Where’s the Outrage?

I wrote this last August. I hope you still find it relevant.

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For the last 25 years, we, the American people, have been sold a bill of goods. The pitch, on one level, appeals to our natural sense of right and wrong. We’ve been told that we pay too much in taxes. We get taxed in the morning. We get taxed as we drive to work. We clearly get taxed on the money that we make it work. We come home and we kiss our spouse. We get hit with the marriage tax. As we make our way to the kitchen we trip over toys that we bought for our kids and of course, those toys were taxed. We get taxed morning, noon and night. Finally, when we leave this earth, we get taxed again with the death tax.

We’ve also been told that our government is not to be trusted. If you give money to the government it is almost equivalent to flushing the money down the drain. Some of our elected leaders have gone so far as to say flushing the money down the drain is actually a better use of the money. The take home lesson is our government is wasteful and we get taxed to death. Cool story. Unfortunately, reality is different than this fantasy world. This week, in my opinion, we saw clearly the result of 27 years of cutting government programs and government spending. The evidence has been all around us but we’ve refuse to see it. Our infrastructure is crumbling around us. We’ve invested almost nothing in our schools, roads, government buildings, levees and, of course, bridges.

As I’ve pointed out in my book, A Letter to America, taxes are like membership fees to an exclusive club. The United States of America is the club that we belong to. Our club used to treat us like exclusive members. If you work hard in school you were almost guaranteed a job for which you can be well-paid. You could be secure in the knowledge that you would have this job until you retire. Once we retired we had a generous pension that made all those years of work, pain and suffering, worth it. Well, like any club, when you reduce the membership fees too far, the perks that made that club special are now not affordable. [Read more →]

Tags: Budget, Domestic Issues, Newsletter, Tax by ecthompson
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The House defeated a $162 billion proposal to fund the Iraq War thru 2009. A coalition of Democrats and insightful Republicans (is that an oxymoron?) who read the tea leaves in Mississippi and are trying to distance themselves from a President who is losing popularity by the second.

Tags: Budget, Iraq by ecthompson
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What would you give to the man that has tapped your phones, taken your liberty and spent your money like it has no value? Yep, me too. I would get him everything else that he wants including all of the money for Iraq and Afghanistan, no stings attached.

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From RS:

The Senate voted Tuesday to provide $70 billion for U.S. military efforts in Iraq and Afghanistan, handing a victory to President Bush and his GOP allies on Capitol Hill.

The 70-25 roll call paved the way for the Senate to pass a $555 billion omnibus appropriations bill combining the war funding with the budgets for 14 Cabinet agencies. (more…)

 

 Animal House - Thank you sir [0:23m]: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

Tags: Budget, Bush Administration, Congress by ecthompson
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After yesterday’s statement, I wonder what the Prez (President Bush) had to say. Well, don’t hold your breath waiting on the President to show any willingness to work with Congress.

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From CNN.com:

Bush said House and Senate Democrats “need to work out their differences before they come to the White House,” and he threatened to veto any bill laden with “wasteful spending.”

Shortly afterward, House Democratic caucus chairman Rep. Rahm Emanuel called Bush’s news conference the “19th press conference where he was pointing fingers at Congress. I think if we did a little more cooperation, a little more compromise, and a lot less confrontation, a lot less complaining, you’ll see a lot more things get done for the American people.”

The Illinois lawmaker congratulated U.S. troops for their service in Iraq, but said what’s missing is a U.S. strategy for allowing Iraq to “stop relying on our troops to do for them what they need to do for themselves.” (more…)

 

 Portion of Press Conferenence and Dem response [2:08m]: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

Tags: Budget, Bush Administration, Congress by ecthompson
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President Bush took the opportunity to wear out Congress yesterday morning. There was no sign that there should be any compromise. It should be his way. If you aren’t doing it his way, he will veto it. He named a number of things that Congress isn’t doing - Alternative minimum tax (which the Republican’s had 6 years to do something on but didn’t), His War Funding request and other spending bills.

I find it odd that this man was labeled as the compassionate conservative. I hadn’t seen one bit of compassion for the American people. I haven’t seen the president compromise on any major piece of legislation. He has pushed, prodded, punched and run over anyone in his way.

From WaPo:

With his approval ratings stubbornly low, President Bush is trying to gain political traction by spoiling for fights with an institution the public appears to hold in even lower esteem: Congress.

Bush held his 18th event of the year yesterday focused on his disputes with Capitol Hill, blasting Democratic lawmakers for not completing annual spending bills, or sending him war funding legislation, or finalizing a measure that would permanently legalize his administration’s warrantless wiretapping program. The 19th event is to come this morning in a presidential news conference at the White House.

Thankfully, Harry Reid, Democratic Senate Majority Leader, countered. “The surge hasn’t accomplished its goals,” Reid said. “… We’re involved, still, in an intractable civil war.” In a wishy-washy piece in Politico.com, the author paints the Democrats has waffling on the Surge. Stating that some Democrats are saying that the Surge is in fact working. Any Democrats who have said that the Surge is working are either being quoted out of context (John Murtha) or have their heads in the sand. Right wing bloggers like Hot Air have missed the point. The point of the Surge was to decrease violence so that there could be political reconciliation. This is what President Bush said back in January. As I mentioned before, our military if given the right resources can control any space in the world. This is clear. No Democrat or Republican would argue this point. Our military has been proving that they can clear and hold territory ever since the war began. The problem was that our military would then have to leave that area and move to somewhere else that was out of control. When they left a power vacuum was filled with para-military Sunni’s and Shiite’s. Again, I would point out that the goal that President Bush set, not Congressional Democrats or Belt Way pundits. The President set the goal. The goal was to decrease the violence so that there can be a political power sharing agreement.

 

 Bush Scolds Congress [7:30m]: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

 

 Countdown - My way or the highway [7:53m]: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

Tags: Budget, Bush Administration, Congress, Countdown by ecthompson
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President Bush vetoed another bill this morning. It is unclear to me why except to use the old phrase - ‘cuz. Cuz? He vetoed a spending bill that included money for Healthcare, worker protections and education. Vetoed $606 billion. The National Teachers Union called the veto a “politically-motivated attack on children.” The president was more than happy to sign a Pentagon operations spending bill for only $459 Billion. Remember that this bill does not include any money for Iraq or Afghanistan. Cool ain’t it?

I do laugh at or cry, depending on my mood, at the president. He talks about being fiscally responsible but he gave several tax cuts in a time of war. He continues to pretend as if he couldn’t plan for next year’s needs in Iraq or Afghanistan.  He asks for war money as supplemental spending. The president has never proposed any way of how to pay for the war. At least not that I have ever heard.  He just keeps writing IOU’s and he’s the responsible spender.  Please!

Oh, and I can’t forget to mention the fact that a new estimate of the cost of the war in Iraq and Afghanistan came out today. The estimate includes hidden costs like treatment of our veterans. So, the cost is only $1.5 trillion. $1.5 Trillion!!! That’s $20,000 per family of 4.

Look for the Dems and the R’s to work with the president to hammer out a bipartisan agreement over the next… I can’t even type this without laughing. Bush has no desire to hammer out squat. It is his way or grid-lock. I wouldn’t be surprised if Bush tries to shut down the government because he doesn’t like the spending.

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From NYT:

President Bush on Tuesday vetoed a major spending measure that would have funded education, health care and job training programs, saying it contained money for too many of the special projects known as earmarks. But he signed a $459 billion bill to increase the Pentagon’s nonwar funding.

The veto, on a measure providing $150.7 billion in discretionary spending for the Departments of Education, Labor, and Health and Human Services, was announced as Bush was en route to Indiana to deliver an economics speech in which chastised Congress for “wasteful spending” and describe it as acting “like a teenager with a new credit card.”

The president’s action guaranteed a new round of wrangling with the Democrats who control Congress over war costs and clashing domestic spending priorities. (more…)

 

 Countdown - Bush vetoes another bill [5:53m]: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

Tags: Budget, Bush Administration, Countdown by ecthompson
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There are times when I just get tired of talking about Iraq.  This war which is not really a war just keeps going on and on and on.  The news comes in 2 flavors - awful and bad.

Today White House press secretary Dana Perino had a very interesting response to the CBO’s figure of $2.4 trillion price tag if the war continues for 10 years assuming that we downsize the force to around 50,000.  She said who knows.  That number doesn’t really matter.  Spending on the global war on terror is an investment in our own security.  This is something that the President is committed in prioritizing in the budget.   What?  That’s a crock.  The War in the Iraq hasnever been in the budget.  Instead it has always come up in supplemental spending requests.

So, the game that the administration is paying is that it will say any big number is wildly out of bounds.  It is too far into the future for us to guess.  That’s been our problem.  If we would have been told from the start that taking down Iraq would cost $500 billion and over 3,000 American troops AND after spending that much money we still wouldn’t have a stable Iraq, how many Americans would have gone for it?  I would bet only a couple of neocons and that’s it.

Chris Matthews talks to Rep. Obey  Chairman of the budget and finance committee.

 

 2.4 trillion reasons to leave Iraq [4:29m]: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

Tags: Budget, Congress, Hardball, Iraq by ecthompson
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Rachel Maddow is the guest on Olbermann’s Countdown.  They discuss 27 years of tax cuts being the official policy of the government.  When politicians are saying that you should flush your money down the toilet rather than pay taxes, you have a problem.  I think that we can argue that many politicians have said that the government can’t be trusted to spend your money wisely.  Why is that?  Either we are electing con artists or something else is going on.  Maybe we need to be smarter in who we elect.  Whether it is Republican or Democrat we trend to vote for folks that look nice.  We vote for folks that have great hair and a strong jaw.  Are there no thoughtful bookworms with terminal acne?

We also need to figure out what we want from government.  If we want government to clean up natural disasters like Katrina and from that tornado in Kansas then we need to elect folks that can manage people and disasters.  I don’t know maybe someone from human resources who deal with people and their needs every day.  It might be that we shouldn’t continually elect lawyers.  I’m not saying that we need to exclude lawyers but maybe there are some other types of people who would look out for our interest better than lawyers.  What else do we want from our government?  Maintain the roads and bridges.  I think that almost everyone would agree with that.  Then we need money for these projects.  On the other hand, we need to stop paying for stupid pet projects.  Maybe we need to elect accountants to Capital Hill.  They may not be the greatest campaigners but they sure could squeeze a penny.

It is my opinion that we need to be better citizens.

 

 Countdown - taxes and policy [6:53m]: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

Tags: Budget, Countdown by ecthompson
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I try to snap out of my depression over the Dems caving on the Iraq funding bill.  The president knew that the Dems would cave and didn’t change his position.  He didn’t move an inch.  Why we caved isn’t clear to me.  I have no explanation unless the Dems have something up their sleeve.

Remember I’m on iTunes and several other podcasting services.

 

 The Errington Thompson Show 5-26-07 [54:18m]: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

Tags: Budget, Iraq, Podcasts by ecthompson
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On March 8, 2007, House Democratic leaders announced that they would introduce the U.S. Troop Readiness, Veterans’ Health, and Iraq Accountability Act of 2007 (H.R.1591), calling for the complete withdraw of U.S. combat soldiers from Iraq by September 1, 2008. The deadline was to be bundled in a $124 billion supplemental appropriations bill which included $95.5 billion to fight the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan for the remainder of fiscal year (FY) 2007. At the time, the Senate was considering a measure with a target date of March 2008.

Specifically, the bill would:

• Provide $95.5 billion to continue funding the Iraq and Afghanistan wars through September 30, 2007. 
• Require that U.S. combat troops be withdrawn from Iraq by September 1, 2008. This timeline would be accelerated if the Iraqi government could not meet its own benchmarks for securing the country. 
• Call for U.S. troops to receive certain standards of training, equipment and rest (although President Bush would be permitted to waive these provisions).
• Specify that none of the appropriated funds may be used to close Walter Reed Army Medical Center (where poor conditions for wounded soldiers had recently been the subject of heavy scrutiny).

Contains billions of dollars in earmarks
The $124 billion spending bill contained billions of dollars in earmarks. These included:

• $25 million for spinach growers hurt by a 2006 E. coli outbreak 
• $75 million for peanut storage 
• $500 million for wildfire suppression 
• $120 million for shrimp and Atlantic menhaden fishermen 
• $4 billion for farmers who had suffered weather-related losses 
• $2.9 billion for Gulf Coast hurricane recovery, including $1.3 billion for New Orleans levee repairs 
• $260 million to dairy farmers for milk loss 
• $100 million for citrus loss protections 
• $40 million to Liberia for security assistance, as well as $100 million to Jordan for the same purpose 
• $450 million for food aid to Sudan and Eastern Chad, Africa; Afghanistan, Southern Africa and the Horn of Africa. 
• $10 million for the ongoing mitigation of pollution of the Rio Grande from U.S. and Mexican influences and flood control on the river. 
• $50 million for asbestos removal in Washington, D.C.

Tags: Budget, Iraq by ecthompson
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Update 2 -  As we appear to be stuck at the level of the Lt Gov office (as the governor and Odom are hiding somewhere), the Lt Gov person who is gathering info is: mike.arnold@ncmail.net.   

Update - http://bluenc.com/legislators-throw-mentally-ill-under-the-bus-tomorrow-is-a-day-of-action 

From ACT:

Mental health services providers and advocates are organizing to fight the state’s reduction in the rate it pays for services known as community support.

A coalition of groups plans to be in Raleigh today to appeal to legislators and Gov. Mike Easley to rescind the cut. They will hold a news conference in front of the legislative building at 11 a.m.

“We have a permit for 100 people, but I think we’ll go way beyond that,” said Karen McLeod, executive director of the Children and Family Services Association of North Carolina. “This is not just a cut to a program. This is the core of mental health reform. If this stays, there will be a cascade effect. Everything could fall apart.”

Those involved in the event include the N.C Mental Health Association, National Association of Social Workers of North Carolina, Children and Family Services Association of North Carolina, N.C. Providers Council, N.C. Council for Community Programs, Covenant with North Carolina’s Children and the National Alliance on Mental Illness of North Carolina. (more…)

Tags: Budget, Healthcare by ecthompson
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John Murtha has been doggin’ the administration for over 2 years now.  At first the administration was just laughing at him.  Then they started to call him names.  Now, they don’t know what to do with him as public opinion has swung toward Murtha.

 

 Murtha discusses funding [6:52m]: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

Tags: Budget, Iraq, Military by ecthompson
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I feel like he should have a bottle of warm milk.  He believes that if he says something often enough the American people will begin to buy it.  I guess he doesn’t remember the Social Security disaster.

 

 Bush scolds Congress [1:58m]: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

Tags: Budget, Economy, Iraq by ecthompson
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He lays it out. 

 

 Cafferty out of Iraq: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

Tags: Budget, Iraq, Media, Military by ecthompson
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This is the recovery.  I don’t think that it begins to tell the story of how hard a journey this is.  I have dealt with head injury patients.  They get very frustrated because they can’t do things that use to be able to do without thinking.  They have to relearn everything.  Look at how he spells hammer.  It is a very easy word but he has to relearn it.  The physical therapists and occupational therapists and speech therapists are the unsung heroes in this tale along with his family.

 

 Bob Woodruff - To Iraq and Back [12:47m]: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

Tags: Budget, Healthcare, Iraq, Media by ecthompson
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Wow, this is a very powerful story for a number of reasons.  First of all, Bob Woodruff has had a terrible brain injury.  By all accounts he should not be this functional.  He is a walking testimony to modern American trauma surgery.  He takes back to Iraq and then thru his injury.  We follow his long recovery.  What he doesn’t highlight is how his treatment was different than the average soldier.  I believe the difference can be seen in rehab.  His family was on top of every little detail.  Even his children help with his recovery.  I think, I don’t know this for a fact, that the average soldier gets the same initial care including rapid transport from the field to a forward hospital.  Quick operative if necessary then transport to the States.  All of this care is the same.  I will go so far as to say all of the hospital care was the same.  The difference comes in the rehab.

Woodruff takes us to see several head injury patients that are not doing as well as he is.  I think that this takes some personal courage to share those feelings with us.  Most trauma patients just simply want to move on and forget about what happened.  He doesn’t.

This is part of the series.  Enjoy.

 

 Woodruff - Iraq and back [9:16m]: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

Tags: Budget, Media, Military by ecthompson
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Joe Biden is a very good senator. He does get the job done.

Here he is pushing back against Wolf’s lame questions and the president and his Republican supporters. He throws the stupid arguments aside and deals with the meat of the issue. Surge or no surge. Reauthorize the war. Do not get into a discussion on funding. Dem’s lose that argument no matter how you slice it.

 

 Biden on Iraq [7:21m]: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

Tags: Budget, Iraq, Senate by ecthompson
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CNN does a nice job at getting at the costs of the Iraq War.

 

 Costs of War [2:35m]: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

Tags: Budget, Iraq, Mess O'Potamia (Iraq/Iran/Israel/Palestine) by ecthompson
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So let’s get busy.

Thursday will be day one for the 110th Congress and it’s time to roll up the sleeves and get to work. House Speaker-elect Nancy Pelosi has not made much of a secret of the items on the agenda for the first 100 hours. So much for those old-fashioned “100-day” agendas. Strap on your socks and get ready. With the stage set by Pelosi and Harry Reid’s pledges to keep the House and Senate open for business with…. gasp…. actual five-day work-weeks, I’m looking forward to tuning into C-SPAN.

The Preznet tried to jump the gun and grab a little press for himself on Wednesday with a little op-ed in the Wall Street Journal, begging for a spirit of bipartisanship. I caution you that before you read it, you might want to make sure you’ve taken some sort of anti-emetic and that you not try to read the whole thing at once. The degree of hypocrisy and stubborn-headedness, not to mention the insistent repetition of misleading statements sold to us for the last six years is not for the faint of heart. I may try taking a shot at dissecting it a bit when I can carve some time out over the next few days.

Whatever he says, though, the cheerleader-in-chief is on the wrong side of public opinion and the wrong side of the vote count on almost everything that the Democrats plan to put forward in their agenda. DailyKos pointed me towards this CNN poll that was taken in December for release Wednesday. They slice and dice the questions a couple of ways in their survey, but they basically asked people whether they favored/opposed/lacked opinion on the various Democratic proposals that we will see coming forward. Suffice it to say that these are pretty popular proposals amongst the American public (numbers in parentheses are favor/oppose/no opinion):

Allowing the government to negotiate with drug companies to attempt to lower the price of prescription drugs for some senior citizens: (87/12/1)

Raising the minimum wage: (85/14/1)

Cutting interest rates on federal loans to college students: (84/15/1)

Creating an independent panel to oversee ethics in Congress: (79/19/2)

Making significant changes in U.S. policy in Iraq: (77/20/3)

Reducing the amount of influence lobbyists have in congressional decisions: (75/21/4)

Implementing all of the anti-terrorism recommendations made by the 9/11 Commission: (64/26/10)

Maintaining the current Social Security system to prevent the creation of private investment accounts: (63/32/6)

Funding embryonic stem cell research: (62/32/6)

Reducing some federal tax breaks for oil companies: (49/49/2)

Changing the rules to allow Congress to create new spending programs only if taxes are raised or spending on other programs is cut: (41/54/5)

Over half of these proposals are favored by the public by a three-to-one margin. All but two of them are favored by at least 30 percentage point margins. We’ve seen how little was accomplished in the last six years under single party Republican rule. Now let’s show them how it’s done.

Tags: Budget, Domestic Issues by desertbug
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From The Globe:

House Republicans yesterday revived their efforts to slash funding for public broadcasting, as a key committee approved a $115 million reduction in the budget for the Corporation for Public Broadcasting that could force the elimination of some popular PBS and NPR programs.

On a party-line vote, the House Appropriations subcommittee that oversees health and education funding approved the cut to the budget for the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, which distributes money to the Public Broadcasting Service and National Public Radio. It would reduce the corporation’s budget by 23 percent next year, to $380 million, in a cut that Republicans said was necessary to rein in government spending.

The reduction, which would come in the fiscal year beginning Oct. 1, must be approved by the full Appropriations Committee, and then the full House and Senate, before it could take effect. Democrats and public broadcasting advocates began planning efforts to reverse the cut.

A similar move last year by Republican leaders was turned back in a fierce lobbying campaign launched by Public Broadcasting Service stations and Democratic members of Congress, in a debate that was colored by some Republicans’ frustration with what they see as a liberal slant in public programming.

Still, Republicans say they remain adamant that public broadcasting cannot receive funding at the expense of healthcare and education programs.

Republicans are looking for ways to save taxpayers’ dollars, amid fiscal conservatives’ concerns over the budget deficit. more

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If you don’t want to take this laying down, click here to act.

Tags: Budget, Media by ecthompson
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