At the Campaign for America's Future, Richard Eskow writes
Dear House-Senate Budget Committee: The Country Needs Jobs:
Some politicians and pundits still insist that lower taxes and reduced government spending will lower unemployment. They continue to claim that an agenda of tax breaks for corporations and the wealthy – packaged nowadays with the misleading label “tax reform” – is a job creation program.
If you’re one of the people who feels that way, our question for you is a simple one: Where are the jobs? Your agenda has been in place for more than a decade, with low tax rates for the wealthy and corporations, and cuts in government spending.
Corporate taxes are at or near a 60-year low, and your “reform” would fix those historical tax giveaways for mega-corporations as a permanent tax rate. Millionaires and billionaires, who paid 73 or 74 percent on most of their income at the start of the Reagan era, now have a top official tax rate of 39.6 percent – and, thanks to plentiful loopholes, usually pay much less than that.
Richard Eskow
The cuts which have already been forced on us have cost the economy nearly 1 million jobs, according to the most conservative estimate, while robbing our economy of tens of billions in growth.
Do you really think we want more of the same?
As Dean Baker recently pointed out, many Democrats nevertheless seem to have bought into the deeply misguided deficit agenda. That’s a profound error, both economically and politically. The American people are looking to Democrats to be the voice of reason. Please don’t let them down.
You can’t cut government jobs in an economy wracked by unemployment – an economy whose current “multiplier effect” translates them into many more nongovernment jobs which will be lost – and still tell us your approach works. Everything, including economics, common sense, and historical experience, tells us how to fix our economy: by investing in our economy and creating jobs.
So create some. Create some construction jobs, before our crumbling infrastructure robs our economy of even more lost growth – and starts robbing Americans of their lives. Create some teaching jobs so that our young people can get a decent education. Create some jobs for college graduates, who are facing career-crippling early-stage unemployment, so that they can go to work improving this country.
Please stop putting people out of work with government cuts, and start putting them back to work with government investment.
|
Blast from the Past. At Daily Kos on this date in 2008—Lynch Mob:
Ashley Todd, the young Texan McCain volunteer who claimed she was mugged, sexually assaulted and had a "B" carved into her face by a "dark-skinned" black man near an ATM in Pittsburgh, has confessed that she made up her story. Just as several of us said would happen. It’s hard to know what the cops and the district attorney will do. Making a false report to the police is usually a felony. Whatever happens in the legal system, let’s hope Todd gets some psychological counseling, court ordered if necessary. She's young. She can get better.
There is no hope, however, for jackals like Drudge, numerous other rightwing bloggers, and executive vice president for Foxaganda, Joe Moody.
Because what we have here is a story that not so many years ago got black men lynched. Dragged from their houses to quiet locations by masked or unmasked men, stripped, castrated, hanged, burned and gruesomely photographed. Although many people – even the usually execrable Michele Malkin - were skeptical of Todd’s report the minute they heard it and saw the alleged "carving" of "B" on her face, the Mandingo button had been pushed. The completely unsubtle message? A big black man, black as coal, wearing black clothes and black shoes, a blackety-black man, had done what black men have done to white women in America since 1619 given half a chance.
|
Tweet of the Day:
Even after committing repugnant outrages against US citizens & economy, Bankers & GOP are offended by questions about their honesty & morals
— @CuestionMarque
On
today's Kagro in the Morning show,
Greg Dworkin recaps the ACA website news, and predicts how the traditional media are likely to cover the continuing story. Also: Chris Christie's weakness in the 2016 contest.
Jon Perr's "How Democrats helped Republicans save BushCare." Ari Berman's coverage of how the Texas voter ID law is discriminating against women! A conversation with CREDO political director
Becky Bond. How they work, what moves them to action & what they're up to now. Alex Pareene takes a shot at the JPMorgan Chase settlement. And for a change of pace, Jeremy Paxman's interview with Russell Brand on the UK's
Newsnight program.
High Impact Posts. Top Comments.