It's Official! The Koch Brothers Rule America!

Have you heard the "old" people talking about the Good Old Days? Do you ever wonder what they're talking about? They're talking about those halcyon days when Men were Men and Women were Pregnant and... the top tax bracket was 70 percent or higher.



Yep. Seventy percent. And that's down from the peak, by the way!



Yes, there actually was a time when we discouraged the kind of wealth collection that the top .01% engages in these days, days when we actually knew that it was better for the country, as a whole, if the game wasn't rigged to direct the flow of money toward those who already had plenty. But now, if you have money, all the rules of the game are rigged in your favor. You don't have to pay taxes at the same rate as "regular" people, especially if most of your money comes from "investments." (They're not really investments, for the most part. They're bets that the wealthy place, using gambling casinos like Wall Street. Worse, they're safe bets. You and I bail them out of they have any losses. And do they share their winnings with us? Wait... I have to stop laughing before I answer that question...)



Princeton Concludes What Kind of Government America Really Has, and It's Not a Democracy - PolicyMic:



'via Blog this'

Wealth Inequality in America

Tea Party Logic

One of These Things Does Not Go With The Other

The folks who brought you the government shutdown -- Ted Cruz, Mike Lee, and the former half-term Governor of Alaska, Sarah Palin -- showed up Sunday, October 13, to protest the fact that the government (specifically, the World War II Memorial and the Lincoln Memorial) were shut down. Not a word, by the way, about the 9 million Moms and their babies who are part of the WIC program and who will have to get by with less food.

Once they were done grandstanding at the Lincoln Memorial, the group headed to the White House to demand the impeachment of the President over, presumably, the closure of the Lincoln Memorial. And to make sure that the world understood how much they cared about the Lincoln Memorial, how much they cared about everything that Lincoln stood for, they brought along this guy:

There is, of course, no better way to show your support for Abraham Lincoln than to wave the flag representing those states that seceded from the Union, in order to protect their "way of life" (translation: slavery) and waged war upon the nation led by Abraham Lincoln. This is, of course, just as logical as everything else the Tea Party (translation: fake grass-roots party created by the Koch brothers to agitate against higher taxes on billionaires) does, like protesting the fact that their taxes are the lowest they've been in decades.

Oh, wait; they actually think their taxes are higher. Could they possibly be protesting against the color of the skin of the man who occupies the oval office?

Alert the Press! Obama is Bailing Out Detroit!

The $300 Million Bailout That Wasn't

I have a cousin who lives in Georgia, watches Sean Hannity faithfully, and who visits websites like Breitbart.com. She posted on Facebook, the other day, her outrage over the $300 million bailout Obama was giving to "union fat cats" in Detroit. This turned out to be a story that FreedomWorks was pushing, and it came as no surprise that the story wasn't entirely true, and that it was tied to a drive by FreedomWorks, which was in deep financial doo-doo, to raise funds.

So what did we learn from all of this? First, we learned that the $300 million didn't actually involve any new funds; it was all money Detroit was slated to get anyway, money for things like hiring police officers, clearing blighted and abandoned properties (Detroit's population has declined by 25% in the last decade, which leaves a lot of abandoned houses) and transportation aid. The Obama administration merely cleared some red tape.

And how does this aid compare to the kind of aid that a red state receives? Let's look at Georgia: 31.6% of Georgia's state spending came from federal funds. $12 billion worth of federal funds. For those doing the math, that's forty times more money than $300 million. Is the federal government bailing out Georgia? You be the judge.

Buying Crab Legs with Food Stamps

Food Stamp Frenzy

You've heard the stories, right? People standing in line at the supermarket, pushing carts filled with expensive cuts of meat and crab legs, paying for their bounty with food stamps. Maybe you read about it on Fox Nation. Maybe you heard Louis Gohmert railing about it. (Caveat: Louis Gohmer is a certifiable idiot.) Maybe you even saw this response to what Louis had to say.

Here's the thing:. All of those stories are anecdotal. They all happened to a "friend of a friend" or it's "a story I've heard time and time again." There never is any direct documentation, never any filmed evidence of someone buying filet mignon with their SNAP card. And nobody ever thinks to wonder just how the food stamp recipient manages to pay for fancy food items, like king crab legs, out of an allotment that averages $4.50 per day. (I suppose the common assumption is that food stamp recipients get a credit card with which they can charge anything they want, at any price.) Frequently, these people paying with food stamps have "nice clothes," or maybe "cell phones," and even "nice cars." And, naturally, things like that fly in the face of our requirement that anyone seeking federal assistance must first divest themselves of all worldly possessions and must dress only in second-hand clothes.

The next time you hear something like this, hold your hand up in the universal "Stop!" position and yell, loudly, "BULLSHIT!" The next time you read something like this, head straight for the comments section and post "BULLSHIT!" And then post this link: http://goo.gl/0UBt4. You probably won't change any minds; preconceived notions are the hardest things in the world to dispel. But you can at least try.