September 6, 2010, Hope. Change.
The President uses the occasion of this Labor Day holiday to announce... $100 billion in proposed tax cuts for the rich..., specifically an extension of a business research and development tax credits that were part of the "stimulus" package (which itself consisted of an awful lot of tax cuts for the rich business.)
Also on the table is another $50 billion in infrastructure spending.
Thing is, I kind of like Nancy Pelosi; I hate to see her thrown under the bus. But when the bogus way that unemployment was counted by the Clinton Administration in order to make itself look good even still is stuck close to ten per cent, and the real unemployment rate that Poppy Bush would have been charged with is around sixteen or seventeen per cent, and what would have been called unemployment in FDR's time is around an astonishing 22%... (the differences involve how we count people who might be in the work force but have given up looking)... these rather pathetic and tepid pronouncements (and on Labor Day no less)... seem designed not to change the political momentum right now, which favors the party-out-of-power as it is in a mid-term, but in a mid-term with a bad economy... does so with a vengeance.
Again, not that I think that with Barack Obama in the White House and Harry Reid in the Senate Majority Leader's office that any of this actually matters,.. but I will just say
that Nancy Pelosi, at least, has sincerely tried to pass an agenda that her constituents (and people like me) actually think would be a good idea... and yet, it looks like she will likely be tossed from the Speaker's chair, and it sure seems that the President from her party couldn't be happier about it.
I remember making the joke on this very blog that the Bush Administration's answer to everything from hurricanes to tainted beef recalls was ""invade Iraq and cut taxes for the rich." Yes, yes... "combat operations in Iraq are over" notwithstanding the occasional need for American forces to be involved in the occasional... combat... and yes, the one actual promise that Barack Obama has decided to keep happened to be to accelerate America's drive to oblivion via Afghanistan, the Graveyard of Empires... but... does anything seem even a little different? I mean, the Bush Administration's answer to observations when it's tax cuts did not lead to job growth was... you got it... "well, things would have been worse, but for the TAX CUTS."
Honestly, it was over for me over a year ago with the sell-outs on state secrets when I felt the body-blows from this Administration... not closing Guantanamo was anything but a surprise by that point. Yes, by no means has everything has been a disappointment, to be sure... but neither was that the case from the Bush Administration. I just can't differentiate what I'm seeing from the third term of the Bush Administration (or if you like, the fifth of Clinton, sixth of Poppy or eighth of Reagan)... i.e., corporate interests are served... the interests of the rest of us are... well... not.
Well... take care of that vegetable garden; keep the bike oiled, and the doors and windows in order, kiss your kids, feed your pets, and worry about yours and trouble yourself not with things beyond your control... because, it seems, the people who are responsible for what is beyond your control don't care about you, either. That's just how things are. We'll have to muddle through as best we can.
Happy Labor Day. This has been: Hope. Change.