The Senate Cut California’s Kids Out of the Stimulus
Unemployment in California is already near 10%. The catastrophe has begun.
As we Twitter around, Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger and California’s Democrats are slashing at California’s budget. A $40 billion dollar definitely no deficit is no joke. And since our Governor and the Republicans in the Legislature who have enough votes to prevent any budget from passing have been unwilling to pass any tax increase that doesn’t regressively punish the poor, you can bet one day soon Californians are going to wake up to a nightmare scenario.
Millions of people will be put out of work just as community colleges are cut. And that’s the good news. Adult education in some districts may be completely eliminated.
Californians one hope was the Stimulus bill supported by President Obama and Congressional Democrats. By now you know what happened. To appease three Republican lawmakers, who are scared shitless by Obama’s numbers anyway, $80 billion dollars or 600,000 jobs were cut from the bill.
The bulk of the cuts were made to prospective funding to support education spending by the states. This crucial money isn’t onloy going to create jobs and opportunities for kids and laid-off workers, it will save jobs. Lots of jobs.
California’s predicament foreshadows the problems the rest of the country will face soon. Services are stressed and politicians are unwilling to ask the rich to pay more in taxes. It’s an untenable situation.
Governor Schwarzenegger, speak to your Republican colleagues. Let them know that their ironic attempts to teach us about spending will cost California too dearly. Remind your peers that the Republicans let the Depression go for years before taking any serious action. See if you can get them to remember what the Hoover brand did for the GOP.
Sending money to the states now is crucial to this economy, and Washington can’t let California go down the drain. If three Republicans can cost us the educational future of our most vulnerable citizens, then we are begging for a depression, a depression that will cost our grandkids more than government spending ever could.
The Congress needs to restore the state funding for education. And they need to do it now.
President Obama, Please Don’t Get Fooled Again
Hopefully this week Barrack Obama and his White House learned a lesson.
After spending the salad days of his presidency meeting unconditionally with Republicans, our President was completely blindsided by a coordinated full-scale attack on his stimulus program.
Did Obama forget that the same maniacs who ran policy for the Bush Administration are now running the anti-Stimulus offensive?
Obama’s open hand was met with a Republican clenched fist as they parroted rhetoric the Obama 08 campaign would have combated and quelled faster than Ted Haggard could put on a pair of chaps.
The good news is we know the Republican talking points don’t work when they’re met with a coordinated rebuttal and counter punch.
Fianlly, Obama is placing the blame for this crisis back at the GOP’s feet. And he needs to trumpet how embarrassed these people should be to offer the same BS that got us here to get us out.
When FDR was elected there were already breadlines because the GOP doesn’t know to make government work. Obama needs to say he’s not willing to wait till unemployment hits 10%. He has a plan, a plan the American people demand. The GOP better get with the program or face the consequences that other Hooverites had to suffer.
Speed Dating
The birthday gifts my mother gave me were more like a series of insults than a present. A new outfit with an empire waist to hide my belly. A gift certificate to a salon she found on Yelp that specializes in curly hair. And one VIP admission to the Jewish Shalom Speed Dating event in Albany last Wednesday.
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Fiscal Economic Bang for the Buck
One year $ change in real GDP for a given $ reduction in federal tax revenue or increase
in spending
Tax Cuts
Non-refundable lump-sum tax rebate 1.02
Refundable lump-sum tax rebate 1.26
Temporary tax cuts
payroll tax holiday 1.29
Across the board tax cut 1.03
Accelerated depreciation 0.27
Permanent tax cuts
Extend alternative minimum tax patch 0.48
Make Bush income tax cuts permanent 0.29
Make dividend and capital gains tax cuts permanent 0.37
Cut in corporate tax rate 0.30
Spending Increases
Extending UI benefits 1.64
Temporary increase in food stamps 1.73
General aid to state governments 1.36
Increased infrastructure spending 1.59
Source: Moody’s Economy.com (PDF)
Via Rachel Maddow’s Twitter. Winky emoticon.
Guess What: You’re Not a Perfectionist
Recently North America has become overrun with perfectionists.
Everybody is a perfectionist. And because of that, nobody does anything. Why? Because they can’t stand not being perfect. It’s tragic.
You think with so many perfectionists we’d have a much more perfect world. But instead it just kind of makes makes us lazy, incompetent and slightly wussy.
But here’s the good news. You’re not a perfectionist. Your problem is that you think perfection exists—and whatever it is in your mind that supposedly is perfect is what you’re supposed to be. You’re not a perfectionist. You may be a bit of an arrogant dickwad. But you’re not a perfectionist.
From now on, a perfectionist is ONLY someone who continually tries to make things perfect. And guess what, you don’t want to be that.
Martha Stewart is a perfectionist. So was Jeffrey Dahmer in a certain way. Hitler too. Perfectionists are people so arrogant to believe that what that deem perfect should not be denied to them. It’s a double-negative clusterfuck and there are better excuses for not being all you can be. You’re picky, sensitive. Choose one of the other excuses. Be accurate. Do it just because maybe you’re trying to be a perfectionist for once in your silly, sloppy life.
Why You Aren’t a Perfectionist
1. You’re even a little fat. There that eliminates almost everyone.
2. You didn’t save your report cards.
3. You brush less than 2 minutes at a time, two times a day.
4. You believe that some skidmarks are inevitable.
5. You’ve ever waked and baked.
6. You’ve had sex for under $500.
7. You’re not Mormon.
8. You know the world continues when you close your eyes.
9. You stop a list at nine, knowing a perfect list always has ten items.
What My Mother Used to Look Like
Aside from hate speech and porn spam, I really don’t get many comments. So I try to reply when I do.
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My mother is so upset about Gaza.
My mother is so upset about Gaza. She and Ron were going to go on a couples’ caravan through Israel in March, and now her havurah is having second thoughts. Gail thinks they all should just go to Laughlin, but my mother already shopped for Israel. Read more »
Baby College: Stimulus That Gives Poor Kids a Better Chance
Baby College—as conceived by Geoffrey Canada and the Harlem Children Zone—has a real chance of making a significant dent on generational poverty in our time. What we’re learning about education says that the first five years of a child’s life are crucial to a kid’s success, and Baby College makes sure the parents are up to the task of giving poor kids the good stuff middle class kids have been getting for generations.
It’s an amazing project and for fraction of the price of some tax cuts we could be giving poor kids a real shot and creating good jobs for educators across America. If it were done right, the program could be subsidized considerably by more affluent parents who could afford and would be willing to pay for the program.
Give me one good reason—besides debt and tax cut mania—that universal Baby College should not be part of the 2009 stimulus.
The First Annual Electro-Acoustic Music Festival
The future begins now. Correction… Read more »
I Haven’t the Strength to Give Up
After my mother killed herself, I lived with my aunt for a year. I got the bedroom of her one-bedroom apartment and she took the foldout couch/bed, though the mattress was only as thick and cushioned as a little girl’s thigh.
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