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In New Hampshire, 36 percent of the (Bush) tax cut went to the top 1 percent of earners, those with an income of $368,000 or more, according to a 2001 analysis by Citizens for Tax Justice, a liberal public policy organization. Those taxpayers received an average tax cut of $58,179, while taxpayers with an income of $41,300 - the average of the middle 20 percent of incomes - saved $712, according to the report.
Remove the deeper orange band, and imagine what our country could have been like had Democrats had done a better job being an opposition party and prevented Bush from this massive redistribution of wealth:
We're still paying for the days when Democrats thought winning meant being Republican Lite.
"We are dealing with extremist, obstructionist, lying hypocrites who think you don't have to pay for tax cuts for the wealthiest but are holding up help for the neediest," Hodes told HuffPost during an interview at the Netroots Nation conference in Las Vegas. "Believe me, I understand the long-term deficit crisis. We gotta get to address it. To get there, we have to focus on the short-term jobs crisis we've got and support the fragile economic recovery we're in."
That's a view shared by many economists -- including Mark Zandi, a former adviser to Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) -- and by most registered voters, too.
Boy do we need Paul Hodes in the US Senate. Have you reached out to at least five "drop-off" Obama voters yet?
(But he's a Very Serious Senator and a "Fiscal Conservative," so his bona fides is untouchable, no matter how flimsy his rationale for protecting the richest among us. - promoted by Dean Barker)
OK, I simply don't know how you deal with this sort of ...well, I was going to say thinking, but that obviously is not the word I am looking for:
But what about the costly breaks for those at the very top?
As for the Republicans, "we want to extend them all. That's our position," said Senator Judd Gregg of New Hampshire, the senior Republican on the Senate Budget Committee.
Most jobs are not created by big business or by the government (although the government has certainly added a lot of people in the last eight years). Most jobs in America are created by entrepreneurs who start or expand small businesses. So cut their taxes first, and then throw in a tax cut for working Americans so they can weather this storm a little better. This is a Republican idea that was actually proven to work, so we give it to President Obama and his team and say gracefully, "Here, take it. Call it your own. We will not argue. Just do it so we can get this country going again."
We the People, 2 to 1:
On the economic stimulus package: "By a nearly 2-to-1 ratio, people preferred government spending to create jobs over tax cuts to give Americans more money to spend. Large majorities endorsed many details in the plan, with 89% saying they like the idea of creating jobs through increasing production of renewable energy and making public buildings more energy efficient."
We all know people who contradict themselves regularly. It's especially jarring when they come down hard ( and self-righteously ) on both sides of the same issue. They seem to be oblivious to the obvious-that you can't be right both times. Their egos somehow short circuit logic and critical thinking. Harumphhhhhh!!!
With friends we usually zip our lips and absorb those tingles of anxiety. Scratching a friends psyche that deeply invites all sorts of pain and doubt.
But politicians have to face up to our doubts-we demand it.
A case in point is John Stephen's bewildering contradictions on deficits, the Iraq war and the Bush tax breaks.
Here's a quote from an op-ed written by Mr. Stephen. This appeared in the Union Leader on Friday October 19, 2007.
"We have seen record spending increases and deficits in Washington...
It's time for us to get back to New Hampshire values."
What are Washington values? Over the last five years, we have seen $1.5 trillion in deficit spending."
The op-ed, titled "In The Past Five Years, Congress has Lost Its Way", was an attack on Congress for running up deficits, but failed to mention fellow Republican George Bush and Iraq.
Now we see that John Stephen wants us to elect him to Congress to make the Bush tax cuts permanent even though they contribute mightily to our huge deficits.
And on Iraq's price tag Mr. Stephen is still keeping us in suspense.
Something just doesn't square here.
Its time to force John Stephen to reconcile his most jarring contradictions.
Today we are privileged to read an extended "Commentary" from John E. Sununu on the economy from the Union Leader. How nice.
When I read it, I was reminded again, as I have been so many times since looking at his record and statements for so many months, of two things: 1) how he is able to put you to sleep with SenatorSpeak, and 2) how that soporific style does a good job of masking his unwaveringly radical right-wing money policy.
So let's unpack it some. When John E. says...
We also need to make today's lower taxes on families, entrepreneurs, and small business permanent. The rates were first lowered in 2001.
... what he means is that the reckless and repeated tax cuts that Bush wanted, and Sununu helped make a reality, should be made permanent. You know, the ones that went to the uber-rich and have resulted in the widening of an income gap that has surpassed that of the Great Depression.
And when he says...
partisan attacks have prevented us from modernizing our Social Security system for future generations
... he means that despite the overwhelming rejection Americans gave to Bush's attempt to privatize Social Security in 2005, John E. will keep pushing for it (indeed, a casual news search shows he has been a champion of the Gingrich-Norquist-Bush dream of supplanting "Social" with "Private" and "Security" with "Risk").
