This is a comment to a Huffington Post article titled, "Conservativism, Compassion, and Cruelty: A Response to David Brooks."
Why do corporations continue to lobby against progressives and universal health care? You would think it would be in their interest to support health care that is not paid for with company provided health insurance. Don't they have to compete against companies who don't have those costs?
Maybe it is really corporations dominated by outside (foreign) interests that are against American universal health care.
If more than half the town voluntarily helped pay for one person's medical bills, does that say something about universal health care?
What would have happened if it was not Ruthie Leming? If it was someone who was not as well liked or someone who worked in a less visible profession, would the town have responded in the same way? Should one's popularity make a difference in the amount of help given for medical expenses?
Monday, January 2, 2012
Class Warfare, Taxes, and Progressives
What has bled the nation dry is the conservative policy of keeping revenues disastrously low while continuing to raise expenses, such as two unfunded wars. A 25% cut in taxes on capital gains and (special) dividend income is still in place (capital gains and dividend income are now both taxed at 15%), resulting in federal taxes on the wealthy averaging 16%. Most of the income on the wealthy is exempt from payroll taxes. Contrast this with a 25% tax rate on middle class incomes along with payroll taxes. So people are taxed at a much higher rate if they have to labor for their income rather than sending their money out to do the work for them.
We have had thirty years of class warfare by the wealthy. Income at the top has soared while wages among the poor and the middle class have stagnated.
Legislation is dominated by corporate influence. The conservative strategy of increasing the deficit in order to provide justification for cutting social spending has worked. The conservative's stated goal of keeping the economy from recovering in order to defeat Democrats is working.
There is a reason the top 1% pay more in taxes than the bottom 50%. Look at the relative incomes. Just how much should poor people pay in taxes while their income and spending power continues to tank?
Unemployment benefits, public libraries, a women's right to vote, environmental protections, food safety, a 5-day work week, living wages, child labor laws, desegregation, national parks, Social Security and Medicare. That is what progressives have fought for and won. How many of these have conservatives attacked? Do you really want a return to child labor, six-and-a-half day work weeks, senior poverty and poorhouses, sawdust in hot dogs, rivers catching fire, workers being fired for not being able to perform their jobs after being injured on those jobs, and wages that are little more than indentured servitude?
Go ahead and continue to support today's GOP. Continue to vote against your self-interest. Continue to believe right-wing propaganda and continue to believe that progressives are socialists. Continue to support free trade agreements that force American companies to compete against companies that are subsidized by their governments and whose workers have government (not company paid for) health care and 50-cents-an-hour wages.
We have had thirty years of class warfare by the wealthy. Income at the top has soared while wages among the poor and the middle class have stagnated.
Legislation is dominated by corporate influence. The conservative strategy of increasing the deficit in order to provide justification for cutting social spending has worked. The conservative's stated goal of keeping the economy from recovering in order to defeat Democrats is working.
There is a reason the top 1% pay more in taxes than the bottom 50%. Look at the relative incomes. Just how much should poor people pay in taxes while their income and spending power continues to tank?
Unemployment benefits, public libraries, a women's right to vote, environmental protections, food safety, a 5-day work week, living wages, child labor laws, desegregation, national parks, Social Security and Medicare. That is what progressives have fought for and won. How many of these have conservatives attacked? Do you really want a return to child labor, six-and-a-half day work weeks, senior poverty and poorhouses, sawdust in hot dogs, rivers catching fire, workers being fired for not being able to perform their jobs after being injured on those jobs, and wages that are little more than indentured servitude?
Go ahead and continue to support today's GOP. Continue to vote against your self-interest. Continue to believe right-wing propaganda and continue to believe that progressives are socialists. Continue to support free trade agreements that force American companies to compete against companies that are subsidized by their governments and whose workers have government (not company paid for) health care and 50-cents-an-hour wages.
Tuesday, November 1, 2011
Yes to Dirty Air, No to Citizens
On 10/13/2011, Rep. Collin Peterson (D-Minnesota) voted Yea on H.R. 2250, the “EPA Regulatory Relief Act of 2011”, which passed. The bill is not expected to pass in the Senate, and the White House has said it would veto such a bill.
According to EPA’s analysis, this bill would allow up to:
20,000 additional premature deaths;
12,000 additional heart attacks; and
123,000 additional asthma attacks that could have been avoided.[1]
"[T]he measure also exempts smaller burning facilities from any regulation at all."[2]
"Environmental groups and Democrats were livid over the 272 to 142 vote, which they said will allow smaller incinerators -- often in urban settings -- to burn tires, solvents, plastics, oil sludge and other toxic-laden substances for profit without any oversight or reporting requirements."[2]
Two quotes from Betty McCollum (D-MN) in the congressional record is illustrative:
With this bill, Republicans are now seeking to delay and indefinitely block the ability of the EPA to regulate mercury emissions from industrial boilers and incinerators. These rules were called for 21 years ago under the 1990 Clean Air Act and were to have been completed by 2000.
The EPA estimates the cost of compliance for the boiler rule to be around $3 billion annually while providing between $17 billion to $41 billion in benefits to the economy starting in 2014. Bruce Bartlett, former economic advisor to President Reagan, has noted that regulations were responsible for a miniscule 0.2 percent of layoffs in 2010. Despite the evidence, Republicans continue to claim the economic necessity of discarding the health of our children and communities in order to protect a few bad polluters.[3]
Congress sets the rules in the U.S. under which businesses operate. Congress creates the "playing field", and it is their responsibility to balance the needs of consumers, investors, employers and employees, and American citizens.
Rep. Collin Peterson's record of voting with Republicans against the interests of citizens just keeps getting longer. Just how much money to his re-election campaign did this vote gain for him? And when is he going to reveal to voters that he is really a Corporate Republican, not a Democrat?
[1] The White House Blog, "Attacks to the Clean Air Act & the False Choice between a Healthy Environment and Healthy Economy".
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