The party of no strikes again
29 Sep, 2010 in Brian, Friends, Politics, Republican, Taxes, The EconomyYesterday the Republican party continued their campaign of blocking useful legislation from passing by voting down a bill to give tax credits to companies who keep jobs in the US instead of outsourcing them to firms overseas in places like India and China. I really don’t understand how anyone could want to vote for these jackasses, but as I’ve discovered from discussions with several of my conservative friends, the vast majority of the conservative population doesn’t care about whether or not they’re being told factual information from Rush and Hannity and Beck. They just think that if it comes from a conservative pundit, well, it’s just “gotta be true.”
This reminds me of the two “arguments” (lies) of the Republicans/Tea Baggers that I truly enjoy hearing:
- “We need to shrink the size of government and decrease taxes so we can pay the national debt!” – Yes, because shrinking the government and taking in even less revenue will enable us to… oh, right. Still can’t pay the debt without more revenue. Shrinking the government only goes so far. It won’t help pay the debt. Also, the rich will always be able to find tax loop holes and get out of paying as much taxes as they should be.
- “The richest 2% create the most jobs so they deserve tax breaks!” – That’s partially true but very skewed. The rich folks do create *some* jobs. But… a lot of those jobs go overseas to India and China. Sure, it increases their profit margins but it takes jobs away from Americans who need them. Less jobs for Americans = less money in the economy.
The rich save their money. They save and invest it. They buy things, yes, but not at the same percentage as the middle and lower class do. The middle and lower class, by far, put a higher percentage of their incomes into the economy just trying to keep their heads above water. The economic impact of the middle class having more money to spend far outweighs the economic impact of the rich saving their money and investing it overseas.
My friend Brian quoted a very relevant response from Heather McGhee (of Demos, a non-partisan public policy research and advocacy organization founded in 2000) to the question of “can tax cuts hurt job creation?” during her appearance on Countdown the other day which perfectly makes this point:
“In this instance they absolutely can. It particularly because we’re talking about the Bush tax cuts, which, as we know, the vast majority went to the wealthiest 3% of the Americans. Now if I’m a working and middle class person who is living paycheck to paycheck, I spend every dollar that I can hold on to. I spend it on groceries. I spend it on my kids’ books. I spend it on gas for the car. I immediately through-put that out into the conomy. If I’m a millionaire or billionaire I, as you said, Keith, sock it away. And so the problem using tax cuts as stimulus is that it’s far too expensive and it ties the government’s hands to do the more effective form of stimulus, such as infrastructure spending.”
Nice job, conservatives. You’re ruining the United States, one failed bill at a time.
It is September 11th today, and there’s a man in Florida who wants to burn copies of the Quran to “celebrate”. The man is the Pastor of a small church, and claims that he’s doing God’s work. The US General in charge of our troops out in Afghanistan has publicly spoken out against this, pointing to precedent that this kind of act will do nothing but put our lives and the lives of our brave men and women in uniform in grave danger.
Every year on this day, we’re reminded of what happened in New York and DC that beautiful clear morning. We’re reminded by our government that today we should be in a “heightened state of alert.” Never, before today, have I ever actually felt even a hint of concern about it. But this crazy man in Florida, who represents no God but simply his own ego and vanity, he’s succeeded in two things: First, to make himself famous, and second, to actually making some of us honestly concerned that our lives aren’t as safe as we’d normally think they are.
Let’s remember the people we lost that day. Let’s remember the heroes. The people who ran into burning buildings trying to save lives, and those who paid for that heroism with their lives. Let’s remember the people on United 93 who fought back and saved God knows how many lives by taking their destinies into their own hands and did what most of us think would be difficult if not impossible.
Finally, let’s not hate the man for what he wants to do. Giving in to hatred isn’t going to make things better. It would just make us like him. Instead, let’s all take a little time out of our lives on September 11th and help someone. Do something good for someone in need. Donate money to a charity. Do whatever you can, no matter how small. That’s the best way to protest what he’s doing: show that we as Americans are tolerant, giving, and above the hate.
I came across a very interesting and informative article on Gizmodo this afternoon called, The Real ‘Stuff White People Like’. The study itself was done by analyzing “526,000 okCupid users at random and divided them into groups by their (self-stated) race. We then took all these people’s profile essays (280 million words in total!) and isolated the words and phrases that made each racial group’s essays statistically distinct from the others’.”
It’s a really fascinating study, and with such a large number of subjects it holds a little more water (larger sample size = more reliable averages) than typical socio-behavioral studies do. One of the more interesting findings of the study was the “Writing Proficiency Level by Religion”. Atheists, Buddhists, and Jews scored in the top 3 there. Protestants and Catholics scored lowest. I can see why Atheists scored highest – all of the Atheists I’ve ever met have been extremely intelligent, well-educated people. They’re thinkers and educators and scholars. The ones I know, anyway. 
Click the link at the top of this article or head on over to http://gizmodo.com/5632105/the-real-stuff-white-people-like and read it for yourself.
Knowing that life is so short and so fragile, it’s a wonder that we try to do anything at all sometimes except simply exist. Some feel motivated by this fact, others feel demotivated.
So, what’s it going to be?
Around 1:00pm today I received my iPad from UPS after a long night of anxiously waiting. First impressions:
- It’s a whole lot heavier than I thought it would be.
- It’s extremely fast and responsive. Everything runs very fast on it and apps/music/movies took very little time to install from my MacBook.
- The keyboard is surprisingly easy to type on when you lay it down on a flat surface.
- Audio quality is outstanding. Video quality is outstanding.
Enough for now. Back to playtime! Oh, and how cool is it that I’m making this post from the iPad via the WordPress app?
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