Senator Michael Bennet speaks to campaign volunteers, encouraging everyone to step up their efforts to get out the vote. And he’s right: we don’t want to get up on Nov. 3 and find that Ken Buck with his extremist views on women’s rights is now our Senator.
Get ready to vote, because they are ready
Watch them burn
The most shocking story of the day is up at Think Progress: Tennessee County’s Subscription-Based Firefighters Watch As Family Home Burns Down . Seriously, Obion County has a subscription-based fire department that only covers those who subscribe, rather than the normal sort that is paid out of taxes and covers everyone. So firefighters came to the fire and watched as that family’s home burned to the ground. They hadn’t been paid, so they refused to help.
It’s the perfect example of life under a libertarian, big business conservative vision of life, where we have no mutual responsibilities to our community and it to us. It’s everyone for himself, and the devil take the hindmost. I think it’s disgusting.
Wildlife Friday
Tax cut receipt
Via Ezra Klein, I found this link to a Third Way proposal (PDF file) for a taxpayer receipt that would show how your portion of federal taxes is split among different government functions. This is the example they give:
I love this idea! I think it is educational, perhaps even mind-blowing, to look at the details of where our taxes dollars are spent and in what proportion. When you think about the federal budget, the numbers are so huge that it is easy to be confused about the proportion that goes to the military, or to parks. Even though the budget for parks may sound large in total dollars, you can see that as a proportion of your taxes it doesn’t amount to much.
The one thing I would add is a percentage alongside the dollar amounts. I think that would be educational as well. It’s not hard to tell that Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid take up almost half the budget, but it might be useful to spell out that Foreign Aid amounts to less than 1%. Anyway, more information is always good, as far as I’m concerned.
Edit to add: And today Ezra finds that Kareen Shaya made a calculator that lets you plug your own numbers in and tells you where your money went. Neat! (Hmm, doesn’t work for me. 0 of my taxes went to the military!
Tax Cut fight
I like this very much. It’s the clearest presentation I’ve seen of what’s at stake in the fight over the Bush-era tax cuts. I wish the White House had put this out weeks ago. Maybe then I wouldn’t have heard so much misinformation in the discussions on this subject on the news channels.
Unions and the Tea Party are united on trade
When it comes to free trade treaties, workers in this country are very skeptical. In fact a new NBC/WSJ poll finds that 65% of union members and 61% of Tea Party sympathizers say that free trade has hurt the U.S.
I think there are some sectors in the U.S. that have benefited from free trade treaties. Certainly stockholders and CEOs have become fabulously wealthy as they chased cheap labor and poor environmental standards around the globe. But the race to the bottom has hurt U.S. workers, who are now consistently being told that they need to accept the “new reality” of flattened income and stagnant living standards.
I wish we could somehow reach past the cultural issues that divide workers on the left and the right, and see the basic economic issues that affect us all. Yes, there is class warfare going on in this country, and the wealthy are winning it.
If you only had $4.33 a day for food…
What would you eat? What would you do without? And how would you feel if that extravagant sum was suddenly decreased to only $3.75? That’s the amount food stamp recipients will receive if Congress lowers food stamp benefits. In order to boost state Medicaid and education funds Congress has proposed to cut $26 billion from food stamp programs, sort of taking from the poor and working class in order to help the poor and working class. It’s a very odd decision, to say the least.
The New York Coalition Against Hunger has a post that illustrates how much food you can buy with $4.33/day, and what you have to give up if you only have $3.75. Here’s five days of food on the cheaper budget:
Note there’s no butter or salt for those potatoes, no flour and oil to make fried chicken, no fresh fruits or vegetables at all. The Coalition offers a “Food Stamp Challenge” to everyone, to try and live for five days on a typical food stamp budget. You can read reports on their blog from participants who’ve tried it. Most write about how scary it is to go to bed still hungry, and how tired you get of eating the same one or two things every day. And all note that it was very difficult to drop to the new, lower allowance.
At first I thought that the difference between the two daily allowances of $4.33 and $3.75 wasn’t that much—but 58 cents per day can buy two oranges and now I feel like that is huge.
And that’s from people who are in the program voluntarily, and know they’ll be out of it soon. More than 14% of U.S. citizens now live below the official poverty line, the highest rate since 1994. This is not a small issue. Many of our fellow citizens are going to bed hungry at least occasionally. Children are not getting the food they need to grow up strong, and no one is getting a diet that will keep them healthy.
Still, $26 billion is a lot of money, and Congress is trying hard to balance the budget. So we have to make tough choices, right? Then let’s at least note that $26 billion is only 4.33 MIA units, or “Months in Afghanistan”, at $6 billion per month. And we’ve been there for nearly ten years, while more and more of our people go hungry. Why do we always seem to balance the budget on the backs of the poor and needy?
Hat tip to the Iowa Independent, which has been following this story all along.
Why are Democrats dissatisfied?
Stephen Colbert speaks truth to power
I am not a religious person, but I know Colbert is, so I suspect that his study of gospel informed this profound moment in his Congressional testimony on migrant workers last week. Despite our different frames, I found this bit of his statement, when he moved out of character, emotionally deep and true.