Columbus Day Not What’s Advertised

By Justin "Filthy Liberal Scum" Rosario

October 8, 2012      AddictingInfo.org

When I was a kid, I was taught that in 1492, Columbus sailed the ocean blue and discovered America. Then the Pilgrims came, the Indians welcomed them with open arms and they all lived happily ever after.

That’s not quite how it went though, is it? They left out the part where the “Indians” had already settled across large swaths of what would become the United States. There were several sizable nations with fully developed and rich cultures. The European settlers came and took most of it away. They even purportedly used a primitive form of biological warfare by giving the “Indians” blankets infected with smallpox and that was after the Europeans had already inadvertently wiped out millions of them with disease.

Does it count as “discovering” a continent if it’s already inhabited? Not really. This is not to belittle Columbus’ achievement, he did expand our knowledge of the world…or rather, he put together two very large pieces of the primitive puzzle that passed for a map of the world at the time. However, this is cold comfort to the Native Americans that were driven to near extinction by a concerted effort on the part of the United States government. The atrocities are many and I shan’t bother to list them here (Google it if you want to depress yourself). Many Native American nations were wiped out and others struggle to this day to maintain a coherent culture in the face of a continued onslaught of McDonald’s and MTV.

Even today, Native Americans are still the victims of deep rooted racism as the GOP blocks efforts to help Native American women that are the victims of abuse. I can understand (but violently disagree with) why the GOP would not want the Violence Against Women Act not to help lesbians (grrr…homosexuality is bad!) or undocumented immigrants (grrr… “illegals” are bad!) but Native American women? Grrr…”Indians” are bad! They are? Since when? Oh wait, they’re not white, are they? There really isn’t any other reason that stands up to scrutiny. It’s just more racism from the kind of people that happily slaughtered thousands of “injuns” so they could take their land.

Of all the loathsome justifications for violence, “Manifest Destiny” was among the worst. Slightly better than the Holocaust only in that the goal wasn’t to kill them all, just get them out of the way. Think about that when your child comes home singing “In 14 hundred and 92, Columbus sailed the ocean blue.” Ask them if they learned the entire story of what happened to the Native Americans. It may not make for a joyous holiday, but the truth is always better than the comforting lie.

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Technorati Tags: Columbus Day,Christopher Columbus,Native Americans,Current Events,History

Deficit Drops $207 Billion…

…according to the C.B.O.'s 2012 estimates, which is great news for the Obama administration, and for you and I. The fiscal year ended on September 30, 2012.

   The federal deficit came in at slightly less than  $1.1 trillion,  compared to just under $1.3 trillion at the end of fiscal year 2011, a reduction of $207 billion.  The actual deficit numbers will be released later this month by the Treasury Department.

Total Receipts Were Up by 6 Percent in Fiscal Year 2012

Receipts in fiscal year 2012 totaled $2.5 trillion, $148 billion more than those in the same period last year. Compared with collections in fiscal year 2011:

Net receipts from corporate income taxes grew by $61 billion (or 34 percent), largely because of changes in tax rules in recent years.
Individual income tax receipts grew by $37 billion (or 3 percent), as wages and salaries grew modestly, pushing up withheld tax payments; nonwitheld tax payments rose as well.
Receipts from social insurance taxes rose by $32 billion (or 4 percent), reflecting greater withholding for payroll taxes and an increase in unemployment insurance taxes as states continued to replenish trust funds that were depleted by the recession.
Receipts from other sources increased, on net, by about $18 billion (or 9 percent).

By CBO’s estimates, outlays decreased for several major categories of spending:

Medicaid—Outlays fell by $24 billion (or 9 percent) because legislated increases in the federal share of the program’s costs expired in July 2011.
Unemployment benefits—Spending dropped by $30 billion (or 24 percent), mostly because fewer people have been receiving benefits in recent months.
Defense—Outlays fell by $19 billion (or 3 percent), after adjusting for timing shifts, in part because of lower spending for military operations in Afghanistan and Iraq.
Education programs—Net outlays were lower by $29 billion (or 30 percent), excluding changes recorded in the budget for the estimated cost of student loans. That decline has occurred largely because of waning spending from funding provided by the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act. (Most of that spending occurred before 2012.)          SOURCE

   This is positive proof that the Obama Administrations policies are working despite the Republican obstruction in government over the past 4 years.

   Between last Fridays positive job growth report and this, do we need another reason to reelect Obama to a second term?

Technorati Tags: The Economy,Barack Obama,C.B.O.,B.L.S.,The U.S. Deficit,Current Events,2012 Elections

 

$75 Billion U.S. Surplus For September!! Democrats, As Usual, Better at Deficit Reduction

Hoomai29 at DKos gives us the rundown on a very good surplus from September.     

Sat Oct 06, 2012 

The climb out of Bush's almost impossibly deep hole is getting easier--not easy, but easier. Beyond the wonderful news that the 2012 deficit was $207 Billion less than projected as admirably covered in Vyan's diary, the US government was in the BLACK for September for just the second time since the economic crash of 2008.

We weren't just a little in the black either, we were $75 Billion dollars in the black!

According to the Congressional Budget Office the September $75 billion surplus was a good part of the reason that 2012 full-year fiscal deficit was $1.09 trillion, compared with a previous projection of a $1.327 trillion deficit for fiscal 2012 made by the CBO in February 2012.
The September surplus was just the second month in the black for the U.S. government since September 2008, when the country was in the throes of a financial crisis. The September data was buoyed by strong quarterly corporate income tax payments and $7 billion from the sale of shares in bailed-out insurer American International Group.The Reuters story also said the U.S. Deficit was "about 7 percent of U.S. economic output, down from 8.7 percent in 2011, 9 percent in 2010 and 10.1 percent in 2009." So, while we're not there yet, we are getting there-- steadily, intently and now a little faster than we anticipated.

But one of the often overlooked realities to the deficit reduction challenge is just how TERRIBLE the Republicans are at actually stopping deficit spending.

Zero for twenty? Yes. Zero for twenty! More after the fold.

Charts:

Republicans' $12 Trillion Dollar Debt

CBO 2012 Revenue and Expenditures Chart

Thank you for the Rec!

Since this diary's going to be around for a while, it's worth expanding it to look at Bill Clinton's DNC comments about Republicans and the deficit. (BTW, Bloomberg's fact checker found no significant errors with his speech.)

Here's what President Clinton said about the deficit he inherited from Bush Sr. and the surplus he passed on to President Bush the Junior.

"Don’t you ever forget when you hear them talking about this that Republican economic policies quadrupled the national debt before I took office, in the 12 years before I took office — (applause) — and doubled the debt in the eight years after I left, because it defied arithmetic."

But the lack of honesty about U.S. debt and their ongoing deficits is even more astonishing than President Clinton's remarks:

IN 2010 DOLLARS, NO REPUBLICAN, NOT REAGAN, NOT BUSH SR., NOT BUSH JR., HAS COME WITHIN $160 BILLION OF BALANCING A BUDGET SINCE GERALD FORD.

Republicans are zero for twenty since fiscal year 1978. (Democrats are 5 for 15 in balancing budgets during the same time. Carter balanced three budgets. Clinton balanced two, and was barely off in two more.)

In fact no Republican has balanced a budget since Dwight Eisenhower's last budget in 1961.

So when Romney starts talking about how he's going to balance the budget, here's our talking point.

Since 1978, Republicans and supply economics are zero for twenty in balancing budgets. There's no magic. It just doesn't, ever, work.

Technorati Tags: The U.S. Deficit,2012 Elections,C.B.O.,Surplus,The Democrat Party,Current Events,An American Gothic

 

Family Budgets, Bain Capital and Jesus in SC

  do you want to know just how bad the Republican Party and their corporate backers are fucking up the poor and the middle-class in America?  Then look no further than the state of South Carolina as an example of Republican/corporate corruption and the dismantling of Democracy.

   From wjhamilton29464, a Family Court lawyer in South Carolina, who posted the day after the debate:

Yesterday evening the President of the United States attempted to walk a blurred line between perception and reality which the Republicans have been smudging since Richard Nixon took office in 1968, Reagan nearly obliterated and W. Bush finally utterly ignored.  That line is the reality that the policies of our government and the practices of our private sector define the quality of life that ordinary Americans can achieve.  The “American Dream” of wasteful, indulgent consumerism is always uphill towards a bigger house, a more expensive car and more junk to stuff in our closets.  It is always uphill and favors the hard working and diligent.  However, the steepness of that hill is set in the halls of Congress and the boardrooms of Wall Street.

This election is about weather what happens in the halls of Congress and our nation’s capital will merge with the relentless machinery of the banks and corporations to grind the American Middle Class, over the next generation or two, down to the misery that is the life of slave laborers in China.  It is an 70 year, three generation project we are already one generation into.  I can document the progress of that struggle, line by line, in my work as a Family law attorney in South Carolina.

The attack on the middle class cannot be found in the tax code, union busting or the banking regulations which blew an economy up on debt and sucked the wealth of the middle class to the Cayman Island.  It is a death of a thousand cuts enabled by the willingness of ordinary Americans to be distracted, medicated and shamed into submission by the weary club of dishonest jingoism wrapped in our tattered flag.  It is a battle working Americans such as the ones I have represented in Family Court for a generation now lose ten dollars at a time.

Read on to find out how your struggle is reflected in the struggles of the families I encounter in my legal practice, ensnared in delusions they can escape and an economy the Government refuses to control on their behalf.

In every legal action filed in the South Carolina Family Court, both parties, husbands, wives, grandparents and other relatives, are required to file a detailed family budget called a Financial Declaration.  Many people in our poorly educated state are utterly incapable of doing this so it falls on me to assist them, line by line, in what may be the only detailed examination of their Financial Status anyone will ever work out for them.  After that we fight over who pays the debts, child support and gets the remaining property.  Up until five years ago, we used to fight over the equity in the house, the savings and the pension plans but that grows increasingly rare every day.

I represent both the prosperous and the poor; Republicans and Democrats; men, women and children in a state where Democrats have been driven from political power, unions wield little influence and a rising flood of out of state money dominates our politics. 

South Carolina is not stuck in the past.  It and a handful of other relatively poor states where politics can be waged cheaply are being shaped into models for a future dominated by the power of concentrated wealth from out of state. 

In South Carolina low costs of political campaigns, racial division, a heritage of slavery and plantation labor and militarism allow the Koch Brothers and smaller players like Howard Rich to secure control of seats in our legislature for tens of thousands of dollars.  They use operatives placed in our Governor’s office to run state government on a day to day basis, gradually transitioning these “volunteers” of the payroll of some right wing political group into paid State positions.  They picked and paid for our Governor. The details being emailed to her "assistants" from ALEC and the Heritige Foundation are of no interest to the Governor.  Our Governor is flying around the country wearing short suits and SPANX in other people's jets.  Endless numbers of eager conservatives are in the pipeline to replace and supplement them.  She's happy to serve them, "having a ball."  She is Sarah Palin 2.0 beta testing the model for your state's first Republican robot Governor.

Dedicated lifelong conservatives from South Carolina with the state’s own interests in mind are sidelined, retired early or threatened into submission. Last week the Governor helped set up a new Super PAC to attack her Republican opponents with 750 thousand dollars from five out of state donors.  The hapless Democratic Party, champions of Alvin Greene and proud sponsors of over 125 candidates stricken from the 2012 ballot by botched filing procedures struggle in irrelevance.  The national Obama campaign has given up the state for dead, mining it for contributions and volunteers to deploy to North Carolina.  Democratic campaign offices here have no Tshirts, no yard signs, no buttons and no bumper stickers.  There is no printed literature with colorful pictures of the president.  Campaigns are about phone banking and road trips North, every moment of which pounds in the grinding realization that we are irrelevant.  It is destroying the remaining liberal and progressive base here.

Our state has been lost to the right wing Republican plan for America’s future and nearly everyone is attempting to avoid admitting it.

In the line items Financial Declarations I help prepare, file and read in Family Court, I can document the grinding down of the Middle class in my state, a process men like Mitt Romney have been happy to drive.

Lagging wages are the first cause.  I have seen rent rise from from 300 dollars a month to 900 for a modest two room apartment.  Wages have only doubled.  No one carries the cause of the working class to the companies who hire or the government agencies responsible for economic development.  We persist in promising cheap labor to the world.  We have seen our once massive textile industry offshore.

Jjobs are recruited at a huge, often hidden cause.  After the Union at the local Boeing contractor’s facility was decertified, the state legislature held a special session to approve unknown subsidies for a much larger plant here paying a fraction of what Boeing employees earned near Seattle.  Grants, subsidies and tax breaks for this plant were hidden around government like Easter Eggs: road construction, job training, special tax districts, low interest government guaranteed loans and land sold at below market value.  The impacts on the middle class show up as lower wages, less money for the school district, higher costs for government services elsewhere, deferred infrastructure maintenance.  Of course all of this was driven by the terror that someone would underbid South Carolina in the race to the bottom.

Every August parents pay hundreds of dollars in school fees and deliver a box of supplies to school purchased at their own expense.  The total cost of this climbs every year.  Field trips now cost money as does every sport or extra curricular activity.  Fundraising dominates PTA concerns, now paying for library books, school nurses, language teachers and art teachers.  Wealthy public schools were able to accumulate endowments when the economy was fat.  Now the fundraising auctions which used to generate fifty thousand dollars or more, struggle to raise ten from a thin economy.  Ultimately this money largely comes out of the pockets of parents.

As pressure to cut taxes has been gratified by Republicans fess have increased throughout Government.  The filing fee for an ordinary uncontested divorce case has risen from 25 to 150 dollars and a new 25 dollar fee is due for every motion filed, even uncontested ones.  Originally this money was earmarked to put recently retired judges on the bench to cut backlogs, but they’ve largely disappeared while the fees have stayed.  Traffic tickets, building permits and rental fees to use once free public meeting facilities and parks have multiplied.  Bus fare on our transit system has risen from 50 cents to $1.75.  Fines for ordinary petty offenses have risen to over a thousand dollars.  If you are found not guilty in many cases you’ll pay over 250 dollars to get your criminal arrest record cleared.

Fees for recreation department programs and admission to county parks have risen.  Everywhere Republicans are trying to “run government like a business” while cutting taxes for the wealthy.  In our area that focused on a popular program to slash real estate taxes on expensive beach front and resort property while raising sales taxes on clothing and food.  More recently another round of property tax adjustments have cut what is paid on rental and commercial property meaning now nearly no one who is wealthy enough to own property is actually paying taxes on what their property is actually worth, even if they bought it last week.  When sales taxes fall, public transit is cut, schools are closed and grass in road medians grows five feet tall because no Government agency wants to pay a contractor to cut it.

The homeowner's insurance provided by large, politically influential corporations grows ever more expensive and provides less value.  Property insurance in our hurricane exposed area now exposes homeowners to massive deductibles and co payments.  In 1989 when Hurricane Hugo smashed the coast here, my home had a deductible of one thousand dollars and no major, relevant exclusions.  Today that deductible is over thirty thousand dollars.  Thousands of often elderly homeowner have given up covering their homes, gambling the expensive coverage now available won’t be needed.  Insurance companies contribute generously to political campaigns at every level directly and through interest groups.  Republican administrated state agencies have little interest in what happens to consumers.

Heath Insurance is likewise more expensive and less voluble.  In a market and political arena dominated by Blue Cross deductibles have risen from 200 dollars a year to over a 1000 on most people's plans.  Copayments and exclusions have appeared and grown.  Of course if something serious happens, the carrier will search for some alleged preexisting condition so they can escape paying for anything.

All of these items and more show up on the Financial Declarations of the broken families I represent.  Increasingly in our traditional culture, an angry wife is lashing out at the husband and father who seems unwilling to provide the quality of life her father provided her family in 1975.  She works, paying for a vehicle, taxes and often daycare but it adds little to the family’s disposable income.  He takes odd jobs on the weekend, but it doesn’t cover the growing gap.  They’re exhausted with little time and energy for their children beyond the struggle to finish homework, school projects, fundraise and attend soccer games.  Almost none of these people have time or energy remaining for culture, political involvement or civic life.  They deeply resent those of us who do, resenting us as liberal snobs. 

For about twenty years debt and rising real estate values here in coastal South Carolina, driven by the continuous influx of wealthy retirees from the North allowed working families to hide this struggle under a rising pile of debt secured by appreciating real estate.  Families ran up lines of credit and credit cards, refinancing every few years into a new and larger mortgage.  When they could, they moved into a new and larger house so the debt monster could continue to grow.  This economy was finally supported by a desperate last few years of loans to people who could never pay them back to renovate tar paper shacks and buy the working poor minivans based on applications signed by people who didn’t understand them.  Half the people I knew were in real estate, banking or construction.  Now corporate middle management has been downsized, the big pensions are gone and the river of northern wealth headed south has dried up.

Now both the retired from elsewhere and the working locals with kids are both underwater.  There is no more money to borrow.  Dad’s weekend odd construction jobs have evaporated.  The local banks and construction companies aren’t grandstanding at the school fundraiser with a five hundred dollar check.  The fees for building permits down at Town Government have dried up.  Traffic tickets aren’t being paid.  The uninsured swamp local free clinics.  Goodwill in our once prosperous Republican town sells over 3000 items every day.

For many people, the work day has quietly expanded to nine hours or more.  Unpaid work on Saturday is now common.  They’re on salary now thanks to changes made by the Bush administration.  Staffs have been slashed and paid vacation, for those who have it, is a struggle to actually take.

I’m lucky.  I was a student of economics and history educated by pessimistic liberals in our redneck state who could see where this was going a long time ago.  My home and car are paid off.  I’ve saved.  I went  to Paris before the crash.  I resisted the pressure to leverage everything I owned to buy a house to flip seven years ago from the friendly real estate agent prepared to hook me up with a million dollar loan.  He said real estate never went down.  I replied 1931.  He's a Republican on the verge of bankruptcy who hates President Obama and attends a mega church to recruit business prospects.  We don’t talk any more. 

I provide legal services of absolute necessity which must be paid for even in the most desperate circumstances.  I treat my struggling clients well and they remember.  I now represent some of their children, whose custody I litigated twenty years ago.  I respect them.  I understand that a large part of their problem is not of their making.  I talk to them about it, but most can't accept the reality.  Their kids are different.  They hope for little.  They believe in nothing but Jesus.

More attention to the priorities of Jesus on their part won’t solve their problems despite what the teachers at the mega churches they attend say when they’re being instructed to vote Republicans so the angel of prosperity will return to America next Sunday.  A bit of attention to the priorities of Jesus, Paul Krugman or John Maynard Keynes by the men and women who rule their corporations and governments certainly would.

Last night our President listened, too patiently to Mitt Romney’s fabric of lies, woven out of the strands of delusion which have knitted in the dark halls of the right for a generation.  The President has been warned that he can’t raise the banner of class warfare.  Obama must confine this election to the safe margins of tax policy and budgets.  The President is not supposed to threaten the concentrating money at the top. He's not supposed to say that the reason you can't take your kids to the Doctor is because men exactly like Mitt Romney have rigged every economic and social transaction necessary to your survival against you because they believe you are resources to be exploited.  They have rejected the counsel of Jesus and are in league with the Devil to rob you of your rights as an American and the God given joy you are entitled to in your life.

We must remind President Obama and Mitt Romney that the miserable math of these Financial Declarations reveals a citizenry being degraded by exploitation planned in the corporate boardrooms of Wall Street, Wal-Mart and Bejing.  It is a grinding campaign of economic annialation only the Government has the power to stop.   This election is about what side our Government will be on, a choice between the priorities of women who drop their children off at daycare to work for nine hours for eight hours pay vs. women who drop in to see how their dressage horses are doing.

To pretend it is something else wont scare people, but it concedes more of the battle than is safe when the stakes are this high.

Originally posted to wjhamilton29464 on Thu Oct 04, 2012

Technorati Tags: Mitt Romney,Koch Brothers,ALEC,The Republican Party,South Carolina,Conservatives,2012 Elections,Corruption,Current Events