Midcan5's Blog

If the rich create jobs think how many more jobs there will be if we give them even more money? "Conservatives say if you don't give the rich more money, they will lose their incentive to invest. As for the poor, they tell us they've lost all incentive because we've given them too much money." George Carlin By Nicholas D. Kristof "Republicans won’t extend unemployment benefits, even in the worst downturn in 70 years, because that makes people lazy about finding jobs. They’re right: We should be creating incentives for Americans to rise up the food chain by sending hefty checks to every new billionaire. This could be paid for with a tax surcharge on regular working folks. It’s the least we can do. Likewise, the government should take sterner measures against the persistent jobless. Don’t just let their unemployment benefits expire. Take their homes!" Read article here.

What to do, what to do.... "The probability, then, is that the next election will be close. It could also be fateful. Not because it is apt to enable the kind of electoral transformation the country urgently needs. But the Republican Party already has a majority on the Supreme Court, which increasingly attacks the rights of workers and consumers. If it captures the White House and both houses of Congress it will pass Draconian measures and deploy repressive tactics to stifle public dissent. All in the name of freedom. What to do?" "To me, the first thing to do is to explain in sympathetic ways what kind of pressures the white working class faces today, without caving in to tendencies within a segment of this class to demonize minorities. The second is to remind people forcefully how many times tax cuts for the rich and market deregulation have generated economic crises, starting with the Great Depression. The third, and most fundamental, is to challenge head on...

"Man robs bank so he can go to jail and get health care." Listen don't knock him, soon Americans will be committing crime to get an education, eat, and have a roof over their head. In the Great Depression they just didn't have these nice prison facilitates, anyone who thinks America hasn't progressed is dead wrong. Prisons are nice now compared to a republican world, and republicans love them as privatization will mean more cash in their coffers. The elderly are actually banning together into gangs and hoping for one of those nice white collar prisons when Ryan and cohorts screw them on Medicare and Social Security. Good idea, prison, don't you think? While it is rather odd that prisoners do better than working Americans don't knock it as one day you may need it. Prisons may just become the new retirement facilities, we'll need legislation for 55 and older prisons. And when welfare goes, no one will complain about a solid roof over their head and ni...

Reagan Raised Taxes Reagan Raised Taxes Reagan Raised Taxes Reagan Raised Taxes If Ronald Reagan came back today, he wouldn't know who Ronald Reagan was? The GOP has used Reagan to justify their bad policies for so long it is time republicans of sense realized who Reagan was and what he really did. And kudos to Ronnie for his bipartisan work on Social Security. "Faced with looming deficits, Reagan raised taxes again in 1983 with a gasoline tax and once more in 1984, this time by $50 billion over three years, mainly through closing tax loopholes for business. Despite the fact that such increases were anathema to conservatives–and probably cost Reagan’s successor, George H.W. Bush, reelection–Reagan raised taxes a grand total of four times just between 1982-84." Read article here.

I am not a moral relativist. I think the fact the richest nation on earth does not provide healthcare for all its citizens immoral. I do not accept the argument that in any society class, privilege, and wealth are the only determinants of good healthcare. I think that access to good healthcare is a good and a foundation for any arguments on individual freedom. How can any American argue that something that hurts children is just the way it is and the alternate too costly. How can a America without healthcare claim to be a religious, caring, freedom loving nation.

Cities can grow past control and businesses can stagnant and die. The following is a fascinating look at scale and what it means when applied to more than just living things. It is long but interesting. "The question is, as a scientist, can we take these ideas and do what we did in biology, at least based on networks and other ideas, and put this into a quantitative, mathematizable, predictive theory, so that we can understand the birth and death of companies, how that stimulates the economy?" A Conversation With Geoffrey West "The great thing about cities, the thing that is amazing about cities is as they grow, so to speak, their dimensionality increases. That is, the space of opportunity, the space of functions, the space of jobs just continually increases. And the data shows that. If you look at job categories, it continually increases. I'll use the word "dimensionality." It opens up. And in fact, one of the great things about cities is that it s...

"One of the ironies of Archie Bunker's worldview is that the 1930s, 40s, and 50s weren't nearly as conservative as he remembered them. The same faulty nostalgia drives the so-called conservatives of today's Republican Party and the Tea Party movement, who imagine those decades as a time when hard-working Americans pulled themselves up by their own bootstraps. It's true that Americans worked hard during these years. But the bootstraps stuff is nonsense. The 30s through 50s were the time of the New Deal, low-cost loans from the Federal Housing Administration, the GI Bill, huge subsidies for defense contractors during the Cold War and other industries that employed millions of people, massive transfer of funding from cities to the burgeoning suburbs, federal projects like interstate highway construction and the space program, generous investment in public schools, record union membership, high tax rates for corporations and the wealthy, good job benefits, and Social...