Who Are We, Really?

That Trump/GOP Budget?

With this President and the GOP presenting cuts in government programs, I offer this response.



Again.  We are #Strongertogether

Thoughts On A Labor Day Weekend

How To Strengthen America

This is the Right Winger Calling for an End to the "Welfare State"

Hypocrisy much?

What Capitalism Is Not

Quote of the day -- Corporate Welfare

The real moochers

Where more "welfare" in this country actually goes

There's so much talk and indignation of "poor people on welfare", I think it important to consider the numbers, the actual numbers.  The poor in this country...

Receive less in subsidized benefits than corporations. The US government spends around $60 billion on public housing and rental subsidies for low-income families, compared to more than $90 billion on  corporate subsidies. Oil companies alone get around $70 billion. And that’s not counting the nearly $60 billion a year in tax breaks corporations enjoy by sheltering profits offshore. Or the $700 billion bailout banks got in 2008. (Source:  Think By Numbers)

Want to fix our national spending and budget problems?

Cut corporate welfare.

Oh, and defense spending. Cut that bloated, wasteful, biggest source of spending in the country big time.  And soon as possible.

From the article:

20 Things the Poor Do Everyday That the Rich Never Have to Worry About

The very mis-directed Paul Ryan---and his Republican Party

There is an article out just now, from The New York Times, pointing out the problems, inconsistencies and heartless hypocrisies, even, of Republican member of the House of Representatives Paul Ryan. The thing about it is, in the bigger picture, it also points out the callousness and even immorality and lack of "Christian values" of the entire Republican Party:

Paul Ryan's Irish Amnesia

"And there I ran into Paul Ryan. His great-great-grandfather had fled to America. But the Republican congressman was very much in evidence, wagging his finger at the famished. His oft-stated “culture of dependency” is a safety net that becomes a lazy-day hammock. But it was also England’s excuse for lethal negligence.

There is no comparison, of course, between the de facto genocide that resulted from British policy, and conservative criticism of modern American poverty programs. But you can’t help noticing the deep historic irony that finds a Tea Party favorite and descendant of famine Irish using the same language that English Tories used to justify indifference to an epic tragedy.

The Irish historian John Kelly, who wrote a book on the great famine, was the first to pick up on these echoes of the past during the 2012 presidential campaign. “Ryan’s high-profile economic philosophy,” he wrote then, “is the very same one that hurt, not helped, his forebears during the famine — and hurt them badly.”

What was a tired and untrue trope back then is a tired and untrue trope now. What was a distortion of human nature back then is a distortion now. And what was a misread of history then is a misread now. Ryan boasts of the Gaelic half of his ancestry, on his father’s side. “I come from Irish peasants who came over during the potato famine,” he said last year during a forum on immigration.

BUT with a head still stuffed with college-boy mush from Ayn Rand, he apparently never did any reading about the times that prompted his ancestors to sail away from the suffering sod. Centuries of British rule that attempted to strip the Irish of their language, their religion and their land had produced a wretched peasant class, subsisting on potatoes. When blight wiped out the potatoes, at least a million Irish died — one in eight people." 

And the crazy thing, the really crazy thing about all this is that neither Paul Ryan nor anyone in the Right Wing or Republican Party have enough awareness or education or intelligence or sensitivity to see or realize the heartlessness, the lack of humanity, the callousness or the total, utter lack of "Christian values" and/or morality their policies take them.

And the nation.

Quote of the day -- on rich vs. poor

The REAL government "moochers"?

I have 'em for you right here:

Twenty-six of the most powerful American corporations – such as Boeing, General Electric, and Verizon – paid no federal income tax from 2008 to 2012, according to a new report detailing how Fortune 500 companies exploit tax breaks and loopholes.

And then, of course, there's the entire NFL They pay no taxes whatever.  Legally, too.

The report:

​26 top American corporations paid no federal income tax from '08 to '12

And keep in mind, when we think "moochers"--you know, welfare moochers?--we aren't talking the ones getting oh, I don't know, $136 to live off of for two weeks or any "small potatoes" like that. We're talking billions of dollars here.

The 26?

Here they are:

They are, collectively, ladies and gentlemen, taking us for a ride.

A big, expensive, thieving, immoral ride.

And we're allowing it.

The original  report, conducted by the public advocacy group Citizens for Tax Justice.

Link:  How the NFL Fleeces Taxpayers

Welfare ruins nations?

We've heard it repeatedly, right? Welfare--for the people--makes them weaker?

And what countries also aren't outspending the rest of the world for war, bombs and planes, investing so much of their GDP on death and war?

Yeah, them, that's who.

And then there's this, added to it all:

I think it's all important to know.

And repeat.


 

Welfare? Concerned about welfare?

Let's cut into the insane, corporate welfare.

That, my friends, is where the big, big money is. Not the welfare for the people out here, on the street.

Quote of the day--on present-day Republicans

"Apparently there are now two groups of Republicans in the House. First, there's a group of firebrand conservatives headed by Eric Cantor, which, as near as I can tell, is mostly dedicated to finding slightly more slippery language to sell its usual right-wing agenda of school vouchers, block granting Medicaid, increased tax credits, and gutting labor laws. Second, there's a group of insane, frothing-at-the-mouth conservatives who think of Cantor as Nancy Pelosi's lapdog and are basically uninterested in anything other than repealing Obamacare, slashing taxes even more, ending the welfare state, and making speeches about how Obama is destroying America."

--Kevin Drum, American political blogger and columnist

Link to original post:

Quote of the Day: House Republicans Have Completely Melted Down

Additional link:

Kevin Drum - Wikipedia

The New York Times did it again, yesterday, in Sunday's paper with a column on America's current situation:

The Real Spending Problem

Tax giveaways are the costliest benefits the government provides.

Just a bit of the article:

Each year, the government doles out tax breaks worth $1.1 trillion. That is more than the cost of Medicare and Medicaid combined. It is more than Social Security. It tops the defense budget, and it tops the budget for nondefense discretionary programs, which include most everything else.

Tax breaks work like spending. Giving a deduction for certain activities, like homeownership or retirement savings, is the same as writing a government check to subsidize those activities. Functionally, they mimic entitlements. Like Medicare, Medicaid and Social Security, they are available, year in and year out, in full, to all who qualify. Yet in budget talks, Republicans ignore tax entitlements, which flow mostly to high-income taxpayers, while pushing to cut Medicare, Medicaid and Social Security.

For anyone and everyone that thinks "welfare" and "moochers" are the problem--the workers on the street, the middle- and lower-class, working class people, they are mistaken. It is the corporate welfare and tax breaks for the wealthy and corporations that are far more irresponsible and even, actually unreasonable and unnecessary as well as far more expensive.

And the only way it will change is if we, the people, fight for it.

Oh, and fight to end "campaign contributions" so our legislators and their legislation are no longer bought and paid for.

In case you missed this out of Washington this week

Senator Bernie Sanders (Ind., Vt) introduced a long, long overdue bill in Congress this week which would finally, finally require corporations to pay at least some taxes each year, instead of putting profits offshore so they can dodge any taxes.



Here's just one example:

GE has stashed $102 billion in offshore tax haven countries to avoid paying income taxes. If this practice were outlawed, it would have paid $35.7 billion more in federal income taxes.


The time has come--has long since past--that we should ask and expect corporate America to pay for access to our own markets and to help pay for the infrastructure we all need--them as well as us--so they can operate and function, things like roads and bridges and highways and sewers and airports and great schools and good teachers, etc., etc.

Please contact your Senators and your member of the House of Representatives. Tell them you expect them to support this intelligent, fair, long overdue measure. You can find your represenatives here:

Contact - US Senate

 

Find Your Representative - U.S. House of Representatives

This is the welfare we need to end

So many rant and rave and complain about welfare and how it needs to be cut, sure, as we well know but the real welfare that needs to end and that is costing us far, far more is the corporate welfare they buy through our legislators.

Want proof?

Here you go:

The graph above (click on it for better, easier viewing) shows that corporate profits (red line) have soared even as they've cut employees and jobs (blue).

Here's your "welfare recipients" and we need to get rid of them:

And the way to get it started is by killing campaign contributions.

Let's get this party started.

Here's where the welfare money goes

Click on picture for better viewing:

The "welfare" we really need to be concerned about

The biggest problem is "corporate welfare."

End corporate welfare

We should pass at least a couple laws on this. The first would eliminate all tax deductions and credits to corporations and people who take manufacturing offshore. Right now there are tax deductions for that. How stupid is that? Second, we should do away with tax subsidies for "Big Oil." It is the most profitable industry in the nation and world. Why should we give them additional tax benefits? Does that make ANY sense? Third, we should institute a minimum corporate tax of, say, 10% so that, no matter how many tax deductions taken, all corporations would pay that minimum, small amount, as an effort to pay for access to our markets and to help pay for the infrastructure all across the nation they use in order to spread their services or products. We can't exist, as a country, without good schools, roads, sewer systems, etc., etc. It just makes sense. These three, at least, seem very reasonable and fair to all.