RichardH pointed me to The New York Times piece Bonuses for Billionaires.  It started like this:

The first few times I heard House Republicans talk about our budget mess, I worried that they had plunged off the deep end. But as I kept on listening, a buzzer went off in my mind, and I came to understand how much sense the Tea Party caucus makes.

Why would we impose “job-crushing taxes” on wealthy Americans just to pay for luxuries like federal prisons? Why end the “carried interest” tax loophole for financiers, just to pay for unemployment benefits — especially when those same selfless tycoons are buying yachts and thus creating jobs for all the rest of us?

Richard thought it might be something I had written until he looked at the by line – By Nicholas D. Kristof.  Of course he might have noticed that the guy in the picture had hair on top of his head.

Richard also wants me to advise you that the column contains sarcasm.

Sarcasm Warning – be careful that you don’t read too much of the column before you realize that the author is being sarcastic.

The first paragraph of Senator Scott Brown’s e-newsletter stopped me in my tracks. I show the first part of his news letter below.

He explains his symbolic vote for a balanced budget amendment with this remarkable statement, A balanced budget requirement is something we have in Massachusetts, and I think it would be good for the entire country at a time when …

I made a phone call to his office expressing my hope that as a U.S. Senator helping to make economic policy for the entire country, that he understood the vast differences between a state budget and a federal budget. I said that I hoped he understood why it might make sense for a state to be forced to balance its budget, and yet make no sense for a country to have to operate under this restriction.

I begged him to tell me how much he understood about macro-economics. In the short time that I had to leave the message for him, I did not get to ask him some other questions.

For instance does he understand that an entity like the United States that has its own currency must behave differently from a state which does not? Does he understand that borrowing using your own currency is different from borrowing in someone else’s currency?

Does he understand that the federal government running a deficit during the current lesser depression could actually stimulate jobs in the entire country whereas a state as small as Massachusetts could not have that same effect on the entire country (it could have that effect on the local economy.)

Does he understand that the Federal Reserve system whose head is appointed by the President runs an institution that can create huge sums of money almost at will while no state can do the same thing?

Does he understand that the federal government’s failure to collect enough taxes from the wealthiest 1% can cause a huge amount of wealth to be sucked out of circulation in the entire economy, but a state the size of Massachusetts could not have such an effect of that magnitude (and it would be pretty much confined to the local economy)?

To cap it off, he wants a constitutional amendment for what could be a temporary phenomenon if only the second major party in this country had even a rudimentary understanding of macro-economics.

If Scott Brown wanted to legislate like a state Senator and not a federal Senator, he could have just stayed in the Massachusetts State Senate. Is it too much to expect that when you change jobs to an organization that is more than 50 times larger than the one you were just in, that you learn the differences in the duties of the new job compared to your old one?

I don’t know who picked the headline The Deficit Is Not Default of Obama, but I just love it.  In this article posted on Truth Out, Greg Palast starts off with the following:

Charles Dickens’ “Oliver Twist” gave debtors’ prison a bad rap. Too bad. I’d say that locking away GOP Majority Leader Eric Cantor in a penitentiary for deadbeats seems like a darn good idea.

Let’s talk about how we ended up in this pickle, bucking up against the “debt ceiling.” From 2001 to 2008, a Republican president took an annual surplus of $86 billion left for him by Bill Clinton and ran up the budget deficit to over half a trillion in a year ($642 billion in 2008). Altogether, George W. Bush blew up the national debt by over $3 TRILLION – then left the bills to Barack Obama.

And it just goes uphill from there.

The sick assumption of this entire debt ceiling debate, as we hear from talking heads whether on Fox or PBS, is that this is our deficit; as if you and I got a tax break or Amazon delivered that submarine to our door.

And the flapping lips on TV also assume that there must be some kind of “compromise” in which the spending spree by the rich must be paid for by the working class. The Washington elite agree we must pay for tax holidays for hedge funds by closing health clinics.

The NPR show Fresh Air with Terry Gross had two segments on American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC).

The first part of the show was Who’s Really Writing States’ Legislation? The previous link will take you to the audio of this interview along with transcripts and links to other information.

The second part of the show was National Chairman Of ALEC Responds To Report.   This link takes you to the audio for this segment of the show.

Thanks to RichardH for letting me know about this episode of the show.

Here is an email I received from former Representative Alan Grayson. He talks a lot of sense as opposed to the nonsense from the gang of 6 and President Obama.

July 22, 2011.

Alan Grayson sent another email with more suggestions.

•    We could let the Bush tax cuts for the rich expire. (“No! No!” shout the Koch brothers.)
•  We could let Medicare negotiate the price of drugs, the way that the VA and private insurance companies already do.
• We could require the rich to pay the same percentage of their income toward Social Security and Medicare as the poor and the middle class do. Not a higher percentage – my God, that would be progressive taxation! Just the same percentage.
• We could impose the same alternative minimum tax on giant corporations that we mere humans must pay.
• We could reduce U.S. military spending to a paltry 40% of the world’s total, from the current 48%, which would still leave us spending four times as much as any other nation.
• We could make Warren Buffett pay the same tax rate on his income as his secretary pays on hers, by eliminating the long-term capital gains tax break, the great majority of which goes to the hyper-rich.

In the video above, Bernie Sanders does not appear until 8 minutes and 20 seconds into this 14 minute video, but I thought it was worth it to give you the whole thing. You can skip ahead if you like.

It is amazing to me that the President can tout a tax increase that cuts the maximum tax rate for the wealthy. To rebalance the wealth distribution in a way that will lead to a self-sustaining jobs recovery, the top rate needs to go up not down.

Fortunately, the time constraints will not allow us to pass this ridiculous bargain. Once we get the debt ceiling raised, maybe we get get the President off his compromise and start talking serious policy debate.

The article, Nearly 10 Years Ago Today, The U.S. Began Borrowing Billions To Pay For The Bush Tax Cuts, cites an Associated Press story written 10 years ago.  I picked a couple of quotes from that 10 year old article.

The Bush administration said the need to borrow in the third quarter reflects a short-term cash squeeze and doesn’t signal a move from a budget surplus to deficit.

We all know how badly that prediction was off.

… Democratic warnings that a Bush tax cut would slice ddeeply into the budget surplus.

“It’s confirmation that they got us headed into a boxed canyon on the budget”

We all know how good a prediction that was.

Add to this the dire consequences the Republicans predicted when Bill Clinton raised taxes, and the history showing the opposite happening.

With this track record why would anybody give any credibility to any Republican predictions of the consequences of any government fiscal policy?  Sure, even a stopped clock is right twice a day.  That means you only have to pay attention to the Republicans very rarely.  Moreover, you have to know what is truth first before you listen to Republicans.  You cannot judge truth by listening to them alone.

I particularly like the way the above video clip ends.

Franken continued. “And I frankly don’t really know how we can trust the rest of your testimony if you are reading studies these ways.”

The quote above comes from the article, Al Franken Pokes Fun At Focus On The Family Mischaracterizing Study At DOMA Hearing (VIDEO), posted on Talking Points Memo.

I think I see a pattern here Al Franken, Barney Frank, frankly speaking. What’s in a name?

The Six Ways to Liberate America From Wall Street Rule that are posted in the article are theo following:

How to Liberate America from Wall Street Rule spells out details of a six-part policy agenda to rebuild a sensible system of community-based and accountable financial services institutions.

1. Break up the mega-banks and implement tax and regulatory policies that favor community financial institutions, with a preference for those organized as cooperatives or as for-profits owned by nonprofit foundations.
2. Establish state-owned partnership banks in each of the 50 states, patterned after the Bank of North Dakota. These would serve as depositories for state financial assets to use in partnership with community financial institutions to fund local farms and businesses.
3. Restructure the Federal Reserve to function under strict standards of transparency and public scrutiny, with General Accounting Office audits and Congressional oversight.
4. Direct all new money created by the Federal Reserve to a Federal Recovery and Reconstruction Bank rather than the current practice of directing it as a subsidy to Wall Street banks. The FRRB would have a mandate to fund essential green infrastructure projects as designated by Congress.
5. Rewrite international trade and investment rules to support national ownership, economic self-reliance, and economic self-determination.
6. Implement appropriate regulatory and fiscal measures to secure the integrity of financial markets and the money/banking system.

If, after all you have read about the Koch brothers here, you were tempted to boycott any of their products, look to Boycott Koch Brothers Products for a list of items.

I provide this link solely for informational purposes.