08/26/2011
WARNING - RANT ;>)
We interrupt our previously scheduled commentary and story with a breaking news item...Eric Cantor feels that any relief efforts and spending for disaster needs should be offset by a reduction in the budget for subsequent years. Way to go Tea-bagger Eric! Rock on and add more idiotic commentary to the public forum and keep digging your own political grave.
From the Huffington Post:
"Cantor raised some eyebrows on Wednesday when, in the aftermath of the 5.8 magnitude earthquake that rattled the East Coast and originated in his district, he said Congress will help those hurt by the earthquake but will require finding offsets for any federal aid."
Talk about out of touch...so we give money to FEMA every year via taxes, and they set aside what they can in order to provide immediate aid for disaster victims and their infrastructure and communities. Because of the amount of natural disasters due to fires, tornadoes, and now incoming hurricanes (don't mention climate change or you'll get your jaw busted), FEMA is running out of funds (yes, tax dollars, I admitted that earlier, Michael Brown "brownie", please pay attention). So, according to the esteemed representative from the state of eternal bliss and lucrative investment dollars, any expenditure we put in place to cover natural disasters should be managed for in future budgets. Reminder, Mr. Cantor..... We still need to pay for 2 or 3 unbudgeted wars, you ready to raise taxes to cover that? No? Hmmm... So should we cut a little more so that we have more unemployed that won't be paid to support the relief efforts? Should we delay recovery in the event there is a disaster (which I pray there isn't).
Our representation in Washington has truly lost touch with what they were elected to do. It is time to enact true election reform, get PACs of all kinds out of the process, remove any ability for campaign donations to be made by any lobbyists, tighten the requirements for lobbyists to be able to privately or publicly contribute money to campaigns. As a matter of fact, it is time to use PBS and NPR exclusively for political ads and grandstanding, and only allow commercial TV to provide advertising if it gives equal time and equal representation to all candidates. Going to an extreme, maybe commercial stations should be required by the government and the FCC to contribute free time to all candidates during the election cycle. Get rid of greed in the process of Politics, and see how long before career politicians find new work as shady lawyers.....
We will return to our regularly scheduled blog after this rant, and within the next 24 to 48 hours.
Friday, August 26, 2011
Thursday, August 25, 2011
Free school lunches make talk show host lose touch with reality and decency
And the idiocy continues.....
Another ridiculous tirade courtesy of 850KOA's Michael Brown (last one I wrote about is here http://losttouchwith.blogspot.com/2011/04/i-went-to-store-couple-nights-ago-on.html). Last night on the radio, Michael reacted to a story from Detroit about the school system there providing free lunch to all students regardless of ability to pay so as to remove the stigma associated with having to accept "charity." Michael then made the jump to comparing this act of compassion and charity to giving free groceries to everyone! I love the absurdity of Michael's brand of conservative thinking.....
The story, from the AP is as follows:
"By The Associated Press
DETROIT - All Detroit Public Schools students from kindergarten through 12th grade will get free breakfast, lunch and snacks starting this fall under a federal pilot program, the district announced Tuesday.
Michigan's largest public school district said the program's goal is to "ensure all children receive healthy meals, regardless of income."
Most Detroit schoolchildren also meet income rules for free lunches.
Michigan, Illinois and Kentucky will participate in the U.S. Department of Agriculture pilot program during the upcoming school year. Districts in Michigan can participate if at least 40 percent of their students are entitled to public assistance.
"One of the primary goals of this program is to eliminate the stigma that students feel when they get a free lunch, as opposed to paying cash," said Mark Schrupp, the district's chief operating officer. "Some students would skip important meals to avoid being identified as low-income. Now, all students will walk through a lunch line and not have to pay. Low-income students will not be easily identifiable and will be less likely to skip meals."
The district said it still encourages parents to fill out family income surveys because funding for tutoring, after-school programs, extra teachers' aids, classroom technology and other services are still linked to income."
Wow, is that not the worst news? Free food to go along with a free education? And this is in school districts where 40% of the population of the school is already receiving aid. I'm actually glad to see that we are finally providing back to some of our own for a change, but of course to the extremism of talk show radio, this is just another way to cement the divide in our country at present. And...just to cover it, we all know that taxes pay for this program just as it does the education of our youth, cause I'm sure "Brownie", as he was called by President Bush, will want to remind me that even free is really paid for by someone.
So, I decided to email the station and Michael to tell them how sick to my stomach I was listening to his show that evening. And I said the following:
"Sick to my stomach.
There is a big difference between providing a paid for lunch (oh and by the way we provide a paid for education in this country, or should, to all who are interested in bettering themselves) and going to the conservative extreme of providing free groceries. 1) children react negatively to stigma in their environment. 2) adults can handle a little stigma. Be a responsible talk show host and discuss things from an educated point of view instead of an idiotic incendiary escalatory nature."
My point here is to show the absurdity in the thinking that children who are unfortunately stuck in a bad situation and the parents who have some control and responsibility for their situation can even possibly be compared. So imagine my surprise today, Wednesday, when I turn on the radio to hear my email being read (and unfortunately as is par for the course, not being read verbatim but being edited on air by you know who) as the lead to the talk show du jour. At least I gave him a subject for his show.
So,
I awoke the next morning to the following email reply.....
"So you will provide free lunches to all children, regardless of need? You are the ones that will destroy this country."
I just can't imagine that providing a meal through taxes would ever destroy a country. Michael Brown, I'd put the amount of money for school lunch subsidies for all children per day up against the cost per day to wage war in the Middle East. Care to take on that bet?
I didn't think so. Whiner.....just goes to show you how talk radio and 24 hour a day "news" alarmists have twisted and pushed the vitality and intellect right out of our country.
Sick to my stomach.....
Another ridiculous tirade courtesy of 850KOA's Michael Brown (last one I wrote about is here http://losttouchwith.blogspot.com/2011/04/i-went-to-store-couple-nights-ago-on.html). Last night on the radio, Michael reacted to a story from Detroit about the school system there providing free lunch to all students regardless of ability to pay so as to remove the stigma associated with having to accept "charity." Michael then made the jump to comparing this act of compassion and charity to giving free groceries to everyone! I love the absurdity of Michael's brand of conservative thinking.....
The story, from the AP is as follows:
"By The Associated Press
DETROIT - All Detroit Public Schools students from kindergarten through 12th grade will get free breakfast, lunch and snacks starting this fall under a federal pilot program, the district announced Tuesday.
Michigan's largest public school district said the program's goal is to "ensure all children receive healthy meals, regardless of income."
Most Detroit schoolchildren also meet income rules for free lunches.
Michigan, Illinois and Kentucky will participate in the U.S. Department of Agriculture pilot program during the upcoming school year. Districts in Michigan can participate if at least 40 percent of their students are entitled to public assistance.
"One of the primary goals of this program is to eliminate the stigma that students feel when they get a free lunch, as opposed to paying cash," said Mark Schrupp, the district's chief operating officer. "Some students would skip important meals to avoid being identified as low-income. Now, all students will walk through a lunch line and not have to pay. Low-income students will not be easily identifiable and will be less likely to skip meals."
The district said it still encourages parents to fill out family income surveys because funding for tutoring, after-school programs, extra teachers' aids, classroom technology and other services are still linked to income."
Wow, is that not the worst news? Free food to go along with a free education? And this is in school districts where 40% of the population of the school is already receiving aid. I'm actually glad to see that we are finally providing back to some of our own for a change, but of course to the extremism of talk show radio, this is just another way to cement the divide in our country at present. And...just to cover it, we all know that taxes pay for this program just as it does the education of our youth, cause I'm sure "Brownie", as he was called by President Bush, will want to remind me that even free is really paid for by someone.
So, I decided to email the station and Michael to tell them how sick to my stomach I was listening to his show that evening. And I said the following:
"Sick to my stomach.
There is a big difference between providing a paid for lunch (oh and by the way we provide a paid for education in this country, or should, to all who are interested in bettering themselves) and going to the conservative extreme of providing free groceries. 1) children react negatively to stigma in their environment. 2) adults can handle a little stigma. Be a responsible talk show host and discuss things from an educated point of view instead of an idiotic incendiary escalatory nature."
My point here is to show the absurdity in the thinking that children who are unfortunately stuck in a bad situation and the parents who have some control and responsibility for their situation can even possibly be compared. So imagine my surprise today, Wednesday, when I turn on the radio to hear my email being read (and unfortunately as is par for the course, not being read verbatim but being edited on air by you know who) as the lead to the talk show du jour. At least I gave him a subject for his show.
So,
I awoke the next morning to the following email reply.....
"So you will provide free lunches to all children, regardless of need? You are the ones that will destroy this country."
I just can't imagine that providing a meal through taxes would ever destroy a country. Michael Brown, I'd put the amount of money for school lunch subsidies for all children per day up against the cost per day to wage war in the Middle East. Care to take on that bet?
I didn't think so. Whiner.....just goes to show you how talk radio and 24 hour a day "news" alarmists have twisted and pushed the vitality and intellect right out of our country.
Sick to my stomach.....
Sunday, August 14, 2011
Losing touch with the middle class
08/14/2011
Here I go again, looking at the issue that all of the talk about cutting the budget never seems to discuss - what to do with all of the unemployed government workers or industries that are dependent on the taxes we all pay. Are we losing touch and forgetting that unemployed government workers become unemployed Americans that are not paying taxes and may become financial support recipients that tax our ability to care for the less than fortunate in the USA?
I listened to a couple of talk shows this weekend, and read a number of articles, editorials, and reader emails to local papers, all talking about the need to raise taxes to cover expenses not allocated properly in the budget, the need to lower taxes to encourage businesses to invest, the need to decrease the size of government, the need to increase the oversight the government provides because of the crooked amongst us, on and on, you hopefully get the picture.
And then, for me, I heard the absolute most depressing news I could, Michelle Bachman had won the non- binding straw poll in Iowa. Talk about something that turned my stomach, can you imagine that people in this country would be so confused by a two-bit con artist that only knows one phrase, something that has to do with one term.
So, I thought I'd pull in some interesting things I learned listening, reading, or otherwise. They will be all over the board, but all will talk about the need for the wealthiest in this country to assist in employing the middle class of this country by contributing an equitable share, not moving their monies out of the country to avoid paying taxes, and generally figure out a way to help when the need is greatest. In the interest of space, I've compressed multiple paragraphs into one for each article, thought, etc.
From The Denver Post, reader mail:
The economy was in a virtual free-fall when Obama took office, losing more than 700,000 jobs in the month he took over. More than 2 million new private-sector jobs have been added in the last 14 months — with positive job numbers every month. The stock market has improved dramatically since Obama took office — with the Dow Jones Industrial Average, even after the recent sharp decline, up from 8,228 the day he took office to a close Friday of 11,269. According to the Commerce Department, American businesses earned profits at an annual rate of $1.67 trillion in the third quarter — the highest figure since the government began keeping track 60 years ago. Corporate balance sheets are by far the strongest in U.S. history — with close to $2 trillion in cash.
Another from the Post:
There has been a great deal of debate about the role of tax revenue to close the federal deficit. Republicans feel our deficit problem is a spending issue and vow to fight any tax increases on the wealthiest Americans, labeling such action as job killing. Since we now have individuals making $1 billion in a year, I thought it would be helpful to offer a comparison of the job-creating benefits of this individual versus a group of middle-class Americans. For $1 billion, we could employ 20,000 people, each making $50,000 per year. These individuals would contribute over $76 million toward Social Security and Medicare and their employers would match this amount, while the billionaire would contribute approximately $15,300. If the billionaire is a hedge fund manager, he pays only 15 percent of his income in federal taxes, roughly equal to the middle-income earners. When you add in sales taxes, the middle-class tax burden is substantially higher than that of the billionaire. The 20,000 middle-class employees would generate many other jobs in their local economies as they spend their money on the essentials of living. The billionaire wouldn’t spend but a small fraction of his money on living and wouldn’t need to generate any new jobs. In fact, in the age of globalization, the billionaire is more likely to invest his money overseas than in the United States. In spite of Republican claims, there is not one shred of evidence that tax cuts for the rich generate jobs.
From The Atlantic Magazine:
IN OCTOBER 2005, three Citigroup analysts released a report describing the pattern of growth in the U.S. economy. To really understand the future of the economy and the stock market, they wrote, you first needed to recognize that there was “no such animal as the U.S. consumer,” and that concepts such as “average” consumer debt and “average” consumer spending were highly misleading. In fact, they said, America was composed of two distinct groups: the rich and the rest. And for the purposes of investment decisions, the second group didn’t matter; tracking its spending habits or worrying over its savings rate was a waste of time. All the action in the American economy was at the top: the richest 1 percent of households earned as much each year as the bottom 60 percent put together; they possessed as much wealth as the bottom 90 percent; and with each passing year, a greater share of the nation’s treasure was flowing through their hands and into their pockets. It was this segment of the population, almost exclusively, that held the key to future growth and future returns. The analysts, Ajay Kapur, Niall Macleod, and Narendra Singh, had coined a term for this state of affairs: plutonomy.
http://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2011/08/the-middle-class-is-mostly-invisible-to-the-elite/243232/ for the entire story.
To be continued.....
Here I go again, looking at the issue that all of the talk about cutting the budget never seems to discuss - what to do with all of the unemployed government workers or industries that are dependent on the taxes we all pay. Are we losing touch and forgetting that unemployed government workers become unemployed Americans that are not paying taxes and may become financial support recipients that tax our ability to care for the less than fortunate in the USA?
I listened to a couple of talk shows this weekend, and read a number of articles, editorials, and reader emails to local papers, all talking about the need to raise taxes to cover expenses not allocated properly in the budget, the need to lower taxes to encourage businesses to invest, the need to decrease the size of government, the need to increase the oversight the government provides because of the crooked amongst us, on and on, you hopefully get the picture.
And then, for me, I heard the absolute most depressing news I could, Michelle Bachman had won the non- binding straw poll in Iowa. Talk about something that turned my stomach, can you imagine that people in this country would be so confused by a two-bit con artist that only knows one phrase, something that has to do with one term.
So, I thought I'd pull in some interesting things I learned listening, reading, or otherwise. They will be all over the board, but all will talk about the need for the wealthiest in this country to assist in employing the middle class of this country by contributing an equitable share, not moving their monies out of the country to avoid paying taxes, and generally figure out a way to help when the need is greatest. In the interest of space, I've compressed multiple paragraphs into one for each article, thought, etc.
From The Denver Post, reader mail:
The economy was in a virtual free-fall when Obama took office, losing more than 700,000 jobs in the month he took over. More than 2 million new private-sector jobs have been added in the last 14 months — with positive job numbers every month. The stock market has improved dramatically since Obama took office — with the Dow Jones Industrial Average, even after the recent sharp decline, up from 8,228 the day he took office to a close Friday of 11,269. According to the Commerce Department, American businesses earned profits at an annual rate of $1.67 trillion in the third quarter — the highest figure since the government began keeping track 60 years ago. Corporate balance sheets are by far the strongest in U.S. history — with close to $2 trillion in cash.
Another from the Post:
There has been a great deal of debate about the role of tax revenue to close the federal deficit. Republicans feel our deficit problem is a spending issue and vow to fight any tax increases on the wealthiest Americans, labeling such action as job killing. Since we now have individuals making $1 billion in a year, I thought it would be helpful to offer a comparison of the job-creating benefits of this individual versus a group of middle-class Americans. For $1 billion, we could employ 20,000 people, each making $50,000 per year. These individuals would contribute over $76 million toward Social Security and Medicare and their employers would match this amount, while the billionaire would contribute approximately $15,300. If the billionaire is a hedge fund manager, he pays only 15 percent of his income in federal taxes, roughly equal to the middle-income earners. When you add in sales taxes, the middle-class tax burden is substantially higher than that of the billionaire. The 20,000 middle-class employees would generate many other jobs in their local economies as they spend their money on the essentials of living. The billionaire wouldn’t spend but a small fraction of his money on living and wouldn’t need to generate any new jobs. In fact, in the age of globalization, the billionaire is more likely to invest his money overseas than in the United States. In spite of Republican claims, there is not one shred of evidence that tax cuts for the rich generate jobs.
From The Atlantic Magazine:
IN OCTOBER 2005, three Citigroup analysts released a report describing the pattern of growth in the U.S. economy. To really understand the future of the economy and the stock market, they wrote, you first needed to recognize that there was “no such animal as the U.S. consumer,” and that concepts such as “average” consumer debt and “average” consumer spending were highly misleading. In fact, they said, America was composed of two distinct groups: the rich and the rest. And for the purposes of investment decisions, the second group didn’t matter; tracking its spending habits or worrying over its savings rate was a waste of time. All the action in the American economy was at the top: the richest 1 percent of households earned as much each year as the bottom 60 percent put together; they possessed as much wealth as the bottom 90 percent; and with each passing year, a greater share of the nation’s treasure was flowing through their hands and into their pockets. It was this segment of the population, almost exclusively, that held the key to future growth and future returns. The analysts, Ajay Kapur, Niall Macleod, and Narendra Singh, had coined a term for this state of affairs: plutonomy.
http://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2011/08/the-middle-class-is-mostly-invisible-to-the-elite/243232/ for the entire story.
To be continued.....
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