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President Declares "Ownership Society" Tells Convention He's Ordered Invasion of Social Security Trust Fund
[Baltimore Chronicle, Greg Palast, 09/03/04: Fascist Bush declares Class War, but no one seems to notice] Behind the hooray-for-free-enterprise crapola is that dog-eared game-plan to siphon off Social Security revenues to pay for making Bush's tax cuts for the rich permanent.
Number of US poor rises for the third straight year
[Xinhua News Agency, 08/28/04: You might not have heard this on Amerikan media...] The Bureau said in its annual poverty report that the number of Americans living in poverty last year increased by 1.3 million to 35.8 million, accounting for about 12.5 percent of the nation's population, 0.4 percentage points more than the previous year. The rise is particularly noticeable among children, with 12.9 million living in poverty last year, or 17.6 percent of the under-18 population. That represented an increase of about 800,000 from 2002, when 16.7 percent of children lived in poverty. [Related: NYT: Economic Reality Bites]
Overtime cut undermines workers
[Seattle PI, JOHN SWEENEY, 08/25/04: Meanwhile insider-knowledge-based investment incomes of the non-working rich remains staunchly protected] Yesterday, the biggest pay cut in American history took effect: The Bush administration's overtime pay cut became official. It's a new federal rule that could strip up to 6 million workers of overtime pay protection, forcing them to work longer hours without fair compensation.
Gap between rich and poor widens as Bush cuts shift tax burden to middle class
[AP, 08/21/04: The income gap is showing up in booming sales of luxury items] New government data also shows that President Bush's tax cuts have shifted the overall tax burden to the middle class from the wealthiest Americans.
Job growth stalls in last two months, underlining failure of 'tax cuts for the wealthy' as job creation strategy
[JobWatch.com, 08/12/04: What logic supports jobs for the American middle-class?] Payroll jobs increased by only 78,000 in June and a meager 32,000 in July...In reality, since the tax cuts took effect, there are 2,565,000 fewer jobs than the administration projected would be created by enactment of its tax cuts. As can be seen in the chart below:
Without a war on poverty, we will never defeat terror Dictatorship and religious extremism are fuelled by gross inequality
[UK Guardian, Benazir Bhutto, 08/09/04: Another clear-thinking woman...] While the world focuses on the war against terror, the war against poverty slides on to the backburner. Since the bombing of the World Trade Centre in 2001, three developments have become decisive on a global scale. The first is the fight to root out militants, the second is the political rise of those on the religious margins and the third is the growing gap between the rich and the poor.
Pay in U.S. Not Keeping Pace With Price Rises
[NYT, EDUARDO PORTER, 07/18/04: In the boardroom they focus on world-wide sales, so if buying power falls here it's not a big concern if there's more sales gained elsewhere] The amount of money workers receive in their paychecks is failing to keep up with inflation. Though wages should recover if businesses continue to hire, three years of job losses have left a large worker surplus.
Behind the jobs debacle Bush's jobs forecast failed because there's been no jobs recovery at all.
[Salon, James K. Galbraith, 03/16/04: The "good jobs problem" accelerated because Bush's tax & trade policies (to appease the rich & corporations) rewards corporations that outsource. These policies must be reversed to avoid a death-spiral of the non-rich.] ... The failure of Bush and his economists does not lie in faking a [jobs] prediction. It lies in failing to understand what the underlying problems are. It lies in failing to propose policies suitable to their cure. It lies in the wanton pursuit of a strategy of tax cuts for the long term aimed at the political, not economic, objective of exempting plutocrats and their fortunes from federal tax. It lies in the rush into military adventures -- from missile defense to Iraq -- that achieve little, waste vast resources and make a proper jobs-and-security policy even more difficult down the road. Most of all, it lies in failing to care, one way or another, what might happen.
Barney Frank Has Bush's Economic Number: Economy Geared To Create Wealth, Not Jobs, So...
[WP, David S. Broder, 03/14/04: Frank proposes taxing MORE [not LESS] of the wealth the private sector is now producing so abundantly and use it to employ people on socially useful purposes] ... A fundamental shift has occurred, he says. "The ability of the private sector in this country to create [maximum] wealth now [requires least-cost labor from anywhere.] The normal rule of thumb by which a certain increase in the gross domestic product would produce a concomitant increase in [U.S.] jobs [no longer applies.]"
Slamming Entitlement
[thomasmc.com, by Norma Sherry, 02/26/04: Greenspan has Alzheimer's disease!] Greenspan wants Congress to make President Bush’s tax cuts [for the very rich] permanent and cover the [HUGE and growing deficits and debt] by ‘trimming’ future benefits in Social Security and entitlement programs. [Related from the NYT: To Trim Deficit, Greenspan Urges Social Security and Medicare Cuts]
How Social Security cheats you to pay the rich
[MoneyCentral, Liz Pulliam Weston, 02/26/04: It's nice to see it in writing!] What would you think of a tax system that took money from the poor to give to the rich?
That’s essentially what’s happening with our Social Security and Medicare tax system, where low-income workers are dunned to pay benefits for high-income seniors.
Economy Sails Away From Workers
[Newsday, Cathy N. Davidson, 02/15/04: Thanks to regressive (flatter) tax policies, between 1979 and 1995 the top 1 percent of U.S. families had an increase in income of 78 percent while median workers' income has actually fallen!] ...Now, with every [regressive] tax cut, the rich-poor gap widens. Declining social services ensure that those at the bottom stay there. Most Americans don't understand this changing tax philosophy because the chunk taken from their own paychecks is at a historically high level. That is why we feel we are over-taxed. That's why the politicians' "No More Taxes!" is such a crowd-pleaser....[but] the result [of Republican tax cuts] is a disaster for the middle and working classes.
Bush Cuts Low-Income Housing Program Funding by 40% as Rents Soar Nationwide
[Center for Budget and Policy Priorities, 02/13/04: Bush again proves he's a man of the people - the richest people] Most In Bush's proposed budget, the single deepest cut in a major domestic program is in the housing voucher program, the nation's principal low-income housing assistance program.
The Death of Horatio Alger
[The Nation, By Paul Krugman, 12/29/03: Evidence shows upward mobility has become much less likely] A classic 1978 survey found that among adult men whose fathers were in the bottom 25 percent of the population as ranked by social and economic status, 23 percent had made it into the top 25 percent. In other words, during the first thirty years or so after World War II, the American dream of upward mobility was a real experience for many people. Now for the shocker: [A] Business Week piece cites a new survey of today's adult men, which finds that this number has dropped to only 10 percent. That is, over the past generation upward mobility has fallen drastically.
A Nation of Wal-Mart Workers
[Baltimore Sun, By John Atcheson, 12/29/03: A wretched pResident's Republican policies] Can we afford to shop at Wal-Mart if we're all working there? Or will the most massive national debt in history beggar our future? Imagine for a moment that you took all your credit cards and maxed them out. Now take your mortgage and borrow the maximum on it. Cash in the kid's college fund, your rainy day savings, your 401(k) retirement savings. While you're at it, stop paying for your health insurance and the maintenance on your house, your car and your yard. Now take all that money and spend it. Feeling pretty flush? Sure you are. You just pumped tens, maybe hundreds of thousands of dollars into your pocket. But you'd never do that. Because you know that just because you'd be living large for the time being, you wouldn't be wealthier. In fact, you'd be getting poorer by the minute. And yet, that's exactly what Mr. Bush's recovery is - a giant borrowing binge.
Sick Children Pay the Price for Bush's Tax Giveaways to the Rich
[Gannett News Service, Larry Wheeler and Robert Benincasa, 12/29/03: Evidence mounts on the results of this heinous Republican administration] Children across the country are being cut off from doctors because cash-strapped states are rolling back health insurance for the working poor, a four-month investigation by Gannett News Service has found. 22 states have restricted children's health insurance programs over the past 18 months, and more cuts are possible in 2004 as states face another round of daunting budget deficits... About 270,000 children of low-income, working parents have been barred from health insurance programs in the nine states where estimates are available. Texas and Florida lead the country in the number of low-income children shut out of state health insurance programs.
Behind the economic “recovery” • Hunger and homelessness in US continue to rise in 2003
[WSWS, By Jamie Chapman, 12/28/03 - This posting is dedicated to those who won't bother to read about the lower class; after all, you reason(?), they must like to live that way] Hunger and homelessness in the United States continue to rise at double-digit rates in 2003, according to a December 18 report released by the US Conference of Mayors (USCM). In the 25 cities that responded to its survey, requests for emergency food assistance were up 17 percent over last year, while requests for emergency shelter increased by 13 percent on average.
Un-American Recovery
[WP, By Harold Meyerson, 12/24/03 - If our "representatives" continue to fail, let's outsource to replace them all!] The current administration is not responsible for the broad contours of this miserably misshapen recovery, but its every action merely increases the imbalance of power between America's employers and employees. But the Democrats' prescriptions for more broadly shared prosperity need some tweaking, too. With the globalization of high-end professions, no Democrat can assert quite so confidently the line that Bill Clinton used so often: What you earn is a result of what you learn. This year's crop of presidential candidates is taking more seriously the importance of labor standards in trade accords, and the right of workers to organize.
The Poverty Quagmire • What happens when the priority is tax-cuts for the Rich
[WP, By Timothy M. Smeeding, 12/21/03 - We in America have high child poverty rates because Republicans vote to give tax-cuts to the Rich, not because we cannot do anything about it. Other nations make different choices and get different results.] According to data in the Luxembourg Income Study, child poverty is significantly higher in the United States than in wealthy European nations and in Canada and Australia. In 1997 -- in the midst of a robust economy -- one in five American children lived in poverty. This is about double the rate in other wealthy industrialized nations, such as France, Germany and the Nordic countries.
Why America's plutocrats gobble up $1,500 hot dogs
[UK Guardian, By Julian Borger, 11/05/03] Bush and others fake being 'common men' as they work to shift the focus from economic elitism to cultural elitism, while Republicans rip-off the public to benefit the wealthiest 1% Nearly half the benefits of Mr Bush's $1.35 trillion tax cut in 2001 went to the richest 1%, while 60% of this year's cuts will go to taxpayers with incomes of more than $100,000....Mr Bush also fought hard to repeal an inheritance tax that affected only the wealthiest 2%, as well as cutting capital gains tax and trying to abolish the tax on dividends.
Global trade keeps a billion children in poverty, says Unicef [UK Independent, By Maxine Frith, 10/22/03] "More than one billion young people in the developing world are now living in conditions of severe deprivation" International targets to reduce child poverty are going to be missed because globalised trade and cuts to aid budgets are creating an ever-greater chasm between the richest and poorest countries.
America's homeless become new small-town pioneers [Guardian, By Duncan Campbell, 10/24/03] "Dignity Village" residents of the village believe that what they have accomplished over the past two years could act as a model for others who sleep beneath flyovers and in shopfronts. Dignity Village presents a snapshot of American homelessness which, according to the National Coalition for the Homeless, has increased by 14% in the past two years [coinciding with Bush's big tax-cuts to the very rich], with 3.5 million people now classified as homeless. Some two-thirds of the inhabitants of the village are male. Residents range in age from 17 to 72. They include people who have had problems with drink and drugs, and many with professional qualifications, of all races and religions.
False PRIDE [Tom Paine, By Mark Engler, 10/09/03] Our Republican "representatives" are criminally incompetent and way over-paid! Given the state of our economy, one might expect a welfare reauthorization bill to offer emergency assistance to the poor and aid to those trapped in the low-wage workforce. Instead, the so-called Personal Responsibility and Individual Development for Everyone (PRIDE) bill that has just come out of the Senate Finance Committee, like the more extreme bill passed in the House, shows that lawmakers are willfully oblivious to the challenges facing welfare reform.
More Americans in Poverty in 2002, Census Study Says [NYT, By LYNETTE CLEMETSON, 09/28/03] Bush's policies and tax-cuts aren't concerned with the poorer 90% of citizens; he's only verbally compassionate. The number of Americans living in poverty increased by 1.7 million last year, and the median household income declined by 1.1 percent, the Census Bureau reported today. The worsening economic conditions fell heaviest on Midwesterners and nonwhites.
Fiscal immorality [Dallas/Fort Worth Star-Telegram, By Matt Mille, 09/14/03] Democrats (anyone moral!) should demand repeal of tax-cuts going to the wealthy Please tell us, Mr. Bush, what sacrifice is being asked of the most fortunate Americans? In ordinary times, claiming that tax cuts mostly for the rich are needed to boost economic growth would merely be garden-variety political fraud. When Bush makes this case in the context of financing a war on our kids' credit card while shortchanging crucial needs at home, it is morally obscene.
The collapse of the middle class [Working For Change, BERNIE SANDERS, 09/05/03] Which class are you in? Which class are you trending towards? The corporate media doesn't talk about it much, but the United States is rapidly on its way to becoming three separate nations.
#1: a small number of incredibly wealthy people who own and control more and more of our country. #2: a shrinking middle class in which ordinary people are, in most instances, working longer hours for lower wages and benefits. #3: an increasing number of Americans are living in abject poverty -- going hungry and sleeping out on the streets.
Census Shows Ranks of Poor Rose by 1.3 Million No Child Left Behind? [NYT, By LYNETTE CLEMETSON, 09/04/03] Let's roll-back those tax-cuts for the very rich VERY FAST! The spike in economic hardship hit individuals and families alike. The report indicated that the total percentage of people in poverty increased to 12.4 percent from 12.1 percent in 2001 and totaled 34.8 million. At the same time, the number of families living in poverty went up by more than 300,000 in 2002 to 7 million from 6.6 million in 2001.
The number of children in poverty rose by more than 600,000 during the same period to 12.2 million. The rate of increase in children under age 5 jumped a full percentage point to 19.8 percent living below the poverty line from 18.8 percent a year earlier.
UN report says one billion suffer extreme poverty [WSWS, By David Rowan, 07/29/03] Since 1990: 54 countries are poorer, 34 countries have lower life expectancy, and 21 countries are hungrier "Fabre admits that “the richest countries have established various barriers to the entry of goods on their own territories. There are also important subsidies given to agriculture, artificially maintaining these rich countries agriculture (sectors) above world prices.” He went on, “there is, even worse, a dumping of agricultural products from rich countries on countries having weaker economies.”"
Corporate Tax Cheats Wreak Havoc On The Neediest Among Us [Arianna, 07/25/03] Can YOU see the connection? "Corporations are currently turning over 30 percent less of their profits to the taxman than they did 20 years ago. Meanwhile, all across the country, state governments, facing the biggest budget crisis since the Great Depression, are being forced to slash programs and cut services. Gee, do you think there might be a connection? You can bet your vanishing after-school care, prenatal health program, and local law enforcement service there is."
Forbidden Connections: Class, Cowardice, and War [Znet, by Paul Street, 07/25/03] A wide-ranging rant "Beneath myths of equal opportunity and rampant upward mobility, the United States is a savagely unequal society with a rigidly hierarchical and authoritarian class structure. As a reflection of that harsh structural reality, it is nearly taboo to speak or write in any engaged and meaningful way about class inequality in the nation's "mainstream" (corporate-dominated) media and politics."
In Spite Of Words, Bush GOP Fighting To Leave Poor Kids Behind [NYT, DAVID FIRESTONE, 07/10/03] You have to read this to understand the pure ugliness of Republicans, particularly Tom Delay "Struggling to revive a stalled bill to raise the child tax credit for low-income families, Senate Democrats began a series of parliamentary theatrics today intended to increase pressure on Republicans in both chambers to move the bill."
California GOP proposes poor pay more for health care [SF Chronicle, Mark Martin, 07/09/03] More proof Republicans are sub-humans! "[California state] Senate Republicans, in a flurry of proposals to plug the state's budget deficit, plan to suggest dismantling the agency that acts as an environmental watchdog over the California coastline and requiring recipients of state-funded health insurance for the poor to make co-payments for some medical care."
Some Fear Ruin for Head Start [NewsDay, Lily Hindy, 07/08/03] Like with Medicaid - under the guise of efficiency - Bush proposes increasing Block Grants to States instead of discreet (community) funding for Head Start without controls on how money is spent; so instead of helping needy children funds could be used to avoid tax increases of the wealthy "Regional Head Start president Ruth Neale said last week that the bill may "destroy Head Start programs across the United States, but particularly here in New York," where Gov. George Pataki has tried to cut funding for pre-kindergarten programs.
Head Start provides education, medical services, meals and other assistance to low-income children under 5 with the goal of making them ready to compete with more affluent children when they enter school. It serves more than 1 million pre-schoolers..."
CPPCC Member Urges Reform of Personal Income Tax System [People's Daily, 07/07/03] "Qu suggested efforts be made to establish a progressive taxation system ..." Meanwhile, US Republicans are fighting for a more regressive tax to enrich their owners "A member of China's top advisory body said here Monday that there is an urgent need to reform the country's existing personal income tax system so as to address the widening gap between the rich and the poor."
Scorn for the Working Poor [WP, Ellen Goodman, 06/21/03] "The line between the deserving and the undeserving poor has moved up a couple of notches on the socioeconomic scale" "In the House of Representatives...Tom DeLay famously choked on the idea of giving "tax relief to people who don't pay income taxes." In a partisan snit, the House reluctantly restored the child tax credit in an $82 billion bill so bloated with tax cuts for the unneedy that it's worse for low-income families than no credit at all. The whole mess has landed in a House-Senate conference committee as fodder for a food fight." [Emphasis added]
Sanders Votes ‘NO’: Republicans Move to Permanently Extend Tax Breaks for Heirs of Wealthy [Bernie Sanders, 06/19/03] Republicans say $billions should go tax-free to billionaires' children just when Bush deficits of $600 billion/annually are projected as far as the eye can see. What would Jesus say? "Rep. Bernie Sanders (I-VT) today voted against a Republican plan to permanently extend the repeal of the estate tax. Making the estate tax repeal permanent is expected to cost $162 billion over the next decade with a cost of $63.5 billion in 2013 alone. In the decade after that, the cost of the bill is estimated to be $820 billion. All of the benefits go to the wealthiest 2% of the population. The bottom 98% receive no tax reduction at all." [To vote on this in the Senate today...]
GOP spends big but not on the needy [The Capital Times, Dave Zweifel, 06/16/03] The truth is getting out, even though corporate media try like hell to hide it! "...the federal deficit is likely to reach a record setting $400 billion....This dubious record is the result, of course, of another spend-on-the-military and give-tax-breaks-to-the-rich program that was made famous by Ronald Reagan. The only problem is, George Bush is making the ex-president look like an amateur. Reagan's deficits were more like $250 billion."
Sir Roger 'shamed' by Bond carelessness [BBC, 06/15/03] Moore: "I was not really being aware of what was going on in the world." "It's something you don't see when you see the images on television or on the cinema screen, the absolute appalling smell of poverty"
Blessed Are the Poor — They Don't Get Tax Cuts [Time Mag., Joe Klien, 06/03/03] "The Bush budget reveals the true priorities of the administration" "...Bush promised a foreign policy of humility and a domestic policy of compassion. He has given us a foreign policy of arrogance and a domestic policy that is cynical, myopic and cruel."
Battle on Child Tax Credit Intensifies in the Capital [NYT, DAVID FIRESTONE, 05/31/03] Republicans decided that it was more important to give billionaires another $3.5 billion, and not give the poorest 20% of American children a measly $400 "The White House today defended the decision of Congressional negotiators to deny millions of minimum-wage families the increased child tax credit, saying the new tax law was intended to help people who pay taxes, not those who are too poor to pay." [What Republicans did was despicable! As usual.]
Tax Law Omits Child Credit in Low-Income Brackets [NYT, DAVID FIRESTONE, 05/29/03] In the one provision of the tax-cut that did not excessively benefit the wealthy, Republicans made sure the child tax credit didn't help the poor either! "Most taxpayers will receive a $400-a-child check in the mail this summer as a result of the law, which raises the child tax credit, to $1,000 from $600. It had been clear from the beginning that the wealthiest families would not receive the credit, which is intended to phase out at high incomes.
But after studying the bill approved on Friday, liberal and child advocacy groups discovered that a different group of families would also not benefit from the $400 increase — families who make just above the minimum wage."
Dr. Inequality [Slate, Daniel Gross, 05/26/03] Last week, Kristin J. Forbes, a young Massachusetts Institute of Technology economist, was named to President Bush's Council of Economic Advisers because she wrote a paper that said the Right things "Forbes [paper] concluded that "in the short and medium term, an increase in a country's level of income inequality has a significant positive relationship with subsequent economic growth."" [Maybe if I say the bathroom smells better after Bush uses it I'll get a fancy job, too.]
Report Finds Number of Black Children in Deep Poverty Rising [NYT, SAM DILLON, 04/30/03] Anyone surprised this happened under Republicans? "The number of black Americans under 18 years old who live in extreme poverty has risen sharply since 2000 and is now at its highest level since the government began collecting such figures..."
The I.R.S. Goes After the Poor [NYT, EDITORIAL, 04/27/03] The IRS is told to hound the "Slaves" while cheating by their rich "Masters" is winked at "The Internal Revenue Service is planning to impose oppressive new documentation requirements on taxpayers applying for the earned-income tax credit, which for more than a quarter-century has been an important source of income for the working poor. ...the new policy is deeply flawed. It is unfair, particularly in view of the fact that the I.R.S. is devoting diminishing resources to tax cheating by corporations and the wealthy. And it is so burdensome it will drive many poor taxpayers to give up a tax break they are legally entitled to take." [Also read: Tax Inquiries Fall as Cheating Increases and Democrat Blasts IRS Plan to Screen Poor]
County Says It's Too Poor to Defend the Poor [NYT, ADAM LIPTAK, 04/15/03] "The county is suing [Mississippi] because it says it cannot afford to provide defendants with anything more than assembly-line justice." ""In some communities there is downright hostility to making sure poor people get adequate representation," he added. "In counties in Alabama, Georgia and Mississippi, it is not uncommon to see people meeting counsel for the first time and pleading guilty with no investigation and serving much longer sentences than if they could afford counsel.""
Taxpayers to pay $600,000 to Redo Kitchen of Negroponte's NY Apartment! [AFP, 04/07/03] Any thoughts spring to mind? "The United States will pay 600,000 dollars to renovate the kitchen at the residence of the US ambassador to the United Nations"
Republicans to Cut Programs for the Poor because "The Poor are too Fat" [NYT, By LESLIE KAUFMAN, 02/20/03] Welfare in the form of tax-cuts for the very rich is the priority - not the poor; the poor are to be punished for eating cheap, high calorie food instead of lean steaks "The Bush administration and Congress are giving almost every poverty program the once-over, pushing changes that will affect everything from Medicaid to housing assistance. But two programs are receiving unexpected scrutiny: food stamps and subsidized school lunches."
IRS: the Ignore the Rich Service [Working For Change, By Molly Ivins, 02/11/03] "Audits of the working poor increased by 48.6 percent in 2001." "One dandy way to prevent an agency from doing its job is to simply cut its budget year after year. You may recall the Grand Inquisitor hearings during the Newt Gingrich era, when the IRS was called before a congressional committee and denounced for "Gestapo tactics." The Republicans then passed a "tax reform" act that should have been called the "Let's Hamstring the IRS So It Can't Make Rich People Pay What They Owe Law."
The result is that, since 1995, the IRS has focused most of its tax fraud investigations on the working poor, people who qualify for the Earned Income Tax Credit -- the only good idea Ronald Reagan ever had."
Bush's War Budget: War Against the Poor! [WP, By E. J. Dionne Jr., 02/08/03] Bush gets my vote for "Most Despicable President!" "This is not a liberal fantasy. Conservatives acknowledge that Bush's long-term goal is to reduce the federal government's capacity to act -- yes, to spend -- without saying so publicly. The large tax cuts the president has put on the table, conservative columnist Donald Lambro wrote candidly this week, "are, in effect, Mr. Bush's stealth initiative to curb future spending -- big time." Exactly. And if you look carefully, most of the spending cuts will be in programs for the poor and near-poor."
Shocking new info about tapioca [SF Chronicle, Jon Carroll, 02/08/03] Deserved sarcasm aimed at Bush-Republicans, but they'll likely not understand it. "Like all decent Americans, I was shocked this week to learn that millions of schoolchildren from semi-indigent families were receiving federally subsidized school lunches to which they were not entitled. These little criminals were sneaking nutrition from under the noses of taxpayers."
Aid to Poor Faces More Scrutiny in Bush Plan [NYT, By ROBERT PEAR, 02/05/03] The pattern continues: Bush is excessively generous to the Rich, and NIGGARDLY to the Poor "Bush's budget proposes new eligibility requirements that would make it harder for low-income families to obtain government benefits....Critics, including some local officials, said today that the extra steps would deter eligible poor people from applying for needed assistance.The Bush budget would also replace one of the largest federal housing programs with a block grant to states, which could redirect some of the money away from working poor people in cities. Mr. Bush said he wanted to shift money and responsibility for this and other social welfare programs, including Medicaid, to the states....Local officials scorned the plan."
TO CRUSH THE POOR - First it was Reds, then drugs, then terror. So who have the US really been fighting in Colombia? [Guardian, George Monbiot, 02/04/03] "The purpose of this unending war is to secure those parts of the country that are rich in natural resources for Colombian landowners and foreign multinationals." "The United States has been at war in Colombia for over 50 years. It has, however, hesitated to explain precisely who it is fighting. Officially, it is now involved there in a "war on terror". Before September 2001, it was a "war on drugs"; before that, a "war on communism". In essence, however, US intervention in Colombia is unchanged: this remains, as it has always been, a war on the poor."
Stealth Tax Reform [WP, EDITORIAL, 02/04/03] Bush is undoubtedly the worst and most immoral president in history "...President Bush had a plan to dramatically reshape the federal tax system, eliminating taxes on investment income for most taxpayers, making the tax structure less progressive and providing a boon to the wealthiest Americans. You might think he would mention it during his State of the Union address. You might think he would call it by its name: RADICAL TAX REFORM." [Emphasis added.]
BUSH PROPOSES NEW TAX-FREE SAVINGS PLANS - The accounts could replace IRAs and 401(k)s. Revenue could spike now, shrivel later, leaving the poor to fill the gap, critics say. [Baltimore Sun, By Peter G. Gosselin, 02/02/03] Inequality-Bush strikes again! If there is a way to twist things to favor the rich he does it, just like they paid him to "...Between the two new accounts, a [rich] couple could save up to $30,000 a year, tax-free, and more if they set up additional accounts for their children."
More stories...
President Declares "Ownership Society" Tells Convention He's Ordered Invasion of Social Security Trust Fund
[Baltimore Chronicle, Greg Palast, 09/03/04: Fascist Bush declares Class War, but no one seems to notice] Behind the hooray-for-free-enterprise crapola is that dog-eared game-plan to siphon off Social Security revenues to pay for making Bush's tax cuts for the rich permanent.
Number of US poor rises for the third straight year
[Xinhua News Agency, 08/28/04: You might not have heard this on Amerikan media...] The Bureau said in its annual poverty report that the number of Americans living in poverty last year increased by 1.3 million to 35.8 million, accounting for about 12.5 percent of the nation's population, 0.4 percentage points more than the previous year. The rise is particularly noticeable among children, with 12.9 million living in poverty last year, or 17.6 percent of the under-18 population. That represented an increase of about 800,000 from 2002, when 16.7 percent of children lived in poverty. [Related: NYT: Economic Reality Bites]
Overtime cut undermines workers
[Seattle PI, JOHN SWEENEY, 08/25/04: Meanwhile insider-knowledge-based investment incomes of the non-working rich remains staunchly protected] Yesterday, the biggest pay cut in American history took effect: The Bush administration's overtime pay cut became official. It's a new federal rule that could strip up to 6 million workers of overtime pay protection, forcing them to work longer hours without fair compensation.
Gap between rich and poor widens as Bush cuts shift tax burden to middle class
[AP, 08/21/04: The income gap is showing up in booming sales of luxury items] New government data also shows that President Bush's tax cuts have shifted the overall tax burden to the middle class from the wealthiest Americans.
Job growth stalls in last two months, underlining failure of 'tax cuts for the wealthy' as job creation strategy
[JobWatch.com, 08/12/04: What logic supports jobs for the American middle-class?] Payroll jobs increased by only 78,000 in June and a meager 32,000 in July...In reality, since the tax cuts took effect, there are 2,565,000 fewer jobs than the administration projected would be created by enactment of its tax cuts. As can be seen in the chart below:
Without a war on poverty, we will never defeat terror Dictatorship and religious extremism are fuelled by gross inequality
[UK Guardian, Benazir Bhutto, 08/09/04: Another clear-thinking woman...] While the world focuses on the war against terror, the war against poverty slides on to the backburner. Since the bombing of the World Trade Centre in 2001, three developments have become decisive on a global scale. The first is the fight to root out militants, the second is the political rise of those on the religious margins and the third is the growing gap between the rich and the poor.
Pay in U.S. Not Keeping Pace With Price Rises
[NYT, EDUARDO PORTER, 07/18/04: In the boardroom they focus on world-wide sales, so if buying power falls here it's not a big concern if there's more sales gained elsewhere] The amount of money workers receive in their paychecks is failing to keep up with inflation. Though wages should recover if businesses continue to hire, three years of job losses have left a large worker surplus.
Behind the jobs debacle Bush's jobs forecast failed because there's been no jobs recovery at all.
[Salon, James K. Galbraith, 03/16/04: The "good jobs problem" accelerated because Bush's tax & trade policies (to appease the rich & corporations) rewards corporations that outsource. These policies must be reversed to avoid a death-spiral of the non-rich.] ... The failure of Bush and his economists does not lie in faking a [jobs] prediction. It lies in failing to understand what the underlying problems are. It lies in failing to propose policies suitable to their cure. It lies in the wanton pursuit of a strategy of tax cuts for the long term aimed at the political, not economic, objective of exempting plutocrats and their fortunes from federal tax. It lies in the rush into military adventures -- from missile defense to Iraq -- that achieve little, waste vast resources and make a proper jobs-and-security policy even more difficult down the road. Most of all, it lies in failing to care, one way or another, what might happen.
Barney Frank Has Bush's Economic Number: Economy Geared To Create Wealth, Not Jobs, So...
[WP, David S. Broder, 03/14/04: Frank proposes taxing MORE [not LESS] of the wealth the private sector is now producing so abundantly and use it to employ people on socially useful purposes] ... A fundamental shift has occurred, he says. "The ability of the private sector in this country to create [maximum] wealth now [requires least-cost labor from anywhere.] The normal rule of thumb by which a certain increase in the gross domestic product would produce a concomitant increase in [U.S.] jobs [no longer applies.]"
Slamming Entitlement
[thomasmc.com, by Norma Sherry, 02/26/04: Greenspan has Alzheimer's disease!] Greenspan wants Congress to make President Bush’s tax cuts [for the very rich] permanent and cover the [HUGE and growing deficits and debt] by ‘trimming’ future benefits in Social Security and entitlement programs. [Related from the NYT: To Trim Deficit, Greenspan Urges Social Security and Medicare Cuts]
How Social Security cheats you to pay the rich
[MoneyCentral, Liz Pulliam Weston, 02/26/04: It's nice to see it in writing!] What would you think of a tax system that took money from the poor to give to the rich?
That’s essentially what’s happening with our Social Security and Medicare tax system, where low-income workers are dunned to pay benefits for high-income seniors.
Economy Sails Away From Workers
[Newsday, Cathy N. Davidson, 02/15/04: Thanks to regressive (flatter) tax policies, between 1979 and 1995 the top 1 percent of U.S. families had an increase in income of 78 percent while median workers' income has actually fallen!] ...Now, with every [regressive] tax cut, the rich-poor gap widens. Declining social services ensure that those at the bottom stay there. Most Americans don't understand this changing tax philosophy because the chunk taken from their own paychecks is at a historically high level. That is why we feel we are over-taxed. That's why the politicians' "No More Taxes!" is such a crowd-pleaser....[but] the result [of Republican tax cuts] is a disaster for the middle and working classes.
Bush Cuts Low-Income Housing Program Funding by 40% as Rents Soar Nationwide
[Center for Budget and Policy Priorities, 02/13/04: Bush again proves he's a man of the people - the richest people] Most In Bush's proposed budget, the single deepest cut in a major domestic program is in the housing voucher program, the nation's principal low-income housing assistance program.
The Death of Horatio Alger
[The Nation, By Paul Krugman, 12/29/03: Evidence shows upward mobility has become much less likely] A classic 1978 survey found that among adult men whose fathers were in the bottom 25 percent of the population as ranked by social and economic status, 23 percent had made it into the top 25 percent. In other words, during the first thirty years or so after World War II, the American dream of upward mobility was a real experience for many people. Now for the shocker: [A] Business Week piece cites a new survey of today's adult men, which finds that this number has dropped to only 10 percent. That is, over the past generation upward mobility has fallen drastically.
A Nation of Wal-Mart Workers
[Baltimore Sun, By John Atcheson, 12/29/03: A wretched pResident's Republican policies] Can we afford to shop at Wal-Mart if we're all working there? Or will the most massive national debt in history beggar our future? Imagine for a moment that you took all your credit cards and maxed them out. Now take your mortgage and borrow the maximum on it. Cash in the kid's college fund, your rainy day savings, your 401(k) retirement savings. While you're at it, stop paying for your health insurance and the maintenance on your house, your car and your yard. Now take all that money and spend it. Feeling pretty flush? Sure you are. You just pumped tens, maybe hundreds of thousands of dollars into your pocket. But you'd never do that. Because you know that just because you'd be living large for the time being, you wouldn't be wealthier. In fact, you'd be getting poorer by the minute. And yet, that's exactly what Mr. Bush's recovery is - a giant borrowing binge.
Sick Children Pay the Price for Bush's Tax Giveaways to the Rich
[Gannett News Service, Larry Wheeler and Robert Benincasa, 12/29/03: Evidence mounts on the results of this heinous Republican administration] Children across the country are being cut off from doctors because cash-strapped states are rolling back health insurance for the working poor, a four-month investigation by Gannett News Service has found. 22 states have restricted children's health insurance programs over the past 18 months, and more cuts are possible in 2004 as states face another round of daunting budget deficits... About 270,000 children of low-income, working parents have been barred from health insurance programs in the nine states where estimates are available. Texas and Florida lead the country in the number of low-income children shut out of state health insurance programs.
Behind the economic “recovery” • Hunger and homelessness in US continue to rise in 2003
[WSWS, By Jamie Chapman, 12/28/03 - This posting is dedicated to those who won't bother to read about the lower class; after all, you reason(?), they must like to live that way] Hunger and homelessness in the United States continue to rise at double-digit rates in 2003, according to a December 18 report released by the US Conference of Mayors (USCM). In the 25 cities that responded to its survey, requests for emergency food assistance were up 17 percent over last year, while requests for emergency shelter increased by 13 percent on average.
Un-American Recovery
[WP, By Harold Meyerson, 12/24/03 - If our "representatives" continue to fail, let's outsource to replace them all!] The current administration is not responsible for the broad contours of this miserably misshapen recovery, but its every action merely increases the imbalance of power between America's employers and employees. But the Democrats' prescriptions for more broadly shared prosperity need some tweaking, too. With the globalization of high-end professions, no Democrat can assert quite so confidently the line that Bill Clinton used so often: What you earn is a result of what you learn. This year's crop of presidential candidates is taking more seriously the importance of labor standards in trade accords, and the right of workers to organize.
The Poverty Quagmire • What happens when the priority is tax-cuts for the Rich
[WP, By Timothy M. Smeeding, 12/21/03 - We in America have high child poverty rates because Republicans vote to give tax-cuts to the Rich, not because we cannot do anything about it. Other nations make different choices and get different results.] According to data in the Luxembourg Income Study, child poverty is significantly higher in the United States than in wealthy European nations and in Canada and Australia. In 1997 -- in the midst of a robust economy -- one in five American children lived in poverty. This is about double the rate in other wealthy industrialized nations, such as France, Germany and the Nordic countries.
Why America's plutocrats gobble up $1,500 hot dogs
[UK Guardian, By Julian Borger, 11/05/03] Bush and others fake being 'common men' as they work to shift the focus from economic elitism to cultural elitism, while Republicans rip-off the public to benefit the wealthiest 1% Nearly half the benefits of Mr Bush's $1.35 trillion tax cut in 2001 went to the richest 1%, while 60% of this year's cuts will go to taxpayers with incomes of more than $100,000....Mr Bush also fought hard to repeal an inheritance tax that affected only the wealthiest 2%, as well as cutting capital gains tax and trying to abolish the tax on dividends.
Global trade keeps a billion children in poverty, says Unicef [UK Independent, By Maxine Frith, 10/22/03] "More than one billion young people in the developing world are now living in conditions of severe deprivation" International targets to reduce child poverty are going to be missed because globalised trade and cuts to aid budgets are creating an ever-greater chasm between the richest and poorest countries.
America's homeless become new small-town pioneers [Guardian, By Duncan Campbell, 10/24/03] "Dignity Village" residents of the village believe that what they have accomplished over the past two years could act as a model for others who sleep beneath flyovers and in shopfronts. Dignity Village presents a snapshot of American homelessness which, according to the National Coalition for the Homeless, has increased by 14% in the past two years [coinciding with Bush's big tax-cuts to the very rich], with 3.5 million people now classified as homeless. Some two-thirds of the inhabitants of the village are male. Residents range in age from 17 to 72. They include people who have had problems with drink and drugs, and many with professional qualifications, of all races and religions.
False PRIDE [Tom Paine, By Mark Engler, 10/09/03] Our Republican "representatives" are criminally incompetent and way over-paid! Given the state of our economy, one might expect a welfare reauthorization bill to offer emergency assistance to the poor and aid to those trapped in the low-wage workforce. Instead, the so-called Personal Responsibility and Individual Development for Everyone (PRIDE) bill that has just come out of the Senate Finance Committee, like the more extreme bill passed in the House, shows that lawmakers are willfully oblivious to the challenges facing welfare reform.
More Americans in Poverty in 2002, Census Study Says [NYT, By LYNETTE CLEMETSON, 09/28/03] Bush's policies and tax-cuts aren't concerned with the poorer 90% of citizens; he's only verbally compassionate. The number of Americans living in poverty increased by 1.7 million last year, and the median household income declined by 1.1 percent, the Census Bureau reported today. The worsening economic conditions fell heaviest on Midwesterners and nonwhites.
Fiscal immorality [Dallas/Fort Worth Star-Telegram, By Matt Mille, 09/14/03] Democrats (anyone moral!) should demand repeal of tax-cuts going to the wealthy Please tell us, Mr. Bush, what sacrifice is being asked of the most fortunate Americans? In ordinary times, claiming that tax cuts mostly for the rich are needed to boost economic growth would merely be garden-variety political fraud. When Bush makes this case in the context of financing a war on our kids' credit card while shortchanging crucial needs at home, it is morally obscene.
The collapse of the middle class [Working For Change, BERNIE SANDERS, 09/05/03] Which class are you in? Which class are you trending towards? The corporate media doesn't talk about it much, but the United States is rapidly on its way to becoming three separate nations.
#1: a small number of incredibly wealthy people who own and control more and more of our country. #2: a shrinking middle class in which ordinary people are, in most instances, working longer hours for lower wages and benefits. #3: an increasing number of Americans are living in abject poverty -- going hungry and sleeping out on the streets.
Census Shows Ranks of Poor Rose by 1.3 Million No Child Left Behind? [NYT, By LYNETTE CLEMETSON, 09/04/03] Let's roll-back those tax-cuts for the very rich VERY FAST! The spike in economic hardship hit individuals and families alike. The report indicated that the total percentage of people in poverty increased to 12.4 percent from 12.1 percent in 2001 and totaled 34.8 million. At the same time, the number of families living in poverty went up by more than 300,000 in 2002 to 7 million from 6.6 million in 2001.
The number of children in poverty rose by more than 600,000 during the same period to 12.2 million. The rate of increase in children under age 5 jumped a full percentage point to 19.8 percent living below the poverty line from 18.8 percent a year earlier.
UN report says one billion suffer extreme poverty [WSWS, By David Rowan, 07/29/03] Since 1990: 54 countries are poorer, 34 countries have lower life expectancy, and 21 countries are hungrier "Fabre admits that “the richest countries have established various barriers to the entry of goods on their own territories. There are also important subsidies given to agriculture, artificially maintaining these rich countries agriculture (sectors) above world prices.” He went on, “there is, even worse, a dumping of agricultural products from rich countries on countries having weaker economies.”"
Corporate Tax Cheats Wreak Havoc On The Neediest Among Us [Arianna, 07/25/03] Can YOU see the connection? "Corporations are currently turning over 30 percent less of their profits to the taxman than they did 20 years ago. Meanwhile, all across the country, state governments, facing the biggest budget crisis since the Great Depression, are being forced to slash programs and cut services. Gee, do you think there might be a connection? You can bet your vanishing after-school care, prenatal health program, and local law enforcement service there is."
Forbidden Connections: Class, Cowardice, and War [Znet, by Paul Street, 07/25/03] A wide-ranging rant "Beneath myths of equal opportunity and rampant upward mobility, the United States is a savagely unequal society with a rigidly hierarchical and authoritarian class structure. As a reflection of that harsh structural reality, it is nearly taboo to speak or write in any engaged and meaningful way about class inequality in the nation's "mainstream" (corporate-dominated) media and politics."
In Spite Of Words, Bush GOP Fighting To Leave Poor Kids Behind [NYT, DAVID FIRESTONE, 07/10/03] You have to read this to understand the pure ugliness of Republicans, particularly Tom Delay "Struggling to revive a stalled bill to raise the child tax credit for low-income families, Senate Democrats began a series of parliamentary theatrics today intended to increase pressure on Republicans in both chambers to move the bill."
California GOP proposes poor pay more for health care [SF Chronicle, Mark Martin, 07/09/03] More proof Republicans are sub-humans! "[California state] Senate Republicans, in a flurry of proposals to plug the state's budget deficit, plan to suggest dismantling the agency that acts as an environmental watchdog over the California coastline and requiring recipients of state-funded health insurance for the poor to make co-payments for some medical care."
Some Fear Ruin for Head Start [NewsDay, Lily Hindy, 07/08/03] Like with Medicaid - under the guise of efficiency - Bush proposes increasing Block Grants to States instead of discreet (community) funding for Head Start without controls on how money is spent; so instead of helping needy children funds could be used to avoid tax increases of the wealthy "Regional Head Start president Ruth Neale said last week that the bill may "destroy Head Start programs across the United States, but particularly here in New York," where Gov. George Pataki has tried to cut funding for pre-kindergarten programs.
Head Start provides education, medical services, meals and other assistance to low-income children under 5 with the goal of making them ready to compete with more affluent children when they enter school. It serves more than 1 million pre-schoolers..."
CPPCC Member Urges Reform of Personal Income Tax System [People's Daily, 07/07/03] "Qu suggested efforts be made to establish a progressive taxation system ..." Meanwhile, US Republicans are fighting for a more regressive tax to enrich their owners "A member of China's top advisory body said here Monday that there is an urgent need to reform the country's existing personal income tax system so as to address the widening gap between the rich and the poor."
Scorn for the Working Poor [WP, Ellen Goodman, 06/21/03] "The line between the deserving and the undeserving poor has moved up a couple of notches on the socioeconomic scale" "In the House of Representatives...Tom DeLay famously choked on the idea of giving "tax relief to people who don't pay income taxes." In a partisan snit, the House reluctantly restored the child tax credit in an $82 billion bill so bloated with tax cuts for the unneedy that it's worse for low-income families than no credit at all. The whole mess has landed in a House-Senate conference committee as fodder for a food fight." [Emphasis added]
Sanders Votes ‘NO’: Republicans Move to Permanently Extend Tax Breaks for Heirs of Wealthy [Bernie Sanders, 06/19/03] Republicans say $billions should go tax-free to billionaires' children just when Bush deficits of $600 billion/annually are projected as far as the eye can see. What would Jesus say? "Rep. Bernie Sanders (I-VT) today voted against a Republican plan to permanently extend the repeal of the estate tax. Making the estate tax repeal permanent is expected to cost $162 billion over the next decade with a cost of $63.5 billion in 2013 alone. In the decade after that, the cost of the bill is estimated to be $820 billion. All of the benefits go to the wealthiest 2% of the population. The bottom 98% receive no tax reduction at all." [To vote on this in the Senate today...]
GOP spends big but not on the needy [The Capital Times, Dave Zweifel, 06/16/03] The truth is getting out, even though corporate media try like hell to hide it! "...the federal deficit is likely to reach a record setting $400 billion....This dubious record is the result, of course, of another spend-on-the-military and give-tax-breaks-to-the-rich program that was made famous by Ronald Reagan. The only problem is, George Bush is making the ex-president look like an amateur. Reagan's deficits were more like $250 billion."
Sir Roger 'shamed' by Bond carelessness [BBC, 06/15/03] Moore: "I was not really being aware of what was going on in the world." "It's something you don't see when you see the images on television or on the cinema screen, the absolute appalling smell of poverty"
Blessed Are the Poor — They Don't Get Tax Cuts [Time Mag., Joe Klien, 06/03/03] "The Bush budget reveals the true priorities of the administration" "...Bush promised a foreign policy of humility and a domestic policy of compassion. He has given us a foreign policy of arrogance and a domestic policy that is cynical, myopic and cruel."
Battle on Child Tax Credit Intensifies in the Capital [NYT, DAVID FIRESTONE, 05/31/03] Republicans decided that it was more important to give billionaires another $3.5 billion, and not give the poorest 20% of American children a measly $400 "The White House today defended the decision of Congressional negotiators to deny millions of minimum-wage families the increased child tax credit, saying the new tax law was intended to help people who pay taxes, not those who are too poor to pay." [What Republicans did was despicable! As usual.]
Tax Law Omits Child Credit in Low-Income Brackets [NYT, DAVID FIRESTONE, 05/29/03] In the one provision of the tax-cut that did not excessively benefit the wealthy, Republicans made sure the child tax credit didn't help the poor either! "Most taxpayers will receive a $400-a-child check in the mail this summer as a result of the law, which raises the child tax credit, to $1,000 from $600. It had been clear from the beginning that the wealthiest families would not receive the credit, which is intended to phase out at high incomes.
But after studying the bill approved on Friday, liberal and child advocacy groups discovered that a different group of families would also not benefit from the $400 increase — families who make just above the minimum wage."
Dr. Inequality [Slate, Daniel Gross, 05/26/03] Last week, Kristin J. Forbes, a young Massachusetts Institute of Technology economist, was named to President Bush's Council of Economic Advisers because she wrote a paper that said the Right things "Forbes [paper] concluded that "in the short and medium term, an increase in a country's level of income inequality has a significant positive relationship with subsequent economic growth."" [Maybe if I say the bathroom smells better after Bush uses it I'll get a fancy job, too.]
Report Finds Number of Black Children in Deep Poverty Rising [NYT, SAM DILLON, 04/30/03] Anyone surprised this happened under Republicans? "The number of black Americans under 18 years old who live in extreme poverty has risen sharply since 2000 and is now at its highest level since the government began collecting such figures..."
The I.R.S. Goes After the Poor [NYT, EDITORIAL, 04/27/03] The IRS is told to hound the "Slaves" while cheating by their rich "Masters" is winked at "The Internal Revenue Service is planning to impose oppressive new documentation requirements on taxpayers applying for the earned-income tax credit, which for more than a quarter-century has been an important source of income for the working poor. ...the new policy is deeply flawed. It is unfair, particularly in view of the fact that the I.R.S. is devoting diminishing resources to tax cheating by corporations and the wealthy. And it is so burdensome it will drive many poor taxpayers to give up a tax break they are legally entitled to take." [Also read: Tax Inquiries Fall as Cheating Increases and Democrat Blasts IRS Plan to Screen Poor]
County Says It's Too Poor to Defend the Poor [NYT, ADAM LIPTAK, 04/15/03] "The county is suing [Mississippi] because it says it cannot afford to provide defendants with anything more than assembly-line justice." ""In some communities there is downright hostility to making sure poor people get adequate representation," he added. "In counties in Alabama, Georgia and Mississippi, it is not uncommon to see people meeting counsel for the first time and pleading guilty with no investigation and serving much longer sentences than if they could afford counsel.""
Taxpayers to pay $600,000 to Redo Kitchen of Negroponte's NY Apartment! [AFP, 04/07/03] Any thoughts spring to mind? "The United States will pay 600,000 dollars to renovate the kitchen at the residence of the US ambassador to the United Nations"
Republicans to Cut Programs for the Poor because "The Poor are too Fat" [NYT, By LESLIE KAUFMAN, 02/20/03] Welfare in the form of tax-cuts for the very rich is the priority - not the poor; the poor are to be punished for eating cheap, high calorie food instead of lean steaks "The Bush administration and Congress are giving almost every poverty program the once-over, pushing changes that will affect everything from Medicaid to housing assistance. But two programs are receiving unexpected scrutiny: food stamps and subsidized school lunches."
IRS: the Ignore the Rich Service [Working For Change, By Molly Ivins, 02/11/03] "Audits of the working poor increased by 48.6 percent in 2001." "One dandy way to prevent an agency from doing its job is to simply cut its budget year after year. You may recall the Grand Inquisitor hearings during the Newt Gingrich era, when the IRS was called before a congressional committee and denounced for "Gestapo tactics." The Republicans then passed a "tax reform" act that should have been called the "Let's Hamstring the IRS So It Can't Make Rich People Pay What They Owe Law."
The result is that, since 1995, the IRS has focused most of its tax fraud investigations on the working poor, people who qualify for the Earned Income Tax Credit -- the only good idea Ronald Reagan ever had."
Bush's War Budget: War Against the Poor! [WP, By E. J. Dionne Jr., 02/08/03] Bush gets my vote for "Most Despicable President!" "This is not a liberal fantasy. Conservatives acknowledge that Bush's long-term goal is to reduce the federal government's capacity to act -- yes, to spend -- without saying so publicly. The large tax cuts the president has put on the table, conservative columnist Donald Lambro wrote candidly this week, "are, in effect, Mr. Bush's stealth initiative to curb future spending -- big time." Exactly. And if you look carefully, most of the spending cuts will be in programs for the poor and near-poor."
Shocking new info about tapioca [SF Chronicle, Jon Carroll, 02/08/03] Deserved sarcasm aimed at Bush-Republicans, but they'll likely not understand it. "Like all decent Americans, I was shocked this week to learn that millions of schoolchildren from semi-indigent families were receiving federally subsidized school lunches to which they were not entitled. These little criminals were sneaking nutrition from under the noses of taxpayers."
Aid to Poor Faces More Scrutiny in Bush Plan [NYT, By ROBERT PEAR, 02/05/03] The pattern continues: Bush is excessively generous to the Rich, and NIGGARDLY to the Poor "Bush's budget proposes new eligibility requirements that would make it harder for low-income families to obtain government benefits....Critics, including some local officials, said today that the extra steps would deter eligible poor people from applying for needed assistance.The Bush budget would also replace one of the largest federal housing programs with a block grant to states, which could redirect some of the money away from working poor people in cities. Mr. Bush said he wanted to shift money and responsibility for this and other social welfare programs, including Medicaid, to the states....Local officials scorned the plan."
TO CRUSH THE POOR - First it was Reds, then drugs, then terror. So who have the US really been fighting in Colombia? [Guardian, George Monbiot, 02/04/03] "The purpose of this unending war is to secure those parts of the country that are rich in natural resources for Colombian landowners and foreign multinationals." "The United States has been at war in Colombia for over 50 years. It has, however, hesitated to explain precisely who it is fighting. Officially, it is now involved there in a "war on terror". Before September 2001, it was a "war on drugs"; before that, a "war on communism". In essence, however, US intervention in Colombia is unchanged: this remains, as it has always been, a war on the poor."
Stealth Tax Reform [WP, EDITORIAL, 02/04/03] Bush is undoubtedly the worst and most immoral president in history "...President Bush had a plan to dramatically reshape the federal tax system, eliminating taxes on investment income for most taxpayers, making the tax structure less progressive and providing a boon to the wealthiest Americans. You might think he would mention it during his State of the Union address. You might think he would call it by its name: RADICAL TAX REFORM." [Emphasis added.]
BUSH PROPOSES NEW TAX-FREE SAVINGS PLANS - The accounts could replace IRAs and 401(k)s. Revenue could spike now, shrivel later, leaving the poor to fill the gap, critics say. [Baltimore Sun, By Peter G. Gosselin, 02/02/03] Inequality-Bush strikes again! If there is a way to twist things to favor the rich he does it, just like they paid him to "...Between the two new accounts, a [rich] couple could save up to $30,000 a year, tax-free, and more if they set up additional accounts for their children."
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