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Sunday, March 16, 2003 |
How Tax Cuts Trickle Down. The Republican leaders of Congress have unveiled proposals for slashing the most basic government programs for years to come. [New York Times: Opinion]
The estimated shortfall of $2.7 trillion could have been an $890 billion surplus but for the Bush proposals, according to the Congressional Budget Office. The president's next $1.4 trillion cut, geared to the affluent, will average $90,000 a year for millionaires, according to the Tax Policy Center, a research group run by the Brookings Institution and the Urban Institute. You would think a sense of embarrassment might strike the Republicans in blessing such a boon for a fortunate minority while taking a cleaver to programs vital for most taxpayers, notably a woeful $12 billion cut in food stamps. But they seem intent on ideology trumping responsibility.
The contradictions of the Republicans' plans are legion. They intend to somehow cut Medicare by $214 billion this decade even as the president vows $400 billion in prescription help for retirees. A $93 billion Medicaid cut is blithely ordered by lawmakers who do not have enough daring to ask the president about the missing budget costs for the looming Iraq war. The cuts, the largest in history, are mean spirited in the face of the Bush Republicans' deepening embrace of deficit spending. And deficit spending, firmly blessed by the administration, will be the rule once Congress gets beyond this period of public relations budget fantasizing.
The Bush disaster is just beginning. Remember, just a couple years ago there was a budget surplus. Now we're deeply in debt; our kids are going to have to pay this off, and we're not even counting the costs of this war.
1:54:40 PM Permalink
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Charlie Daniels' anti-anti-war rant [bOing bOing]
This is some seriously twisted stuff. But, alas, it's all too typical of the kind of rhetoric we're getting these days. If you're not for this war and if you speak out against it, you're a pawn of Hussein and un-American. And I thought Dubya was supposed to be "a uniter not a divider." A uniter, I guess, as long as we all unite with him.
1:24:00 PM Permalink
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Natalie Merchant, No Strings Attached. (SOURCE:boingboing.net]
Natalie Merchant has stepped off the pop treadmill. After 17 years with Elektra Records, first as the main songwriter and singer of 10,000 Maniacs and then with million-selling solo albums of her reflective folk-rock, Ms. Merchant decided to go it alone. When her Elektra contract expired in August 2002, she chose not to renew it or to seek a deal with another major label. "I would make a big-budget pop album, followed by a year of touring and promotion and then some downtime for recovery," she said. "I don't even know if I was writing music that was appropriate for that mold." Instead she will release her next album, a collection of traditional songs called "The House Carpenter's Daughter," on her own label, Myth America Records. It is to be released June 1 through Ms. Merchant's Web site, nataliemerchant .com, and July 1 in stores.
Good for her; I hope she does well. I'll certainly give it a listen. "The House Carpenter's Daughter" is a great song, though it's a little (little?) hoary these days. A few years ago Clinton Heylin wrote a very good book about this song, called "Dylan's Demon Lover." Oddly, I can't find that book at either Amazon or Alibris.
12:52:29 PM Permalink
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© Copyright 2004 Steve Michel.
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