This post was originally published at Not So Humble. Click here to read the post in its original habitat!

Cracks are starting to show that President Obama and Congressional Democrats may flinch on the issue of the Bush-era tax cuts for the super-wealthy, and let them become permenent instead of allowing them to expire into the nothingness that they should be – they did nothing for the economy when they were passed, despite the loving praise that Republicans lavished on them when they gleefully passed them when they had majorities in the House and the Senate, and Americans didn’t see a single job created thanks to them.

Now, Republicans are claiming that if their best friends don’t get to continue to enjoy the disproportionate tax breaks and the fact that even without them the wealthy have the smallest tax burden they’ve ever had in the United States, second only to the absolute poorest among us, the sky will fall and the economy will grind to a halt.

They may have some leverage there actually – you do have to wonder why so many businesses have decided to only hire very very slowly over the past two years, and why so many businesses are suddenly interested in squeezing as much as they can possibly get from their current employees rather than bring on new ones. Everyone’s trying to hold the government accountable for job growth, but no one seems willing to hold the millionaires and the business owners accountable – the people who are shredding resumes by the thousand. And as illogical as that seems, Tea Party thugs and Republicans of multiple stripes are interested in giving these same people tax breaks, rewarding them for their gross mistreatment of the rest of America.

The folks at MoveOn.org are collecting a list of reasons why the Millionaire tax breaks are a bad idea. I encourage you to submit your own:

[ One Million Reasons the Millionaire Bailout is a Bad Idea ]
Source: MoveOn.org

phoenix is the author of Not So Humble and an unabashed progresssive who isn’t afraid of any or all of the labels thrown at him. Head over to Not So Humble to read more!

This post was originally published at Not So Humble. Click here to read the post in its original habitat!

All the credit goes to the folks at AlterNet for this one, but while many people are sitting back and wailing about the loss of the House to the Republicans as something catastrophic, the one thing you won’t hear anyone but the Republicans themselves saying is that they have some kind of mandate to reduce spending and create jobs – two things that are all but impossible to do since employing people involves spending money on those people. As usual, the instant the Republicans and their tea party friends win a few elections, they’re back to their Bush Era paradoxical talk and impossible promises – after all, those promises and paradoxes are what got them elected.

A lot of good Democrats lost in the House, but in some cases I don’t regret their losing – Blue Dog Democrats who caucused with the Dems but voted with the Repubs, or who held up critical legislation in order to push their own semi-centrist agenda won’t be missed. This is a rallying call for the Democrats who remain to trust in their progressive base and go on the attack, and make sure the American people know loud and clear who’s responsible when the improvements already in place either start to stall, or when one of those new Tea Party freaks does something stupid, says something racist/sexist/homophobic, and inevitably gets busted taking money from the private industries whose boots they lick.

Perhaps the only loss I’m really mourning is the Senate seat of Russ Feingold – the one Senator who voted against the Patriot Act, the one Senator who truly appreciated and respected the rights and civil liberties of the American people, voted out and replaced with a car salesman who bought his way into the Senate with a ridiculous amount of money. Just goes to show you where the Tea Party heads are at, doesn’t it?

So they’re in the House now with a ridiculously slim majority, no majority in the Senate, and an agenda that includes something like repealing Health Care reform, which I would almost be happy to see them try to do – they’re going to need a whole lot more votes to do that, and any effort they make to try and pull people in front of Congress to talk about the new health care laws, the more the American people will see what it does for them, so good luck with that.

Regardless, over at AlterNet, there’s an excellent list of 7 reasons why this was anything but a “wave,” and nothing compared to the 08 elections, and while it’s worrysome in many ways, it’s nothing that progressives can’t rally against – and we all should. Here are a couple of highlights:

We thought a little perspective was in order, so without further preamble, here are seven things progressives should keep in mind after Tuesday’s drubbing:

1. Midterm elections, unlike presidential races, are a collection of low-turnout, localized contests rather than a barometer of the nation’s ideological tilt.

…

The GOP’s gains in last night’s elections, as Rosenberg notes, “are part of the predictable rebalancing that occurs between presidential elections, rather than ideological shifts in the electorate.”

2. The electorate is hopping mad, but they still dislike Republicans. A month before an election that has swept some rather extreme GOPers into Congress, an Associated Press-GfK Poll found that “60 percent disapprove of the job congressional Democrats are doing — yet 68 percent frown on how Republicans are performing.”

A New York Times/CBS News poll last week found that while a majority of Americans voted GOP yesterday, the electorate “continues to have a more favorable opinion of the Democratic Party than of the Republican Party, with 46 percent favoring Democrats and 41 favoring Republicans.”

This will be the third consecutive year in which the party out of power wins. That’s not a measure of the country’s ideological leanings, it’s a sign that people are hurting and are mad as hell about it (in case one needed such a sign).

3. Blue Dogs took the brunt of it. The loss of Wisconsin’s liberal lion, Russ Feingold, is a blow to the progressive movement. Alan Grayson’s defeat in Florida hurts. Other good lawmakers were booted out of office last night as well. But in many cases, what we saw were conservatives with Ds next to their names replaced with conservatives with Rs.

I’ll leave the others – really good ones, I might add, to you to head over and check out.

[ It's Not the End of the World -- 7 Things Progressives Need to Keep in Mind About Last Night's GOP 'Wave' ]
Source: AlterNet

phoenix is the author of Not So Humble and an unabashed progresssive who isn’t afraid of any or all of the labels thrown at him. Head over to Not So Humble to read more!

This post was originally published at Not So Humble. Click here to read the post in its original habitat!

If you read Not So Humble at all, you know what’s at stake in the upcoming elections and how important it is for progressives and liberals everywhere who care about the future and continued progress of our country – incremental as it is – to get to the polls on November 2nd. The far-right wingnuts and Tea Partyists are definitely headed to the polls, and you bet they’re hoping you don’t go because they know full well they’re in the minority.

Do you need more convincing that a lot of the nonsense we’re hearing in the media amount to little more than right-wing talking points? Check out this fabulous list from Dave Johnson over at the Campaign for America’s Future that I have to lift in its entirety because they are, point for point, critical to be read together:

1) President Obama tripled the deficit.
Reality: Bush’s last budget had a $1.416 trillion deficit. Obama’s first budget reduced that to $1.29 trillion.

2) President Obama raised taxes, which hurt the economy.
Reality: Obama cut taxes. 40% of the “stimulus” was wasted on tax cuts which only create debt, which is why it was so much less effective than it could have been.

3) President Obama bailed out the banks.
Reality: While many people conflate the “stimulus” with the bank bailouts, the bank bailouts were requested by President Bush and his Treasury Secretary, former Goldman Sachs CEO Henry Paulson. (Paulson also wanted the bailouts to be “non-reviewable by any court or any agency.”) The bailouts passed and began before the 2008 election of President Obama.

4) The stimulus didn’t work.
Reality: The stimulus worked, but was not enough. In fact, according to the Congressional Budget Office, the stimulus raised employment by between 1.4 million and 3.3 million jobs.

5) Businesses will hire if they get tax cuts.
Reality: A business hires the right number of employees to meet demand. Having extra cash does not cause a business to hire, but a business that has a demand for what it does will find the money to hire. Businesses want customers, not tax cuts.

6) Health care reform costs $1 trillion.
Reality: The health care reform reduces government deficits by $138 billion.

7) Social Security is a Ponzi scheme, is “going broke,” people live longer, fewer workers per retiree, etc.
Reality: Social Security has run a surplus since it began, has a trust fund in the trillions, is completely sound for at least 25 more years and cannot legally borrow so cannot contribute to the deficit (compare that to the military budget!) Life expectancy is only longer because fewer babies die; people who reach 65 live about the same number of years as they used to.

8 ) Government spending takes money out of the economy.
Reality: Government is We, the People and the money it spends is on We, the People. Many people do not know that it is government that builds the roads, airports, ports, courts, schools and other things that are the soil in which business thrives. Many people think that all government spending is on “welfare” and “foreign aid” when that is only a small part of the government’s budget.

If people want to make this a referendum on President Obama, they’d do well to head over to one of our previous articles where we highlight the Obama Achievements Center – where, even if you don’t particularly think President Obama is progressive enough or effective enough, you have to acknowledge the things he’s done so far and ask the question of whether or not you’d get the same from John McCain if he had won the election.

Great example – President Obama participated in the It Gets Better Project. Would John McCain have done that? Would any of these Tea Party nuts who claim to defend the constitution but have never read it (Christine O’Donnel’s “where in the constitution is freedom of religion” and Sharron Angle’s “There’s a second amendment?” comment prove it) have participated? Never – they’re too busy blaming everyone else for the problems they and their financial backers caused while draping themselves in American flags and claiming to be “of the people.”

Be wary my friends, that Trojan Horse is right outside the door, and there are a lot of clueless people willing to let them in.

[ Eight False Things The Public “Knows” Prior To Election Day ]
Source: Campaign for America’s Future

phoenix is the author of Not So Humble and an unabashed progresssive who isn’t afraid of any or all of the labels thrown at him. Head over to Not So Humble to read more!

This post was originally published at Not So Humble. Click here to read the post in its original habitat!

What’s this? Could it be? The very same banks that taxpayers had to rush to save in order to stave off economic disaster could very well be using the same money that the government supplied to them so they could stay afloat to kick people out of their homes without even doing them the due process of filing the legal documents correctly, much less work with those homeowners to keep them in their homes?

No way, couldn’t be.

Seriously, does this surprise anyone at this stage? Banks are so eager to reduce their risk that they would rather cut off their own noses to spite their face to eliminate any and all risk by having money in the housing sector at all, even though that risk could pay off big if they were only willing to work with homeowners to help them stay in their homes. Homeowners who stay in their homes are going to build equity, spend that equity in their homes, and eventually sell those homes at a profit to themselves and the banks who will fund the next buyer who wants that same upgraded home. Getting bargains on foreclosures are great for home buyers, but when a bank is paying a pittance for a home that used to be worth a fortune, it’s no bargain for them. So what’s the deal?

This same nonsensical mentality applies to jobs too – everyone’s so eager to hold the government accountable for the high jobless rate in America – and don’t get me wrong, the government has some strings to pull and are indeed pulling them – which is why we’re seeing increased private sector hiring – but someone, at some point, especially my Republican and Libertarian and other free marketeer friends who trust the private sector more than anyone else – someone has to ask why those businesses just don’t feel like hiring.

After all, they’re seeing great productivity out of the terrified and scared employees they have that are all worried about being laid off, why add more to the payrolls? 9.6% unemployment? Balance sheets don’t care, so why not keep off that hiring frenzy for a while till you get some politicians in office that are willing to shovel you some more cash in exchange for a few measley jobs?

See the pattern? How’s that for “following the money?”

But back to the foreclosure issues at hand:

oint investigation by every state and the District of Columbia could force mortgage companies to settle allegations that they used flawed documents to foreclose on hundreds of thousands of homeowners.

It could take months, at least, for any settlement to be reached. But legal experts say lenders could be forced to accept an independent monitor to ensure they follow state foreclosure laws. The banks could also be subject to financial penalties and be forced to pay some people whose foreclosures were improperly handled.

For banks, “the most efficient way for them to get out from under this is to settle across the board,” said Kathleen Engel, a law professor at Suffolk University in Boston.

Employees of several major lenders have acknowledged in depositions that they signed thousands of foreclosure documents without reading them as required by state laws.

“This is not simply about a glitch in paperwork,” Iowa Attorney General Tom Miller, who’s leading the probe announced Wednesday, said in a statement. “It’s also about some companies violating the law and many people losing their homes.”

Whoa, banks breaking the law in order to alleviate their own risk and reduce the assets on their balance sheets in exchange for cash…cash that they refuse to lend, that even new financial rules don’t even require they keep on hand? That’s unpossible.

Then again, after Republicans derailed efforts last year to force banks into binding legislation to make them settle across the board, maybe now the states will do what Congressional Republicans were too afraid to do: what’s right for the American people.

[ Officials in All 50 States Launch Foreclosure Probe ]
Source: The Washington Post (courtesy of Reader Supported News)

phoenix is the author of Not So Humble and an unabashed progressive who isn’t afraid of any or all of the labels thrown at him. Head over to Not So Humble to read more!

This post was originally published at Not So Humble. Click here to read the post in its original habitat!

When I was an undergrad, I went to see a speech by world reknown poet and author Nikki Giovanni. Her speech changed my life, and completely brought to the fore my own budding political and ideological beliefs. I sat in a room full of my peers – other African-American students at my University – while Giovanni challenged us to move on past our own homophobia, and to not let the racism and privilege that still sits near to the hearts of many of our white classmates deter us from greatness.

She pointed out that we should be less concerned with winning hearts and minds as we are concerned with ensuring equal treatment and equal access – essentially, the end of privilege. Racism is a cancer we may never be able to remove from the human psyche, but racist behavior and the curse of privilege is much easier to attack.

She noted that she hadn’t cared what was in the heart of someone who wasn’t sleeping in bed next to her for years – what was important was how people treated each other in the real world; the doors they opened and the doors they closed.

She also said she was tired of the homophobia in the Black community, and that if we kept this up we were destined to repeat the oppressions and mistakes of the same people who tormented us and marginalized us – she reminded us to be all-inclusive and to fight hatred wherever it rears its ugly head and in whatever form, even if it’s couched in religion and hurled at us from the pulpit of our churches.

She was absolutely right, and to this day I’m irritated at the homophobia in the Black community. Admittedly much of it is religiously driven and I’m not horribly religious, which puts me on the outside of a lot of it, but it still tears at me greatly.

Over at Alternet, Devona Walker is irritated at it as well, and wonders if the Eddie Long sex scandal will force us all to come face to face with its ugliness for what it is:

Atlanta megachurch Bishop Eddie Long faces four lawsuits from young men — either members of his congregation or employed by his church — who alleged that Long coerced them into sex. The news broke a few weeks ago and has caused a huge uproar within the black church community. But black lesbian, gay and transgendered folks as well as numerous civil rights leaders wonder if Long’s downfall could open the door for a long overdue conversation about homophobia in the black church. It also offers an opportunity for the black church to distinguish itself from the anti-gay rhetoric of white evangelicals and reclaim its historical place as being primarily about civil rights, as opposed to hate.

…

“We have a ‘don’t ask, don’t tell’ policy within the black community and the black church. As long as you don’t disclose your sexuality, you can be on the usher board, you can be in the pulpit, but don’t you dare talk about it,” said Darion Aaron, a black gay Christian, activist and author who lives in Atlanta. “And it’s killing us as a community, and it’s killing gay and lesbian members of the black church who have to go to church and listen to that mental abuse. We are more accepting of a rapist or a murderer than an unrepentant gay and lesbian.”

Aaron says the gay community in Atlanta has known for some time that Long was a hypocrite. He has personally seen the bishop on numerous occasions out at the mall with young, attractive men who were either gay or bisexual. The gay community in Atlanta is upset, he says, by the hypocrisy, but not surprised.

“When the news broke,” Aaron said. “It was like, ‘Oh, there it is.”

On the upside, Aaron says the accusations have touched off numerous conversations in Metro Atlanta about gay African Americans and their place in the black church. The black church has historically accepted gay folks as long as they kept silent about their sexuality. Many African American gays and lesbians have accepted these limited roles for the sake of having a place within the black community. You can walk into just about any black church in the country and find dozens of gay folks present. Gay men are leading the choir. They are ushering you to your seat. They are cooking the church’s Sunday dinner.

“Gay men and lesbians have always been present in the black church, actively engaged at that,” said Joshua Altson in a Sept. 23 Newsweek.com article. “The prevalence of gay men in black church choirs and bands, for example, is accepted but not widely discussed. The unspoken agreement is that gay men get to act as seraphim, so long as they are willing to shout in agreement as they are being flagellated from the pulpit. It’s an indignity some gay men subject themselves to each and every Sunday. Why should they have to live this way?”

Alston recalled how another black pastor in Atlanta, Dennis Meredith, had gone from espousing anti-gay views to “preaching acceptance” once his own son came out as gay. While some parishioners left, rather than hear a message of love and acceptance for gays, they were replaced by new congregants looking for a church that would accept and affirm them.

“Long’s predicament is bringing back to the surface the endless debate over whether or not homosexuality is fundamentally moral or acceptable, a debate that preachers like Long have prolonged with their bigoted teachings,” Alston wrote. “It’s about the black community on the whole and whether or not gay men and lesbians are going to be considered full citizens in it.”

Ray Taliaferro, of the San Francisco Bay area, is just one of many longtime civil rights activists who have used the Long scandal as an opportunity to blast black homophobia.

“It is inhumane to do what black people do when they approach the issue of homosexuality,” Taliaferro told the San Francisco Examiner. “Why is it that black people, my people, feel they got to get up in the pulpit and they have to condemn a very active segment of the population of our society who happen to be gay, who happen to be homosexual?”

Taliaferro is a former San Francisco NAACP president and has been a choir director for years at several churches in San Francisco.

I’ve wondered for a while – and said for a while publicly – that maybe it’s time for some of the old guard leadership of the Black community – those who so courageously led us through the Civil Rights Movement and the darkest days of the 50s, 60s, and 70s – now retire and appreciate how far we’ve come in that time, and let the young ones who are more familiar with and able to adapt to this new age take the lead now.

The world is different now, the threats to our freedom are different, and many disparate communities being attacked by privilege and hate need the bolster and support of other communities that have been through it and have learned that only be coming together can you face down hatred and injustice.

I can only hope – for the sake of our communities and for the sake of Black people as a unified force for social justice and equality everywhere – that we can get past this, and those of our community that are religious can begin to preach the gospel of acceptance and love instead of thumping the bible in darkness and out of hatred.

[ Will the Eddie Long Sex Scandal Force Black Churches to Confront Their Homophobia? ]
Source: AlterNet

phoenix is the author of Not So Humble and an unabashed progresssive who isn’t afraid of any or all of the labels thrown at him. Head over to Not So Humble to read more!

This post was originally published at Not So Humble. Click here to read the post in its original habitat!

Ever since the media descended on that little hardware store that shall now live in infamy to listen to some of the Teapublican Party’s most worthless representatives unveil their so-called “pledge” to America, I’ve been itching to take it apart piece by piece. Thankfully, a number of other great writers have done so for me, and called out the pledge for what it is – at best a shell of empty promises the Republicans simply can’t keep, and at worst a malicious plan to cripple the American middle class, shovel tons of money into the hands of the Republicans’ best friends, and pull money back from the areas that the American government should be investing in most heavily right now, like education and job training.

But the Republicans, as always, see things differently – mostly through a lens of “I’ve got mine, you can go to hell,” which results in a legislative agenda that does nothing in the good times and actually reverses public progress and common good in the worst times; and that’s exactly what they plan to do.

Over at The Washington Monthly (and reposted at AlterNet) was a fantastic piece calling the pledge out as the sham that it was – snake-oil designed to make Tea Partiers and people who are disenchanted with the fact that this hole the Bush Administration and the Republicans in Congress during the Clinton Administration dug is deeper than they have patience for turn out to the polls:

Looking at the bigger picture, it’s tempting to think House Republicans deserve at least some credit for making the effort. After all, the GOP hasn’t even tried to craft a policy agenda in many years. The point of the “Pledge,” presumably, is to help demonstrate that congressional Republicans aren’t just the “party of no”; this is a new GOP prepared to reclaim the mantle of “party of ideas.”

But that’s precisely why the endeavor is such an embarrassing failure. The document combines old ideas, bad ideas, contradictory ideas, and discredited ideas. The Republican Party that lost control of Congress four years ago has had an abundance of time to craft a policy vision that offered credible, serious solutions. Instead, we’re confronted with a document that can best be described as tired nonsense.

That sounds about right, but there’s definitely more:

Ezra Klein’s take was entirely in line with my own.

[Y]ou’re left with a set of hard promises that will increase the deficit by trillions of dollars, take health-care insurance away from tens of millions of people, create a level of policy uncertainty businesses have never previously known, and suck demand out of an economy that’s already got too little of it.

You’re also left with a difficult question: What, exactly, does the Republican Party believe? The document speaks constantly and eloquently of the dangers of debt — but offers a raft of proposals that would sharply increase it. It says, in one paragraph, that the Republican Party will commit itself to “greater liberty” and then, in the next, that it will protect “traditional marriage.” It says that “small business must have certainty that the rules won’t change every few months” and then promises to change all the rules that the Obama administration has passed in recent months. It is a document with a clear theory of what has gone wrong — debt, policy uncertainty, and too much government — and a solid promise to make most of it worse.

If Republicans set out to prove that they’re wholly unprepared and incapable of governing effectively, they’ve succeeded beautifully. That may have been obvious when there was an actual GOP majority and they failed on a spectacular, generational scale, but any hopes that the party has since learned valuable lessons quickly fade with the release of the “Pledge to America.”

Indeed, the moral of the story this morning is very likely the fact that Republicans probably shouldn’t even try. Last year, the House GOP released an alternative budget, which was so tragically pathetic, it neglected to include any numbers. Several months later, the House GOP released an alternative health care reform plan, which made no effort to actually improve a dysfunctional system.

In fact, the Republicans’ “pledge” would rob the coffers of K-12 education by millions upon millions of dollars thanks to drastic cuts in public education, but it wouldn’t strike a dime from tax breaks for the wealthy, the Defense Department’s budget, or their own salaries. How’s that for fiscal responsibility?

[ GOP’s New ‘Pledge to America’: A Pathetic, Destructive Sham ]
Source: The Washington Monthly (courtesy of AlterNet)

But the beat goes on: over at the Campaign for America’s Future, RJ Eskow calls out the “pledge” for pretending it’s fiscally sound and that it’s aiming at bloated government spending when it’s really a ruse for deep cuts to public programs that are unpopular with Republicans and their Tea Party ilk: programs like health care, education, and social services. He writes:

Once you strip away the rhetoric, the answer is simple: Off the top, their plan is a trillion-dollar giveaway to the rich – at everybody else’s expense. Their “pledge” would slash needed spending, kill jobs and end any hope of growing the economy. It declares open season on the public’s health and safety with a deregulation agenda that would unleash BP, Goldman Sachs, and every other corporation whose risky behavior endangers us. It would lead to even more financial crashes and environmental disasters. Firefighters, cops,and teachers would be laid off in droves. The deficit would soar. We’d face a permanently stagnating economy. The middle class would wither away.

That’s the future they’re offering. It’s Bush on steroids, fattened up and ready to feast on … you. If you like today’s economy, you’ll love the one these guys are cooking up.

If this document wasn’t written by lobbyists then it was certainly submitted for their review and approval. And there’s a lot for them to love.

He doesn’t waste time diving right into some of the same laughable notions that came up in the Washington Monthly piece – things so laughable that they couldn’t possibly ever become public policy in America unless the American people like shooting themselves in the foot (although the rise of the Tea Party and the “ignorance is bliss” political movement gives me pause to wonder if they’re not the case):

Where would they cut, exactly? They don’t say. David Frum, a former speechwriter for George Bush, explains why: “Here is the GOP cruising to a handsome election victory. Did you seriously imagine that they would jeopardize the prospect of victory and chairmanships by issuing big, bold promises to do deadly unpopular things?”

Deadly unpopular things. At least Frum is honest enough to say out loud what other Republicans won’t: They’re going to subsidize their tax breaks for the wealthy by doing things the American people will hate. They won’t just cut the everyday functions of government that make our lives better. Returning government spending to “pre-stimulus, pre-bailout levels” also means ending the repair work that’s currently being done to fix what their policies have broken. That includes getting people back to work, providing loans for small businesses, and cleaning up the Gulf of Mexico.

…

But even though they slither past the specifics, the GOP leaders left some broad hints about their defunding priorities. In a graph that lists government spending, for example, the categories aren’t listed by size, or alphabetically. The ones at the top are the targets, and which figure prominently? The Departments of Health and Human Services, Agriculture, Education, Justice … you see where this is going, don’t you? (Yes, the Justice Department’s on the list. Law enforcement isn’t always a convenient thing in their America.)

Their list of 2,050 different assistance programs singles out Federal funding to the states—states that are in desperate need of federal support to keep people working in the fiscal aftermath of GOP policies. They need Federal aid to avoid the kind of cuts they’ll be forced to make otherwise: laying off cops and teachers, slashing Medicaid, letting roads crumble, and shutting down emergency services, just to name a few.

Why not rename this pledge the “fire a cop, buy a banker his own private island plan”?

…

The Pledge also promises to give “small businesses” a tax deduction equal to “20 percent of their business income” – but, as Rachel Maddow and others have observed, their definition of “small business” includes giant corporations like Bechtel and PriceWaterhouseCoopers. That would mean another multibillion-dollar tax break for the wealthiest among us.

This “deficit-conscious” plan wants to expand the “military/industrial welfare state,” too. “We are a nation at war,” it says, calling to “fully fund” a missile defense system that’s already plagued with persistent test failures, laden with cost overruns, and which most experts don’t think is needed or can ever wok. What it can do, however, is transfer a lot of middle-class income to Boeing and Northrop Grumman. We’ve already spent more than $60 billion on the “Star Wars” missile program in the last eight years, in fact. Why, that’s nearly as much as the GOP intends to give to the top 25 billion-dollar-a-year hedge fund managers!

They dress their plan up with the usual mumbo-jumbo about government spending that’s “crowding out the private economy.” That may sound good, Tea Partiers, but think about: How does it do that, exactly? Every government employee buys things from private companies—from supermarkets, pharmacies, auto dealers, and yes, hardware stores. Makes no sense when you think about it.

And while their rhetoric’s pretty polished, they tried a little too hard to channel the Founding Fathers with lines like this one: “Whenever the agenda of government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the right of the people to institute a new governing agenda and set a different course.” (Note for whichever lobbyist wrote that: “Agenda” is a business word, not an inspirational one. It doesn’t fit. It’s like writing “When in the course of human events we are called upon to write a Mission Statement …”)

Here’s the bottom line: They’ll raid your money to make their rich patrons even richer. The middle class will continue to wither away, and those manage to hold on will be worse off than ever. More and more people will slip into permanent unemployment, poverty, and penurious old age. More roads will crumble. More aging pipelines will explode in towns like San Bruno, Calif. This “pledge” is the oldest kind of promise in the world: the promise than con men make to their victims.

Remember, the Republicans made a lot of promises the last time they took control of the Congress. They promised to create more jobs, and their policies led to record unemployment. They promised to limit their own terms, then settled in for a long comfy stay in Washington. They promised that businesses would regulate themselves, and both the Gulf Coast and the Main Street economy were ruined.

Seriously people, remember this when you head to the polls. There may be no way to heal this wound in time for the elections, but there’s definitely time to stop the bleeding so we can continue the work of repairing the damage that these same people – and then the people who inspired the worst of them that are rising to influence – have caused and are eagerly planning to cause.

[ GOP's "Pledge" To Rob The Middle Class: No Jobs, No Health Care, No Security ]
Source: The Campaign for America’s Future

phoenix is the author of Not So Humble and an unabashed progresssive who isn’t afraid of any or all of the labels thrown at him. Head over to Not So Humble to read more!

This post was originally published at Not So Humble. Click here to read the post in its original habitat!

If the only folks you listened to these days were the Republicans, you’d think that the national debt and deficit were huge and uncontrollable and were going to the the cause of the imminent collapse of our society. You wouldn’t hear that most economists believe that central spending is the best way to avoid and stimulate an economy back to a growth mode, and that by strategically spending money on projects that can help businesses grow and people get back to work, a federal government can go a long way toward building a fiscal bridge between economic hardship and recovery, without the economic hardship being nearly as deep or dangerous as initially feared.

Then again, who’s only listening to Republicans?

Frankly, the only folks who honestly are worried about short term implications of current government spending are the people who are scrabbling to get themselves elected this season; aka the Tea Party and their commissioned thugs. As if I haven’t said it before, the Tea Party is what you get when you bundle up every idiot in America who knows nothing of civics and government but somehow steadfastly believes that everyone in Washington is evil and should be deported – to be replaced by some amorphous body that’s “more like them.”

Congratulations – here you go: if you really want to, you can replace qualified, knowledgable politicians on either side of the aisle with people like the Tea Partiers who are so lacking in basic knowledge that they’d be more than happy to impress their beliefs on the American people without so much as opening a book or reading the Constitution they so staunchly defend.

I digress though – everyone agrees that long term deficit spending is unsustainable and something should be done about it – when the country’s economy is strong enough to hit the treadmill and shed some weight, but right now? Not so much – and a panel of over 300 economists agrees and wants to warn Washington that spending too much time worrying about the deficit now instead of worrying about growth is a bad idea:

On Thursday, 300 economists and analysts issued a statement warning that the “deficit hawks” who appear to be gaining the upper hand in our economic debates are threatening to turn an already deeply painful recession into a full-blown depression.

In a conference call with reporters organized by the Campaign for America’s Future, the experts warned that the American economy now stands at a crucial juncture. They acknowledged that public debt is mounting, and presented a choice of two different paths to right the ship: imposing fiscal “austerity” today, in the midst of the most serious downturn since the Great Depression, or investing in the American economy — with public spending over the short term — in order to grow our way out of the red ink.

Former Labor Secretary Robert Reich said that the economists’ statement “is both a warning about the danger of deflation and continued stagnation, and it’s also a plan for growth — the right way to approach and address long-term deficits.” Reich warned that if the policies being pursued by Washington’s deficit hawks continue, we risk not only a “double-dip” recession, but possibly a “lost decade, similar to that experienced by Japan during the 1990s.

The wonks advocate increased aid to cash-strapped states and municipalities, direct support for public service jobs and comprehensive investments in America’s aging infrastructure.

“This is about a high road to recovery versus a low road to fiscal balance,” said Robert Kuttner, a senior fellow with Demos. “All of us want reduced deficits at some point. The question is: what is the proper sequencing, and what is the proper analysis of cause and effect?” Kuttner said the economists’ view was “simple.” “You get the recovery first, and that requires increased public investment, and then the road to fiscal balance is much less arduous because people are working, businesses are investing and tax revenues go up because you’re in recovery.”

Absolutely correct. President Obama is doing the right thing, too – he’s making sure to spend some money on public infrastructure projects like roads and bridges and telecommunications infrastructure that will put people back to work and leave tangible results behind that will serve to improve our communities. I’m also a fan of more direct aid to states, and boosts for public sector jobs to encourage people to come to work for the communities they live in – it’s not just the private sector that has to start hiring; the history and spectre of deregulation and the Reagan-era belief that there’s nothing government can do that private industry couldn’t do better needs to be nailed into its coffin and shoved into the ground.

This is especially poignant considering the fact that the private sector isn’t hiring, and I blame them to some extent for that – they should be, but they’re not, primarily because they’ve realized through the economic downturn that they can survive with fewer people and by paying them less – there’s no reason to believe that they’ll change their minds and start hiring again for the good of the economy and the good of the American people, when their balance sheets are shining after they’ve been standing on our backs for so long.

Now if only people would remember all of this when they head to the polls, they’d be crying for more government spending.

[ 300 Economists Warn That Deficit Hysteria Is a Big Con ]
Source: AlterNet

phoenix is the author of Not So Humble and an unabashed progresssive who isn’t afraid of any or all of the labels thrown at him. Head over to Not So Humble to read more!

This post was originally published at Not So Humble. Click here to read the post in its original habitat!

On September 11th, I retweeted something that I thought was particularly poignant, and had been posted to Twitter by Xeni Jardin, where she said:

Honoring 9/11 by refraining from maudlin “where I was” tweets, or using the event as a mule to carry the cause-burden of my choosing.

I absolutely agree with her. After seeing the woeful tearjerking by people all over Twitter and just about everywhere else on September 11th, people who were and always have been far from New York City and Washington DC, people who claim to have been “directly affected” but watched on their television screens from miles away, and people who to this day continue to use the attacks on that day as a prop for their own personal political causes and beliefs, I decided to keep quiet about my feelings about that day.

The day was complicated for me personally, but that’s not what’s important. The folks out there with the glittery animated GIFs of eagles crying as the towers fell and Facebook status updates like “Never forget: if you’ll never forget post this to your status,” and whatnot are more than likely people who had no direct involvement or impact from the attacks – they’re simply all too happy to use the event as a chest-thumping excuse for sensless – and selfish – nationalism.

Every year that progresses, I get more and more jaded at the people who seem to cling so deeply to that day, especially as their ranks grow and I know that none of them lost a loved one, none of them saw the planes that day, none of them heard the explosion at the Pentagon, none of them ran from the expanding cloud of dust in lower Manhattan, and none of them were likely even awake early enough on that day to see everything happen.

I’m not alone, either – I think there’s a growing number of us who are tired of seeing 9/11 being used as a justification for mindless hatred and anger that thinly covers the sadness of people who were so far removed from it that they don’t even know how to move on like those of us who actually were affected simply had to.

Something else I think was extremely poignant was tweeted by Clayton Cubitt, someone I don’t have the pleasure of knowing, but saw retweeted by a number of people I do know. He said:

America, we love you, but quit trying to drag us into your creepy 9/11 death cult. We chose life. -NYC

Washington, DC would like to co-sign that statement, please. Thanks.

William Rivers Pitt, like he always does, has something poignant to say on the matter. He shares his own story, but then nails it with this:

Nine years, four national elections, two wars and two presidents since that day, and where are we now as a nation? Broke, deranged and dangerous pretty much sums it up. We have Christian-Taliban pastors in Florida with filthy souls threatening to burn the Qu’ran, as if such an act had any meaning beyond a desire to make money, and a national news media apparatus all too happy to give them all the ink and air time he could ever wish for. We have seething crowds threatening arson and murder because a Muslim community center might get built next to a strip club on the site of a defunct coat store. We have national caricatures like Sarah Palin charging people more than $200 for the chance to meet with her on that day, as if she has any significance at all. We’ve got stabbings and beatings and firebombings, and this is nine years later.

We are a nation of euphemisms now. It’s not spying on the American people, it is “national security.” It’s not holding someone in a hellhole without charges or trial, it is “indefinite detention.” It’s not kidnapping, it is “extraordinary rendition.” It’s not murder or assassination, it is “targeted killing.” It’s not torture, it is “enhanced interrogation.” It’s not wildly and patently illegal and immoral on its face, it is “war.”

We are a lessened nation nine years later, and much of the damage has been done by our own hand. It is one thing for people to react with fear and rage after an outrageous act of violence. It is quite another for the leaders of those people to exploit that fear and rage for their own dark and greedy purposes, and nine years later, we are down in the ditch thanks to exactly that sort of behavior. Thousands of American soldiers have died in Iraq and Afghanistan, and tens of thousands more have been grievously maimed. Millions of civilians in those two countries have been slaughtered or shattered, but we may never know the true scope of the carnage, because “we don’t do body counts.”

…

Nine years later, one truth remains: America is an idea, a dream, a hope that has yet to be realized. Take away our people, our cities, our roads, our crops, our armies and navies and bombs and guns, take all of that away and there is still the idea, as vibrant and vital as it was when the Founders first put ink to parchment and changed the world. Everyone you know owns a heritage that began somewhere else; we are all different in so many ways, and all that binds us is the ink on that parchment and the ideas therein contained. We are all our brother’s and sister’s keeper, beholden to one another, all of us children of that idea.

Nine years ago, we were forced into an accounting of how dear that idea is to us, and were found wanting. Nine years later, we still are. The idea deserves better than what we have given to it. We can continue in this fashion, or we can summon within ourselves the will and wisdom to locate those better angels of our nature that are surely there, waiting for us.

The entire piece is much worth reading, and I strongly suggest you do.

[ Since That Day ]
Source: TruthOut

phoenix is the author of Not So Humble and an unabashed progresssive who isn’t afraid of any or all of the labels thrown at him. Head over to Not So Humble to read more!

This post was originally published at Not So Humble. Click here to read the post in its original habitat!

By now, the completely unremarkable crowd of about 2500 people who descended on Washington DC to the utter and prompt annoyance of us locals, complete with their attitudes of ownership of the city and their privilege (seriously, these folks assumed that because they were white and “proud” so much that they wouldn’t have to actually, you know – spend money to get around town on the Metro) are all gone, leaving the rest of us to go back to the duties at hand that are important to the fate and future of our Republic.

Behind them in their wake, aside from the trash they left behind on the streets and lawns of Washington and the stench of their putrid ideology in the air, they leave behind questions about why Sarah Palin can’t seem to speak in public ever and make a coherent sentence, and why Glenn Beck ever hid behind his so-called “divine providence” that led the event to be on the same day at Martin Luther King’s “I Have a Dream” speech 47 years ago.

There are a couple of reasons behind this, but I think Henry Rollins said it best and with finer words and a finer point than I could hope to put on it in a recent blog post at Vanity Fair:

I get the feeling that this pitiful gathering will be more about angry white people who think they have lost something. These are people who can’t handle the fact that with time, things change. The restoration of honor they strive for is nothing more than regaining a perceived position of superiority they feel is rightfully theirs, that has been taken away. Who took it? The Muslim from Kenya? Liberals? Activist judges? Probably.

Glenn Beck has told his followers not to bring signs. Smart thinking. He knows his demographic well. He knows that there would have been some atrocious sentiments expressed on those signs. Not that Fox News would carry the images, but certainly real news outlets would have. Had the signs been present, would anyone be surprised at what they said? You know what this grouping of woefully misinformed and willfully ignorant participants is all about. It’s not about honor, it’s not about freedom, and it’s definitely not about what Martin Luther King Jr. stood for and died for. It is about white anger, indignation, desperation and severe plot loss. Their numbers will be few. Many of them have to be bussed in, perhaps unable to even find the nation’s capital on their own. It is yet another pathetic exercise of a small group of people whose beliefs are regressive and repellent. They are only left with their hate, ignorance, and fear. This non-event is their moment to bark at the sun.

[ Comedy Critic’s Choice: Glenn Beck’s Restoration of Honor ]
Source: Vanity Fair

I think that’s absolutely well put, and even after the event, Henry Rollins felt bad for him more than he thought the event or the speeches were contemplative in any fashion, and I wholeheartedly agree. Conservatives in general put up a lot of bluster and pomp and circumstance, but at the end of the event, what were the tea partiers supposed to go home with? What were they supposed to do, except be themselves? How were they supposed to go about “Restoring Honor” in their communities?

After Mr. Beck had mercifully ended his speech and the man in the kilt came onto the stage playing Amazing Grace, it fully registered with me what a huge non-event this was. The speech, full of references to God, over and over, possessed not one concrete thing to take away. When the people who were at this event get back to their normal lives this week, what changes will they make? What steps will they take to restore honor? Seems to me there would be no place for racism or homophobia in the life of an honorable American, so I guess we won’t be having to deal with any more of that. Mr. Beck wants his people to make God the central force in their lives. Does that mean they get all generous, tolerant, and kind now? Cool.

When was the honor lost? Operation Ajax in 1953? The bitter opposition to the Civil Rights Act of 1964? The assassination of Martin Luther King Jr. in 1968? The covert bombing raids into Cambodia in 1969? Watergate? The invasion and occupation of Iraq? I am not listing president Clinton and his sexcapades because no one was killed, although millions of dollars were wasted. So, were these instances where America lost some traction on the honor-highway? Or perhaps it was things like the Fair Labor Standards Act of 1938 that abolished child labor and established a minimum wage or Social Security that pushed America off the shining path to honor?

So, Citizen of the Republic, what are you going to do to make a change? What is your resolution to the restoration of America’s lost honor? More prayer? Tithing? Perhaps maybe even reading some of the speeches of Abraham Lincoln? Where is the next stop, great restorer of honor? To Florida for the 9/11/2010 Koran burning, perhaps?

[ Pity, I Guess ]
Source: Vanity Fair

This makes me think about Sarah Palin’s speech, where she – true to her own “did anyone actually read this before she opened her mouth” style, claimed that she and her followers are resistant to change, and instead they want to “preserve” America in the image of its past. Which of course amounts to changing the way it is today. But they don’t want change, they want to preserve….by changing it from what it is today. You see the problem?

Like Rollins says, the entire thing amounts to saber-rattling on the part of the far right, which sadly does nothing except get them out to the polls, which could be bad enough for the future of our country, frankly.

These folks don’t have ideas on how to improve our communities, our schools, our jobs, or our environment – ideas and thinking are their strong suit. What they do have, is a lot of anger, hatred, and bluster, and a deep-seated fear of the changing demographics, dynamics, and power structure of America in the 21st century. They see their old standby, privilege, slowly being eroded in favor of equal opportunity and equal rights, and they fear it and hate it with the same fervor as a infant whose rattle has been taken away. And they behave as such.

It’s up to the rest of them to note the fact, marginalize them, and move on without them. We must.

phoenix is the author of Not So Humble and an unabashed progresssive who isn’t afraid of any or all of the labels thrown at him. Head over to Not So Humble to read more!

This post was originally published at Not So Humble. Click here to read the post in its original habitat!

I’ve been pretty quiet about the matter of the community center near ground zero that everyone is calling a “mosque,” when in reality it’s nothing of the sort. I’ve also been quiet because logically it doesn’t make sense to care so much about a mosque near the site of the World Trade Center attacks on 9/11, because if people cared so much about such things they would have shut down the other community centers nearby, the strip club nearby, and just about everything else the conservative right could work themselves into a lather over that’s just as close or closer than the community center that’s being planned for the region.

Sadly, it’s just another example of first – how there’s a small group of very vocal people who are still trying to use a tragic event in American history that occured almost 10 years ago to benefit themselves both monetarily and to their own political gain, with no respect for the events of the day or the people who died, and how there’s a small group of people who are still trying to use that same event to steer political policy in a way that retains their power and privilege, making sure that Americans live in the same state of fear we experienced that day – only now backed with a strong dose of hatred against a minority group that, the way the Germans did with the Jewish people after World War I, are easily blamed for all of society’s ills and dangers without demand of evidence.

Over at Tablet Magazine, Daniel Luban explains why this is exactly the issue at hand, and why this isn’t about one community center, this isn’t about a mosque, this is about the rampant Islamaphobia that’s spread out from the ignorance and bigotry of Americans far from New York City and is sweeping the nation thanks to the fervent push from the conservative right to actively deny and smother education to the contrary:

After Abraham Foxman waded into the “Ground Zero Mosque” controversy,opposing plans to construct an Islamic community center a few blocks from the World Trade Center site, the Anti-Defamation League chief was assailed by critics who charged that the ADL was giving license to bigotry and betraying its historic mission “to secure justice and fair treatment to all citizens alike.” A week after initially coming out against the mosque, Foxman announced that the ADL was bowing out of the controversy, but the damage to the group’s reputation had been done.

The problem for the ADL is that there simply isn’t much anti-Semitism of consequence in the United States these days. While anti-Semitism continues to thrive elsewhere in the world and to molder on the fringes of American society, Jews have by now been fully assimilated into the American ruling class and into the mainstream of American life.

…

At the same time, many of the tropes of classic anti-Semitism have been revived and given new force on the American right. Once again jingoistic politicians and commentators posit a religious conspiracy breeding within Western society, pledging allegiance to an alien power, conspiring with allies at the highest levels of government to overturn the existing order. Because the propagators of these conspiracy theories are not anti-Semitic but militantly pro-Israel, and because their targets are not Jews but Muslims, the ADL and other Jewish groups have had little to say about them. But since the election of President Barack Obama, this Islamophobic discourse has rapidly intensified.

While the political operatives behind the anti-mosque campaign speak the language of nativism and American exceptionalism, their ideology is itself something of a European import. Most of the tropes of the American “anti-jihadists,” as they call themselves, are taken from European models: a “creeping” imposition of sharia, Muslim allegiance to the ummah rather than to the nation-state, the coming demographic crisis as Muslims outbreed their Judeo-Christian counterparts.

Heard this story before? Of course you have – it’s what led to the Germans locking up Jewish families and barricading Jewish communities during the early years of World War II. Now I normally hate to Godwin’s Law up any discussion like this, but the parallels are too close to ignore – and the frothing hatred is starting to get to that eerie fever pitch where an entire group of people are to be subjugated to culling and retribution by the masses because of the actions of a few. The last time I saw behavior like this was in the 1970s and 1980s when the conservative right, largely White Americans, were outraged at the so-called epidemic of “Black on White crime,” while killings among and between other minority groups went largely ignored. I fear we’ll see the same apathy until the drug war simmering in Mexico spills over enough to take White American lives; then Latinos may find themselves bundled up with Muslims.

Here’s the clincher though – voters really don’t care. Over at The Nation, Katrina vanden Heuvel points out some interesting statistics about recent polls:

Pundits and politicians are working themselves into hysteria over a mosque near Ground Zero. But this election won’t be about mosques in Manhattan. It won’t even be about the deficit, really. It will be about manufacturing on Main Street, and which party can talk effectively about the progressive solutions Americans desire.

Not surprisingly, polls from Gallup to the Wall Street Journal show Americans are worried most about the economy and jobs. And a just-released poll—from progressive outfits Campaign for America’s Future and Democracy Corps with sponsorship from MoveOn.org Political Action and two labor unions—gives a more detailed look at what voters are looking for. Respondents, in particular the “rising American electorate” —youth, single women and minorities that constitute a majority of voters and are President Obama’s most supportive base—support bold steps for renewing the economy.

The poll tested a range of messages, with the greatest support for one calling for “rebuilding infrastructure” and another calling for constructing “an economy on a new foundation”—that is, investing in education and a 21st century infrastructure, leading in the green industrial revolution and balancing our trade.

But what about that deficit? Americans worry about the deficit, but less for reasons usually given by deficit hawks than because they think it may get in the way of creating jobs and of protecting Social Security. The poll shows equal support for a five-year plan to revive America’s industry and a five-year plan to cut deficits—and in equal intensity. The two are linked. Put people to work and revive manufacturing, and you will bring the deficit down. Bring the deficit down, and you’ll help put people to work.

And by large margins, Americans don’t think deficit-cutting should include cuts in the federal benefits workers have already fought to get. It is widely rumored, for example, that President Obama’s bipartisan deficit commission is considering raising the retirement age on Social Security as part of a deficit-reduction plan. It better think again. Poll respondents want Social Security and Medicare protected. Over 60 percent of Republicans, of independents and of Democrats oppose raising the retirement age on Social Security—or Medicare, for that matter. Similarly, when AARP asked if Social Security should be cut as a “way to help reduce the federal deficit,” 72 percent of respondents were strongly opposed.

Proof of the matter is that right now, the American people care more about the economy and jobs, and care enough in an intelligent way, that it’s safer to say “It’s the economy, stupid,” and that the President is doing the right thing by dismissing the entire controversy about the community center in Lower Manhattan as exactly what it is – an arbitrary attempt by a few bigoted people who are more interested in carrying the American flag for their own benefit and trampling the graves of those who died on 9/11 in a rush for their own personal and political gain than it is any substantive controversy or matter of concern. He points instead at the first Amendment to the Constitution of the United States as a shining example of exactly why such a community center should be built, over all opposition.

He’s right – but the conservative right in America has never listened to reason over the voices of hatred in their own heads – it’s up to the rest of us to make sure they listen to us and our voices at the polls instead.

[ Rage Against Islam: The New Anti-Semitism ]
Source: Tablet Magazine (courtesy of AlterNet)

[ It's About Main Street, Not the Mosque ]
Source: The Nation

phoenix is the author of Not So Humble and an unabashed progresssive who isn’t afraid of any or all of the labels thrown at him. Head over to Not So Humble to read more!