Public Employee Unions are not the Problem: The Super Rich getting tax cuts is.

Great blog by Robert Reich. Republicans are trying to use the recession they created to attack public employee unions.
Among the best passages:

It’s far more convenient to go after people who are doing the public’s work - sanitation workers, police officers, fire fighters, teachers, social workers, federal employees – to call them “faceless bureaucrats” and portray them as hooligans who are making off with your money and crippling federal and state budgets. The story fits better with the Republican’s Big Lie that our problems are due to a government that’s too big.

Above all, Republicans don’t want to have to justify continued tax cuts for the rich. As quietly as possible, they want to make them permanent.

Let the Tax Cuts Die

Back when Bush cut taxes for everyone, a change in the tax code that mainly benefited this nation's wealthy elite, I saw a reduction of $300 or so in my tax bill.

Big whoop!

That's why I am not in the hand wringing mode over the prospect that the Bush era tax cuts are set to expire for everyone in a few weeks if the Republicans and Democrats don't start singing Kum By Ah together over the so-called "compromise" reached between Pres. Obama and congressional Republicans.

I say, let the whole thing die! The cuts have been around too long. All they have done is give us record deficits, benefited those who did not need help, and punished those who did.

Let us remember that the Bush changes basically did away with the reforms Bill Clinton made in the US Tax Code, reforms that were passed without a single Republican vote. All that did was give the US record prosperity,its first budget surplus since 1969, and a real reduction in the number of American's living in poverty.

Bush didn't seem to like that arrangement and shoved the whole thing in reverse. In doing so, he not only spent the surplus, but blew a hole in the budget to the tune of $2.3 trillon.

According to The Center on Budget and Policy Priorities:

Allowing tax cuts to expire for married filers with incomes above $250,000 and single filers with incomes above $200,000— the top 2 percent of U.S. households— will avert $826 billion in added deficits and debt over the next ten years. The savings from allowing the top two marginal tax rates to expire for those high-income households constitute $443 billion of that $826 billion.

If we truly want to reduce the deficit as everyone says, we cannot afford these cuts any long. The federal government can have my measly share of the savings to help save future generations the burden of paying off my debt.

So, let the Bush tax cut debacle die. It should have been strangled in its crib.

I Hope the Republicans Succeed

The Republican Party has taken over nearly all branches of state government in Oklahoma largely because they were able to nationalize the issues in the state races and make this round of local elections a referendum on Pres. Obama and the national Democratic Party.

When Sen. Obama was elected to the White House in 2008, Rush Limbaugh and others on the fringe right loudly voiced their desire to see the president "fail" because they feared that his policies, which they saw as contrary to their ideology, would succeed and be made permanent. They were cynically willing to see ordinary Americans suffer in order to serve a political end.

I am liberal and proud to be so. However, I am not so much of an ideologue that I would wish my fellow Oklahomans anything but the best out of their government, which they voted for in very large numbers. I want their suffering due to the present recession to end, and I am not particularly concerned about who gets the credit. If Republican policies produce a better life for all Oklahomans, then bring them on and make them the law of our land.

What I am concerned about is that this government, and this goes for any government, deal with all its citizen justly. That they do all they can to respect and enhance human dignity, deal rightly with those who are most vulnerable in our society like the very old and very young, and work to make our presence on this planet more sustainable.

I am skeptical of the Oklahoma's Republican Party's ability to do this since it seems to me that they long ago sold their soul to rich and powerful who have little interest in the those who have been marginalized in our culture other than to provide them with a docile labor and consumer population. Their concern is for the short-term bottom line rather than the type of environment that will be inherited 7 generations hence.

But I hope that I am wrong. I wish to see my home state prosper. I wish to know that our choices have created better lives for our children and their children's children. Of course, I am going to be taking an active role in creating this success, and if this means that the Republicans claim justification for their victory, then so be it.

Republicans move to strip teachers of due process

From my friend, Skip Ogle, "[Oklahoma] SB 1 was filed by Senator [John] Ford today. It repeals trial du novo for teachers. Due process then would become a board hearing and that would be it. Career teachers would be treated the same as brand new teachers." We are seeing the first effects of the Republican takeover of Oklahoma state government. Ford represents the Bartleville area. I very much doubt this will be the only attempt to diminish over even end Oklahoma teachers' due process rights.

The Republican's Approval Rating Lower than Congress'

from The Daily Kos