Politics Plus

Yesterday the Senate held two votes without filibusters.  Have you regained consciousness?  Apparently McConnell allowed it so Republicans can claim that Democrats voted to raise YOUR taxes.  Unless YOU are a millionaire or billionaire, that is a lie.  The Republican bill would extend all the Bush tax cuts.  Since they are already slated to expire, voting against their bill was not a vote to raise taxes.  It was a vote to leave earlier legislation unchanged.  The Democratic Bill would lower rates to present levels for all but the top 2% as soon as the Bush tax cuts expire.  It is not a tax increase.  It is an entirely new tax cut for the poor and middle classes.  It did put the entire Republican Party on record voting against a tax cut for 98% of Americans.

The Senate voted 51 to 48 Wednesday to approve highly contested legislation that would raise taxes on high income earners while lowering taxes on middle income earners.

Vice President Joe Biden made the trip to Capitol Hill to preside over the vote on the Democratic measure, dubbed the Middle Class Tax Cut Act. It aims to raise taxes on high income earners while preserving tax cuts for 114 million middle income taxpayers. Democrats estimate that would save every person $1,000 to $1,600 in 2013 should it become law.

"Republicans should not hold the middle class tax cut hostage," Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nevada, said in remarks prior to the vote. "All you folks who love to give tax cuts to the millionaires, our bill does that–the first $250,000 they make they are treated just like a middle class family."…

…The president issued this statement after the vote:

With the Senate’s vote, the House Republicans are now the only people left in Washington holding hostage the middle-class tax cuts for 98% of Americans and nearly every small business owner. The last thing a typical middle class family can afford is a $2,200 tax hike at the beginning of next year. It’s time for House Republicans to drop their demand for another $1 trillion giveaway to the wealthiest Americans and give our families and small businesses the financial security and certainty that they need. Our economy isn’t built from the top-down, it’s built from a strong and growing middle class, and that’s who we should be fighting for.

… [emphasis added]

Inserted from <PBS>

Photo credit: National People’s Action

The following worthless scum goose-stepped with the Republicans by opposing tax cuts for the 98%:

LIEberman (Asshole-CT), Webb (DINO-VA)

One bought DINO bastard goose-stepped with the Republicans by favoring the Bush tax cuts for the 2%.

Pryor (DINO-AR)

Since the Constitution requires that all bills pertaining to taxes must begin in the House, this bill was technically dead the second it passed. Ezra Klein covered this story and interviewed Norm Ornstein and Tom Mann to show why this is the worst Congress in History, and that Republicans have been responsible for it.

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Note that Ornstein is no bleeding heart liberal. He represents the AEI, an extreme right organization strongly associated with the Neocon movement. For him to admit the truth about today’s Republican Party required considerable courage.  I was shocked to see it.  Kudos!

Although the bill did not start in the House, this would not be the first time that the Senate has initiated a tax bill, and the House has taken it up, introduced and passed it, and then returned it to the Senate for approval. Thus the only thing standing between the US and the fiscal cliff is Republican insistence on welfare for the rich. That’s  what makes "off the cliff" the best strategy.

Hearing about Willard’s notion of foreign policy, I cringed in disgust.  “This must be an American Century” took me back to the Neocon days, before PNAC (Project for a New American Century) went defunct, thoroughly discredited by their failures and lies.  Neocon policies made our nation an international pariah from wars of aggression, based on lies, and my way or the highway diplomacy.  All Willard has to offer is a return to those days.

The presidential candidates took a break this week from talking about the economy, the most important issue in the election, and turned to foreign policy. This was a chance for Mitt Romney to show that he could be a better international leader than President Obama, who has already proved himself in that field. He fell far short.

Mr. Romney spoke about foreign affairs on Tuesday to the Veterans of Foreign Wars, which Mr. Obama addressed on Monday. There was a contrast, but not in favor of Mr. Romney, who is still struggling to differentiate himself. Even some of his advisers, when interviewed, have been unable to explain exactly what he would do differently on many issues, and, where he does draw a line, his positions are mostly troubling or unconvincing.

He has, for example, struggled to play down the simple fact that Mr. Obama ordered the killing of Osama bin Laden. He has tried to focus instead on how details became public, accusing the administration of politically motivated leaks. “It’s a national security crisis,” he told the V.F.W. With stunning overkill, he called for a special counsel to investigate an administration that has been more determined than most to find leakers.

Mr. Romney seemed just as disingenuous when he tried to blame Mr. Obama for $500 billion in automatic spending cuts that the Pentagon is facing over the next 10 years, beginning in January. He called them “the president’s radical cuts.” In fact, it was Congressional Republicans who manufactured a crisis over the debt ceiling in 2010 and demanded passage of a budget bill that mandated the cuts to keep the government from defaulting… [emphasis added]

Inserted from <NY Times>

Picture credit: ABC

While the article does quite a bit to expose Willard’s foreign policy lies and ineptness, it does not tie Romney to the Neocons well.  For that, Chris Matthews explained how Willard is adhering to the failed Neocon party line.

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Some of you may not realize just how extreme Republican neocons are in their quest for world domination, through wars of conquest.  In 2007, General Wesley Clark (Ret) revealed the Republican plan to attack and conquer not just Iraq, but seven countries in five years.

General Clark also mentioned PNAC.  I rarely provide links to right-wing extremists, but even though the website is there, the organization is defunct.  Take a look at their extreme notions, plans and the lies they use to support them.  The people behind this war plan and PNAC are the same people, who are formulating Willard’s foreign policy.

Remember Bush?  Want more?

The more I look at the situation we face today, the more convinced I am that the wisest course for Democrats and the best course for America is to jump off the fiscal cliff.  Although more and more people are seeing the wisdom of that move, most of the media is acting as though those people do not exist.

The Congress is set to begin debating this week whether to extend hundreds of billions of dollars in expiring tax cuts in what amounts to a round of shadow boxing in advance of the real battle after the November elections.

Both the Democratic-led Senate and Republican-led House of Representatives will take up the expiring tax rates in coming days, but the outcomes will be very different and will settle nothing.

Still the votes may provide some hints on the prospects for party cohesion – especially for Democrats – on the tax issue after the election.

"For Senate Democrats, the primary goal is to avoid the optics of late 2010 when they couldn’t really come together," said Helen Fessenden, an investor adviser at Eurasia Group. "They want to avoid the public message of division."

U.S. lawmakers from both parties fear the blame for pushing the country over the so-called fiscal cliff of expiring lower tax rates on December 31, and automatic spending cuts set to kick in days later unless Congress steps in. The Congressional Budget Office says failure to act could spur a recession in 2013.

The tax cuts, passed under Republican President George W. Bush, expire at the end of the year unless Congress and President Barack Obama agree to extend them in one form or another, as they did after a bitter struggle in December 2010.

Republicans want to extend the tax cuts for at least another year with an eye toward a broader reform in 2012. They are playing to small-government Tea Party advocates and voter worries about the economy and sluggish job growth.

Democrats want to extend the lower rates for the first $250,000 of an individual’s income and allow rates to rise for income earned above that threshold.

They are making a play for what polls show are a majority of Americans who believe the rich should pay more to reduce deficits… [emphasis added]

Inserted from <Reuters>

Note that, while the authors did an excellent job explaining the fiscal cliff, they did not even mention the lawmakers that favor digging in and refusing to cave-in to Republican demands.  Reaching a settlement after the election will head off the recession the authors mentioned.

We’re faced with three basic facts.  First, we cannot reduce the deficit without increasing revenue.  Second, over the years, trickle down has gushed up so much over the year that the only ones who have any revenue are the super rich.  Only they can afford to give back some of our money that Republican welfare for the rich has given them.  Third, the only way Republicans will ever negotiate in good faith requires a figurative axe hanging over their political necks.  Refusing to cave-in and letting the fiscal cliff work for us is the only strategy that fits those facts.

Lawrence O’Donnell discussed jumping off the cliff with Ed Bartlett, senior policy analyst in the Regan White House, and Asst. Secretary of the Treasury under GHW Bush.

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Bartlett is certainly no bleeding heart liberal, and even he points out that the Republican hypocrisy here is extreme. Republicans are saying that spending costs jobs, unless it’s what they want.  Thast will make your veggies grow organically!  Republicans are running scared. We should keep them on the run.