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Grubble Grubble
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Monday, February 10, 2003 :::
Ok, so I have lagged again. I suppose if I did not have my job or if I did not spend so much of my "free" time pursuing a career as an actor, my blogging would not suffer so. Admittedly, I harbor that latent fantasy about having some major conglomerate, like MSNBC, "discover" me as a major writing talent and pay me to do this.
Well, it won't happen. One, because I do not blog nearly enough to even come into their radar scopes, and two, because my blogging is mostly ranting in a decidedly unjournalistic manner. What can I say? I like to complain about the inequities of everyday life. *shrug*
Ok, back to our irregularly scheduled ranting:
rant
I am breaking from my tradition of ranting on one topic and am going on a rant-a-thon today.
Headline: Germans Believe U.S. a Nation of Warmongers.
Not meaning to be politically incorrect here, but when the Germans consider us to be warmongers, I think it is time to take a step back and look at ourselves. Admittedly, we have an administration that has stated that if no weapons are found in Iraq, they are obviously hiding them. If they claim not to have any, they are obviously lying. We have lobbied the international community for months now for permission to attack Iraq. When we were told no, we said we were going to do it anyway. Hey, does that make us warmongers?
As long as we are on the administration, I would be remiss if I did not talk about Junior for a while.
For those that are not paying attention, I am referring to our warmonging (hey, those are the Germans' words, not mine) president, Mini-me Bush.
The Administration is predicting a deficit next year of $307 billion, with an estimated $1 trillion deficit over 5 years. Again for those not paying attention, that is higher than Bush the Elder's staggering, and previously record-breaking, deficit of $292 billion. I am not speaking to the man's morals here, but I miss the Clinton days of budget surplus.
And for the record, Mr. Bush, how do you plan on paying for the aforementioned war you are currently monging?
Can we expect Medicare and Social Security to be raided yet again to finance your war to vindicate daddy? How about the "No Child Left Behind" Act? While I find this particular idea laughable and the height of hubris, cutting from it will still mean that the education of our nation's children will suffer so their older siblings can go and die on foreign soil. At least Reagan made us feel good about going broke. What are you doing? You lock the protesters in cages away from the cameras so it looks like we are happy.
We have already begun using the Reserve Air Force. The only other time we have done this is during the Gulf War (hey, dad's war. Whoda thunk?) For those not in the know, the Reserve Air Force is basically chartered commercial airliners used to transport troops, and sometimes materiel, into combat rear areas. Well, if we cannot pay to transport them ourselves, lets toss the cost over to the airline industry. Hey, they do not have enough budget problems already, right?
And as long as we are talking about money and the government, I thought I would talk about some of those tax "breaks" Bush has been slipping past us.
2001 - Inheritance tax goes away. Ok, nothing too bad. In fact, it could be good.
2002 - Let's eliminate income tax on corporate dividends.
2003 - tax favored savings plans. IRA's would no longer be tax-deductible.
Separately, each seems quite moderate. Well, add it all up and guess what? Tax-free investments. Who benefits most from this? I do not think that the lower end of our American socio-economic scale will see much benefit.
Of course, Bush will counter with the age-old argument that the more liquid capital the rich(er) have, the more will be spent. The economy will soar and services for lower-income families will benefit. Reagan called this "trickle-down" economics. For those that don't remember, it didn't work. It just widened the gap between rich and poor in this country.
/rant
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