Times Tough

The job situation is becoming worse. Each day, news outlets are reporting another Corporate lay off effecting thousands of people’s lives. When I drive around my neighborhood, I see more and more “For Sale” signs in front of houses.  I even saw one house that had a “For Sale” sign and a “For Rent” sign in front of it. Either option was acceptable to the homeowner.  Now that’s desperation.

President Obama created a stimulus plan that would help put Americans back to work. He presented this plan to the House of Representatives hoping that Congress would write a job stimulus bill. After a few days of discussion, the House passed a bill which removed some of the spending and added more tax cuts.

The House stimulus bill is now with that elite group, the Senators, and the so called “Moderates” or “Centrists” have brutally chopped away at the “spending” and added more tax cuts. For 8 years, the Republican mantra has been tax cuts and more tax cuts. Since our economy is taking a nose dive over a cliff (h/t Daily Kos), it is obvious that these tax cuts didn’t save us. So what do the Republicans want more of in this stimulus bill? You guessed it, more tax cuts. They want to continue doing the same thing over and over again even though it never worked in the past. There is a word for this behavior. It is called insanity.

The “Moderate’s” Senate bill includes tax cuts that encourage Americans to buy houses and cars.  This would be good if we were in a demand side economy.  The problem now is that there are no demands for these products because Americans are not freely spending their money.  They either lost their jobs or are afraid that they will be losing their jobs.  Tax cuts will not create jobs.  Spending will.

I’m curious. What do these “Moderates” have against women and children? They removed spending that would provide more funding and more jobs to help protect abused women and provide education to pre-school children just so they could give more tax cuts to the people that still have jobs, high paying jobs.

According to the Noble Prize-winning economist, Paul Krugman,

Now the centrists have shaved off $86 billion in spending — much of it among the most effective and most needed parts of the plan. In particular, aid to state governments, which are in desperate straits, is both fast — because it prevents spending cuts rather than having to start up new projects — and effective, because it would in fact be spent; plus state and local governments are cutting back on essentials, so the social value of this spending would be high. But in the name of mighty centrism, $40 billion of that aid has been cut out.

My first cut says that the changes to the Senate bill will ensure that we have at least 600,000 fewer Americans employed over the next two years.

You can view all the cuts here… (h/t Faiz Shakir at Think Progress)

Unlike the federal government, most state governments, if not all, must have a balanced budget.  If a state does not have sufficient funds to run its government, then state employees will face a lay off.  California is in such dire straits that this past Friday, the state employees stayed home from work without pay (furlough day).  This is serious and the “Moderates” don’t seem to understand the problem.

There was a time when a “Moderate”  was a person whose ideals and views were close to the middle, sometimes slightly left and sometimes slightly right.  Since the Republicans handed over their party to the extreme right, there are very few Republicans if any that would fit that definition. On a scale of 0 to 10 with 0 being far, far left and 10 being far, far right, today’s “Moderate” would be an 8. They lost their moral standing by handing it over to the “money changers”. They have their fists clenched around money just as tightly as any greedy neocon.

As times are tough for Americans, the “Moderates” that have good paying government jobs with outstanding benefits want us to “eat cake” and be happy with more tax cuts, even though the tax cuts only effect people that have jobs and even that number is dwindling rapidly.  These “Moderates” along with the Republican gang want Obama to fail which means that they want America to fail.  How unpatriotic of them.  If America fails, what will these “Moderates” and Republicans do then?  They’ll leave this country and go wreck another country.  After all, that is what they are good at doing.

A little song to brighten my mood and maybe yours, too, by Toots Hibbert… “Times Tough”.