(no subject)
This is yet another sad day for America, with the inauguration of the Cheney-clone Chris Christie as governor of New Jersey and the election of an apparent Teabagger to the seat held by the late great Ted Kennedy. I have to conclude that Americans have the long-term memory of an amnesiac fruit fly, it's only been a year since we got ourselves out from under the inept rule of the Republicans and now people are clamoring to bring them back in? They ruined the economy, gave companies free reign to lay off thousands of workers just to increase profits and executive compensation, and directly created the health care fiasco that we have where we pay ever more and more each year for ever diminished coverage and quality of care. I don't know about you, but when a middle class person has to pay hundreds of dollars a month just to be told that his disease isn't covered or that he has to undergo an outdated procedure because the newer and more effective one isn't covered I consider that a failure. Republicans consider it a triumph of the market, but then they are rich enough that they don't really need insurance and even if they did they could afford the really expensive kind that actually covers stuff.
We as a nation are a bit like the child who doesn't want to take his medicine to feel better because it tastes icky. The Republicans have spent the last thirty years screwing up this country, starting with Reagan who unbalanced the tax system by taking responsibility away from the rich and loading it onto the poor. The top tax bracket is now at the second-lowest it's been since there's been an income tax (it was only lower during the end of Reagan's second term and Bush I's term, also coincidentally a period of recession and job loss), and yet the Teabaggers act like it's so unbearably high that it has to come down even further. Think about the periods of greatest innovation and creation in this country, and then remember that they were all periods of higher taxation. The creation of the interstate highway system, the space race, and even the internet boom all came about in periods of comparatively high taxation, while the only other period that was as low as now was a time of stagnation and economic suffering. Maybe we should think about that before we gleefully vote to turn the relatively short recession of the last few years into a second Great Depression while the Republicans and their rich masters feast on the remains and leave us all to starve.
We as a nation are a bit like the child who doesn't want to take his medicine to feel better because it tastes icky. The Republicans have spent the last thirty years screwing up this country, starting with Reagan who unbalanced the tax system by taking responsibility away from the rich and loading it onto the poor. The top tax bracket is now at the second-lowest it's been since there's been an income tax (it was only lower during the end of Reagan's second term and Bush I's term, also coincidentally a period of recession and job loss), and yet the Teabaggers act like it's so unbearably high that it has to come down even further. Think about the periods of greatest innovation and creation in this country, and then remember that they were all periods of higher taxation. The creation of the interstate highway system, the space race, and even the internet boom all came about in periods of comparatively high taxation, while the only other period that was as low as now was a time of stagnation and economic suffering. Maybe we should think about that before we gleefully vote to turn the relatively short recession of the last few years into a second Great Depression while the Republicans and their rich masters feast on the remains and leave us all to starve.