be a major issue, then address it in earnest. If not, then abandon the false focus and help with the programs we need to create jobs and restore prosperity to the middle class.

Whatever the case — it’s time for all of our elected officials to cease their infernal shell game, stop the finger pointing, and for once dispense with the snow-job and TELL THE FREAKING TRUTH!

Article first published as Michele Bachmann’s State of the Union Tea Party Commercial on Technorati.

TeaPartyHD, the television and Internet network responsible for the unseen camera and teleprompter that Michele Bachmann looked toward while delivering her rebuttal to President Obama’s State of the Union address, finally posted their video of the congresswoman’s speech on Friday. And yes, she’s looking squarely at the camera.

So now, with a little luck, this will be the end of media coverage of the strange off-angle shot aired on CNN. In the big picture, who really cares what camera Michele Bachmann was looking at? The gaff made the speech a bit odd to watch, but it really could have happened to anyone. This aspect of the Bachmann story has been given far too much attention — so much that nobody’s talking about the insaniTea of her message.

First off, to call Bachmann’s speech a “response” or “rebuttal” to the State of the Union is to completely ignore everything she said. She didn’t deliver a response; it was nothing more than a rerun of the same fact-free Tea Party commercial we’ve all seen over and again, ad nauseam. It is on this inane content where criticism for the Bachmann slideshow should be focused.

Bachmann wants Americans to blame President Obama for unemployment, so she shows a nice red and blue chart depicting unemployment rates by year. According to Bachmann, the spike in 2009 is Obama’s fault. Of course, she failed to mention that we were hemorrhaging jobs at a rate of 600,000 per month when he took office, and that the economy was in a freefall stemming from the Bush orchestrated bank collapse, but what the heck . . . it’s all fair in politics.

The congresswoman then hit the tried-and-true “attack the Stimulus” chord. The “failed stimulus,” as she referred to it, gave America nothing more than “a bureaucracy that now tells us what light bulbs to buy.” This is a great tactic: just make up your own story, completely devoid of truth, throw in some exaggeration (the trillion dollar stimulus), play upon people’s emotions, ignore the facts, arrive at a hyperbolic conclusion, and BAM — the falsehood lives on. Keep repeating it, and you will gain believers.

This works well so long as the audience just buys the bullshit without checking any facts. But if people have even the slightest inclination to think for themselves, to actually understand the situation, the bald-faced nature of Bachmann’s nonsense shines through. It’s just too bad that so many people don’t care that the Stimulus actually staved off total collapse of the economy — that it added as much as 4.5% to the GDP, saved or created as many as 3.3 million jobs, kept unemployment from climbing to 11.5% or higher, and gave tax cuts to 94% of Americans. If they took the time to know the facts, they’d understand that the biggest problem with the Stimulus was that it was too small.

But the truth doesn’t always play well for the political goals of the speaker, so politicians and pundits are often forced to turn to propaganda — fact selection that results in lying by omission. According to Ms. Bachmann, while there had been “unacceptably high” deficits under the Bush administration, these “exploded” under Obama. She illustrates with a graph showing huge blue bars that tower above the short red Bush deficits, and she assigns all blame for the spending increases on President Obama.

Bachmann’s graph appears to be accurate, but like an iceberg, what’s seen on the surface doesn’t accurately reflect all that’s hiding below. And since the congresswoman doesn’t really want people to recall that her tallest blue bar, the one for 2009, actually reflects President Bush’s budget through October, or that it included much of the $700 billion “bailout” that was passed under Bush, she conveniently leaves these details out. And so what if she failed to mention that those little red bars didn’t include the spending for the two deficit-expanding wars that President Bush chose to keep off the budget. If President Obama didn’t want the billions in war expense reflected in his budget, he should have kept the costs hidden.

But as disingenuous as is Bachmann’s Tea Party spin on jobs and the deficit, there’s really nothing more egregious than the distorted fantasy of fear mongered hype she spewed regarding healthcare reform. In Bachmann’s words, “Unless we fully repeal Obamacare, a nation that currently enjoys the world’s finest healthcare might be forced to rely on government-run coverage that could have a devastating impact on our national debt for even generations to come.” What a crock!

Between Tea Party and more mainstream Republicans, there is no piece of legislation more illegitimately maligned than the Healthcare Reform. Their fallacy starts with erroneous claims about the quality of the American healthcare system, one that consistently produces outcomes inferior to other developed nations, and it always extends to outright lies about the nature of the legislation that was passed.

The truth of the matter is that “Obamacare” is not “government-run.” It’s actually an extension of the public/private system currently dominant in the U.S.. And as far as costs go, it’s designed to reduce them. In fact, according to the non-partisan Congressional Budget Office (CBO), it will reduce the deficit by $230 billion. And although that doesn’t solve the problem, at least it’s a step in reducing the costs of a system that now outspends the average of the developed world by more than two to one.

Bachmann is right about one thing regarding healthcare, it will bankrupt the country if allowed to continue on its present course. But the issues driving that dynamic are actually made better under “Obamacare,” although not to the extent needed — that would have required the “public option,” but the Republicans and Blue Dog Democrats made sure that didn’t happen. There was no way they were going to do anything to cut into the record profits of the medical insurers and Big Pharma.

Our nation faces serious problems, and President Obama’s State of the Union was light on specifics regarding how he will address them. But unless the American people want more poverty, more debt, more concentration of wealth, fewer jobs, lower wages, and a healthcare system that puts the insurers above the patients, they will do with Michele Bachmann’s “response” what they do with all fecal matter — flush it and forget about it.

Senate Republicans’ “Dr. No” spending hawk warned Sunday that America would experience “apocalyptic pain” with between 15 percent and 18 percent unemployment and that the middle class would be “destroyed” if it didn’t get its fiscal house in order.

“If we don’t fix the problems in front of us everybody’s going to pay a significant price,” Sen. Tom Coburn (R-Okla.) said on “Fox News Sunday.”

Bridget Johnson, The Hill

Coburn is just a skirmisher for the battle to come. The lines have been drawn and the strategic objectives set. The Obama tax deal gutted an already hemorrhagi­ng federal revenue base and collapsed the flank for any defense against deep and destructiv­e cuts to the budget that will most certainly be centered in social programs.

The deficit will be back on the center stage but will continue to be defined by Republican­s as a “spending problem.” Tax cuts will be hyped as “job stimulus,” and the vast majority of Americans will be asked to buck up and sacrifice.

It doesn’t matter that the dire straits of our Main St. economy was brought about through the greed of the wealthiest 1%, that a third of the wealth of the middle class was extracted to fill the coffers of rich Wall St. bankers, or that our 17% real unemployme­nt is the direct result of that extraction combined with incessant offshoring of American jobs.

Regardless­, the storyline will be shared sacrifice, but the reality will be that it’s only the bottom 98% who are to share. Listen to the talking heads in the media to see the paradigm is already shifting. They’re talking about “being thankful you have a job” and “being willing to take a pay cut.” It’s all about the “new normal.”

So bend over America — this is going to hurt — but somebody has to pay the price, and it’s not going to be the wealthy, because they own the Congress.

The list [of Obama's legislative accomplishments], in fact, is staggering: major, not to say sweeping, new laws on health care, banking and finance, food safety, child nutrition, credit cards, pay equity, home mortgages, student loans, tobacco use and sale, home mortgages — not to mention $1.7 trillion in tax cuts and spending in the name of economic “stimulus.”

Taken together — and at least in theory — these measures amount to the most aggressive expansion of federal regulatory authority in a generation. It is no wonder the Chamber of Commerce spent $100 million and turned itself into a Rovian attack machine.

Even so, the party’s progressives aren’t particularly impressed by much of the new legislation. The Krugmanites — columnist Paul Krugman deserves to be their namesake — argue, and often with good cause, that the new laws are timid compromises with the powerful industries they are supposed to reform.

Does anyone think that big banks — having been saved by bailouts — have now become earnest stewards of the public good? How about insurance companies? Health-care conglomerates? Mortgage lenders?

Howard Fineman, Huffington Post

Obama is a corporatis­t, plain and simple. He is selling the middle and working classes down the river, and all under the guise of upholding Democratic ideals — what a farce! After caving on healthcare and gifting the medical insurers and Big Pharma with 32 million new, government subsidized patients, he moved to financial “reform” and strived to keep the banks alive and thriving, with their casino still wide open for business.

Then the President ends the first half of his term with a “compromis­e” that includes no “compromis­e.” It’s the lesson he learned from the teaser rates of the illegitima­te mortgage originator­s. You hook people by making them offers they can’t refuse — it’ll completely obscure their perception that all you’ve done is inflate the bubble a bit more. “Compromis­e” is when somebody gives — not when both sides get what they want.

The Obama tax deal is an abominatio­n, and any politician who voted for it is either corporatis­t or a crack dealer. This deal is nothing but a hit in the arm, a fix, and the high will end shortly and leave the nation much worse than it was. But it doesn’t really matter — not to the corporatis­ts. This entire fiasco is just another chapter in the Great American Ponzi Scheme — the one where the rich take their loot before the pyramid collapses, before the next calamity.

The sad truth is that America is suffering from over-concentration of wealth, and the Obama “deal” will only feed that fire. American productivi­ty climbed steadily for decades, but the gains have all been accumulate­d at the very top. The peak income for the bottom 90% of Americans occurred in 1973, when they averaged $33,000 in inflation adjusted dollars. Since then, the per-hour output of the average worker has increased by 50%. If that increase was shared proportion­ately by everyone from the workers to the CEOs, the average worker would be making 35% more now — the average household income would be increased by $20,000.

But that’s not the way it’s worked out. The deal has been broken. The top income people have taken a disproport­ionate share, like CEOs who now make 500 times what the average employee takes in — where it was only 25 times more in the 70s. Add to that the incessant shipping of jobs overseas to increase profits, often to the tax advantage of the traitorous company, and all the while, the government withholds tariffs under free trade. Who gets hurt? The American worker.

Of course, the multinatio­nals still enjoy the American consumer market and all the protection­s of American society. They even enjoy privatized earnings and socialized losses, Add to that the increasing­ly regressive tax structures that have helped to concentrat­e more financial wealth in the top 1% than the bottom 95%, and top it off with a burgeoning debt that could topple the dollar from being the reserve currency, and you’ve got a giant pyramid scheme that’ll likely be coming down soon.

President Obama has done NOTHING to help this situation, and by signing his tax deal into law, has actually forced the further descent of the American middle class. The bottom line is either raise taxes or drasticall­y cut services — what direction did the Obama “deal” take us? Obama and the Republicans will be coming for the spending cuts very soon, because now that we’ve given another tax cut to the only segment of the population capable of paying, there is no alternative. So tuck your Social Security away and batten the hatches — this is going to get ugly.

The Senate voted 81-19 yesterday to accept the $858 billion Obama/McConnell tax deal. California Senators Dianne Feinstein and Barbara Boxer voted with the majority but for varying reasons. Boxer attributes her support to provisions that will extend breaks for alternative energy sources. Feinstein says that while she doesn’t like the bill, she’s voting in the affirmative because it will create much needed jobs. Both of these positions hold an element of truth, but in the final analysis are, in tamed vernacular — equine feces!

A little simple arithmetic will help to appreciate the insanity of what these politicians would have us believe. Taking Feinstein’s rationale, she’s in favor of the “deal” because economists told her it would increase the GDP by .6 to 1.2 percent, which she claims will translate to 600 thousand to 1.2 million jobs. So in other words, it makes sense to the Senator to add $858 billion to the deficit in order to sustain jobs at a best-case rate of $715,000 per job. Does that make any sense at all?

Math for Senator Boxer’s justification is even worse, since she claims the energy provisions will only result in “tens of thousands of jobs.” Although to be fair, she does also identify help for the middle class as another motivator.

The problem with both of these positions isn’t really the math; it’s the fact that they’re really nothing more than an exercise in rhetorical gymnastics used to justify support for a bad piece of legislation. While this deal is being spun as “temporary,” the tax cuts are anything but. Set to expire in two years — during a presidential election — the politicians who lacked the will to terminate them now are not going to do so then. If they really were intended to be temporary, they would have been extended for a single year, where there was at least a chance of it happening. The sad truth is that this deal will seriously impact a federal deficit that’s already teetering at record highs, and it will do so for dubious benefit.

Center to the “deal” are the unemployment benefit extensions that the Republicans have held hostage pending the approval of tax cuts for the wealthy. Few disagree with the need for this action that will enable those who have not yet exceeded the 99-week maximum to continue receiving payment. Economists all agree that it is of the highest order of economic stimulus, returning as much as $1.90 for every dollar spent. But the 13-month extension accounts for only $56 billion of the package, and although it may be the right thing to do, it does nothing to address long term unemployment issues.

Other items included in the remaining $802 billion also have legitimate justifications.  For instance, the reasoning behind extending the Bush tax cuts for the middle class, which is the single largest piece of the tax deal pie, is sound. The situation is that 70% of the GDP is fueled by consumer spending, and because the middle class has been so severely squeezed by the recession, if their taxes were to increase, it would translate directly into a reduction in GDP. And when the GDP drops, jobs go with it.

The 2% reduction in payroll taxes follows the same logic as the extension of the middle class tax cuts. The money will mostly go to people who have already tightened their belts in order to make ends meet and will therefore be spent immediately and returned into the economy. Estimates actually place the return as high as $0.90 for every dollar spent, which is more than double the estimate for the general tax cuts. But at a cost of $120 billion, there are much more effective ways to use the money. And none of the other possibilities have the potential downside of tying Social Security to the general fund, which could lead to future arguments to dismantle the program.

Provisions included to extend certain tax credits follow the same reasoning, with each putting money in hands that will spend it. And the provision that will allow businesses that make investments in 2011 or 2012 to accelerate deductions by expensing 100% in the current year is really more of a shift than an outright loss of revenue.

But the sound reasoning and rationale component of the deal ends prior to evaluating the tax cuts for the top 2% and the estate tax reduction for the top one-tenth of 1%. Both of these upper crust tax cuts will reduce federal revenues, thereby adding to the deficit and requiring further indebtedness to foreign nations, like China. But they will do so, not for the purpose of stimulating the economy, as the money is much more likely to be saved. Neither will the savings be extended because the recipients have been hurt by the economic collapse and are in need. No, the tax cuts for the rich are included strictly because they are the ransom demanded by Republicans in order to do what’s right.

The sole justification for the tax cuts for millionaires and billionaires, beyond the fact that the Republicans demand it, is because the money belongs to these people. That’s it. Ask any Republican — it’s their money and the government doesn’t have the right to take it. Never mind that the wealth people accumulate is not created in a vacuum. That wealth is the fruit of both their individual efforts and the societal system that ALL Americans work to support and maintain. Never mind that taxation is the means by which the citizens of a free society fund the government in order to provide the services required to sustain that system and enable the accumulation of wealth.

This is the classic “redistribution of wealth” argument, and it’s as invalid now as it was the first million times it was spoken. Those who present the “redistribution” argument choose to give credit disproportionately to the individual, which is obviously nonsense. It takes an entire society to sustain a system of opportunity. The problem in America today is that too many of the wealthy and would-be wealthy want to extract the benefit of our democratic society but don’t want to pay back into its sustainment.

This is precisely the reason that our infrastructure is crumbling and the wellbeing of the average American is in serious decline. The problem that’s taken root in America over the past 30-plus years is unethical redistribution of wealth — from working Americans to the top 2%. It is that concentration that’s behind the recent collapse and the present stagnation. We are experiencing the result of over-extraction of wealth. It is therefore the responsibility of the system — the one that so many people have used to accumulate said wealth — to adjust and bring back employment and prosperity to those who have been exploited.

America needs jobs, and we need fair taxation. The Obama tax deal delivers neither. Working Americans will be glad to pay more taxes — if they are just allowed to work and share in the huge increases in productivity that have lined the pockets of the wealthy. Make no mistake about it: there is no justification, rational or moral, for the Republican-demanded tax cuts. They’re nothing but the looting of America by the new Robber Barons.

Article first published as Tax “Deal or No Deal” Ordeal on Technorati.

The details of President Obama’s tax “deal” were announced on Monday, and five days later Democrats are still strengthening their opposition. Viewed by many as a blackmail payment to Republicans who have held hostage any legislation to help hurting Americans until tax cuts for the top 2% were extended, Democrats from coast to coast are angry and active.

Opposition in the House is being led by Rep. Jay Inslee (D-WA) who, with Rep Nancy Pelosi’s (D-CA) help, has managed to coalesce the Democratic Caucus and intends to block the President’s proposal from reaching the floor. Meanwhile, the torch in the Senate is presently being carried by Senator Bernie Sanders of Vermont, who stood up today and independently filibustered against the bill for more than 8 hours. 

Analysis of the bill reveals that not only will huge income tax benefits be extended to the top 2%, but an even more expensive estate tax gift will be given to the top one-tenth of 1%. In exchange, unemployment benefits that have historically always been granted when unemployment is above 7.2% will be extended, the bottom 98% of Americans will get the tax cuts the Republicans have held hostage, certain income tax credits will be extended, and there will be a one-year 2% rate reduction for Social Security withholding.

Overall, Obama’s back-room deal is sweet indeed for the wealthy and sweeter still the more wealthy one is. It does also give tax relief for the middle class, but according to Rep. Jan Schakowsky (D-IL) it will actually increase taxes on individuals making less than $20,000 or household making less than $40,000.

But in spite of the dire state of the economy, the immensity of the deficit and the plight of the middle class, Democratic opposition is not unanimous. Such Democratic stalwarts as Governor Ed Rendell of Pennsylvania have come out supporting approval of the proposal. And today, former President, Bill Clinton signed on to the list. To the person, these respected Democratic leaders assert that this is the best deal the democrats can get.

Sadly, it seems that President Obama, Governor Rendell, President Clinton and other Democrats who share their position are all completely missing the point. The situation we have in America right now is the result of decades of precisely the type of thinking these leaders espouse. It’s essentially business as usual deal making, and it gets us exactly NOWHERE. It’s the type of thinking that continues to build the bow wave that will soon wash across America again and take with it all but the wealthy who can weather the storm.

The fact of the matter is that the wellbeing of the majority of Americans has become so marginalized in the past 35 years that a huge portion of the populace now feels completely disenfranchised. The problem is so significant that less than 60% of registered voters typically bother to show up at the polls. But rather than address the core problem of voter participation, the process that President Obama and others in his best-we-can-get camp are pushing is focused on trying to sway the 19% of independents who form the center of this bare majority.

Enter the pendulum: this is the electoral system that created our present problem; the independents vote first one way and then the other — kick out the bums, become unsatisfied with the results, bring back the other bums — it’s a perpetual misery machine that pulses but never changes. It’s a closed system, and as stated by Einstein, it is therefore incapable of effecting real change.

If real change is what we want, then we must look outside of this closed system. We can no longer tolerate practices that serve only to maintain equilibrium, yet this is exactly what concentration on the 19% independent vote does. What’s needed is the introduction of new factors, the most significant of which should be an expanded electorate — a focus on tapping into that HUGE 40% or more of registered voters who stay home.

The Tea Party is evidence of the power of this phenomenon, albeit in a counterproductive direction. Allowed to continue, their discontent and belief that government is the enemy will form a vicious spiral that will only gain momentum. The President’s tax deal does nothing to alter this path. It is sadly a reinforcing mechanism that will help to sustain the descent.

What’s remarkable is that President Obama’s campaign of 2008 was the antithesis of the Tea Party movement. It too proved the power of expanding the electorate (62% turnout) and could have formed the roots of a peaceful revolution — a virtuous spiral. But alas it was not reinforced and was instead allowed to wither on the vine. Once elected, the President surrounded himself with status quo insiders and instead of being a force for real change became just another instrument of the establishment. He dedicated himself to doing what he had learned in Chicago politics — make deals. And in so doing, he failed in the most critical aspect of leading change; he failed to keep his supporters excited.

The President’s tax deal is a perpetuation of the system that’s responsible for the mess we’re in today. It offers temporary relief for structural problems and serves to exacerbate the issue of massive concentration of wealth — the very dynamic that brought us to economic collapse and a jobless recovery. The President’s deal does nothing to actually change the system, while potentially opening the door to further chipping away of our social safety net. It is at best a short term bandage that splits the proceeds evenly between the two sides, but where one side consists of 98% of all Americans and the other side is a minuscule elite minority.

Those on the left who advocate this deal are supporting the continued demise of the American middle class. Giving them the benefit of the doubt with regard to motive, they’re doing this because they believe that this is the best deal we can get. That belief is bred in the acceptance of 55% voter turnout and born of the notion that change must be sought by swinging that 19% independent vote. This is simple and utter defeatist nonsense.

The last thing we need moving forward are any more “deals.” What America needs is to excite the sleeping masses. Those who want to maintain the status quo fight diligently to break voter’s spirits and have them believe they can’t make any difference. Those who desire a better America need to break the trend. They need to motivate and inform the disenfranchised mass of voters who no longer participate. They need to give people a reason to get involved — and that will never result from making more back-room deals — it will only happen when the forces for change stand and differentiate themselves from the powers of resistance.