What A Difference A Few Decades Make

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Tuesday February 01, 2011 · 8:45 AM PST

2011/02/01 · 08:45

"The test of our progress is not whether we add to the abundance of those who have much. It is whether we provide enough to those who have little." - Franklin D. Roosevelt

Sometimes I wonder what has happened to us as a nation. How have we allowed greed and selfishness to thrive and flourish so rampantly in our society? How can anyone take these so-called leaders seriously when on the one hand they continue to provide the corporate class and the wealthy with tax-cuts and on the other they tell the other classes that they are costing the country too much money? Can someone explain to me how the last time we faced similar economic conditions and the country was suffering so much pain that we created safety nets and today we are demolishing safety nets? How could we in the midst of a catastrophe find the resources and courage to provide for our countrymen but today we can provide for oil companies, wars, and corporate subsidies yet nothing for education, the unemployed or medical care?

Forgiven

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Friday January 28, 2011 · 7:16 AM PST

2011/01/28 · 07:16

We need to start making things again in this country, and we can do that by reducing the tax and regulatory burdens on job creators. America will have the highest corporate tax rate in the world. Think about that. Look no further to see why jobs are moving overseas. – Michelle Bachmann Response

I cannot remember ever having three State of the Union speeches in one year. Normally the party in the White House gives the traditional State of the Union speech followed by the out of office party giving a response. Now thanks to our political system being awash in cash any crank can go on television and get their 15 minutes of fame. My question is who funded this little Bachmann escapade? Michelle Bachmann is supposed to be a money maker and according to reports she is a fund-raising machine, but where does this money come from? No one knows. I would venture to guess that it is the same AstroTurf funders who started the teabagger movement.

Forgiven

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Thursday January 27, 2011 · 6:00 AM PST

2011/01/27 · 06:00

After listening to the President’s State of the Union address I couldn’t help but to feel a sense of loss. I understand that this was a political speech in a lot of ways and will surely be the kick-off speech to his 2012 run for re-election, but with all of its platitudes and feel good rhetoric there was something missing. Could it have been that unemployment was not mentioned? Or that the poor and the middle-class were conspicuously absent? I don’t know about the state of your union, but in my union these issues are still alive and well. I have yet to hear this President connect to the pain that so many Americans are suffering from, especially black Americans.

Forgiven

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Sunday January 23, 2011 · 6:00 AM PST

2011/01/23 · 06:00

"Should taxpayers in Indiana who have paid their bills on time, who have done their job fiscally be bailing out Californians who haven't?" House Budget Committee Chairman Paul Ryan, R-Wisc., asks. "No. That's a moral hazard that we are not interested in creating." - Fox News Blog

So the financial wiz-kid of the Republican Party believes that we are just a group of states that happen to share borders but have no inherent connection to one another? It is this type of rhetoric and mentality that fosters the divisions that keep us from moving forward as a nation. This simplistic view of the economy shared by the wing-nuts and tea-baggers makes it difficult to take any of their proposals seriously. We are not talking about some teenagers who have overspent their allowance and so the answer is to send them to their room with no dinner. We are talking about our fellow countrymen who just happen to live in another part of the country, our country. We already know that being born in Hawaii makes you a foreigner, but this is ridiculous.

Forgiven

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Wednesday December 22, 2010 · 7:13 PM PST

2010/12/22 · 19:13

The ultimate decision about what is accepted as right and wrong will be made not by individual human wisdom but by the disappearance of the groups that have adhered to the "wrong" beliefs. - Friedrich August von Hayek

As the President begins his victory laps and the pundicracy begins to fall back in line by touting the recent passage of some historic legislation I think it is important that we remember what the cost of these victories has been and what it will be in the future. So let’s be clear it took 700 billion dollars to get the Republicans to enact legislation that the majority of Americans supported. Is paying the ransom to the kidnappers a victory? I do not want to appear as if I am raining on the President and the Congress’ parade but the reason this legislation got passed was not because the Dems finally realized they had a majority that was due to expire or that the Republicans finally decided that bi-partisanship was worth pursuing, it was because the Dems gave them 700 billion dollars.

Forgiven

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Friday December 17, 2010 · 6:05 AM PST

2010/12/17 · 06:05

I think experience will teach you a combination of liberalism and conservatism. We have to be progressive and at the same time we have to retain values. We have to hold onto the past as we explore the future. – Oliver Stone

One of the greatest tragedies of the 20th century has been the decline of liberalism and the ascendancy of conservatism. While there are many opinions for the cause of this phenomenon the one that is the most fraudulent is that America is a conservative nation. This false premise has been propagated by those who want to maintain some fictitious sense of America’s past and a desire to reverse the progress we have achieved. Over the course of the last 50 years they have steadily and persistently chipped away at those ideas which defined liberalism (shared sacrifice, equality, and shared responsibility) and replaced them with greed, selfishness, and special interests while simultaneously demonizing liberalism as socialism.

Forgiven

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Wednesday December 15, 2010 · 9:52 AM PST

2010/12/15 · 09:52

But that does not seem to matter, not for her and not for a growing number of people in their 50s and 60s who desperately want or need to work to pay for retirement and who are starting to worry that they may be discarded from the work force — forever...Of the 14.9 million unemployed, more than 2.2 million are 55 or older. Nearly half of them have been unemployed six months or longer, according to the Labor Department. The unemployment rate in the group — 7.3 percent — is at a record, more than double what it was at the beginning of the latest recession. - New York Times

Forgiven

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Sunday December 12, 2010 · 10:44 AM PST

2010/12/12 · 10:44

You don’t have to abandon your principles to cut a deal. You just have to acknowledge that there are other people in the world and even a president doesn’t get to stamp his foot and have his way...They believe nonliberals are blackmailers or hostage-takers or the concentrated repositories of human evil, so, of course, they see coalition-building as collaboration. They are also convinced that Democrats should never start a negotiation because they will always end up losing in the end. – David Brooks

Forgiven

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Friday December 10, 2010 · 6:52 AM PST

2010/12/10 · 06:52

I think that this is a long and winding process. But I think at the end of the day, members are not going to want to be in their districts, senators are not going to want to be in their districts when their constituents find out on the 1st of January that their taxes have gone up by several thousand dollars. - Robert Gibbs/Press Secretary

Can someone help me out here; why is it that every time the wealthy in this country are facing any type of loss of income through taxes or corporate malfeasance the situation becomes the onset of Armageddon for the rest of us? Remember the beginning of this "recession" at the end of the Bush Administration that was brought on by the investment community and bankers gambling with our economy? We were on the brink of Armageddon and had to pony up 800 billion dollars to rescue our economy which was being held hostage by the same people who were handing out multi-million dollar bonuses right up until the day of the bail-out.

Forgiven

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Tuesday December 07, 2010 · 5:33 AM PST

2010/12/07 · 05:33

Weakened by the election, Obama would be likely to bear most of the blame as opponents accused him of intransigence and arrogance. Republicans are always happy to run campaigns based on tax cuts, and this impasse might set up 2012 nicely for them. - Larry J. Sabato

Now that the President has caved on the tax-cuts the question progressives must ask is this, "If not this issue, then what issue is this President willing to fight for?" This was supposed to be his signature issue. The one issue that he claimed was a "principle". If this was a principled fight then I would hate to see an issue he didn’t care about. This issue was a no-brainer for the Dems. If you can’t win a fight against tax-cuts for people who have already made out like bandits for the last 10 years by borrowing from China to finance them, then what fight can you win?

Forgiven

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Saturday December 04, 2010 · 10:46 AM PST

2010/12/04 · 10:46

It was a time when higher taxes did not sink the economy. Instead, after Clinton passed a tax increase in 1993, the economy enjoyed an epic era of economic prosperity with over eight years without a recession in sight highlighted by an unemployment rate that fell below 4 percent - a level no one thought possible only a few years earlier. - Jules Kaplan/The Hill

Despite the propaganda from both the Dems and the wing-nuts the economy will not suddenly come crashing down if the Bush tax cuts are allowed to expire. The reason most people on both sides want to keep some form of the tax cuts is because they have a vested interest in their continuation. Many of the television pundits and reporters who have been covering this story have not called for letting all of the tax cuts to expire even though letting them expire is what is best for the country as a whole. The reason is because we have all become special interest groups who are choosing our own interests at the expense of the country. Does anyone remember "Country First"?

Forgiven

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Thursday December 02, 2010 · 5:58 AM PST

2010/12/02 · 05:58

Where have all the Democrats gone? Long time passing
Where have all the Democrats gone? Long time ago
Where have all the Democrats gone? Hiding in their bunkers every one
When will they ever learn? When will they ever learn? – Remake of Where Have All The Flowers Gone

I hope Pete Seeger won’t mind my remaking of his beautiful song, "Where Have All The Flowers Gone", but it seemed appropriate considering the times we are living in. If anyone still believes that the Dems are gonna fight for the middle-class of this country the next few days should remove all doubt about where their loyalties lie. The truth be told there is no longer any Party that speaks for the middle-class of this country or speaks to the issues that are crushing them. The dreaded Bush Tax Cuts that were the bane of the Party just a few months ago will be extended.

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What A Difference A Few Decades Make

Citizens United By-Product?

He Doesn’t Feel Our Pain

Bankruptcy Is Not An Option

The Cost of Victory

The Failure of Liberalism

The Older Unemployed and Social Security Reform

Selective Amnesia

Armageddon Again

The Fight That Never Was

Why We Must Allow The Bush Tax Cuts to Expire

Where Have All The Democrats Gone?