http://www.washingtonmonthly.com/political-animal-a/2013_12/class_warfare_roundup048294.php
Yesterday budget agreement for next year just passed Congress, and it doesn’t have an extension of unemployment insurance. Senate Dems will take up the extension after the break, but it probably it won’t pass the GOP-controlled House.
I have often written about the Republican crusade for austerity, but the truth isn’t quite that simple. Austerity does, maddeningly, define the space of acceptable budget discourse; both parties are culturally trapped by it. However, real bone-deep austerians are entirely concerned with the budget deficit, and so don’t mind raising taxes in the service of more revenue.
But Republicans, unlike the UK’s Conservative Party for example, are almost totally intolerant of tax-side austerity. The obvious truth is that the GOP doesn’t care about the budget deficit even slightly, and instead wants to 1) cut benefits for the bottom half of the income distribution and 2) cut taxes on the rich. It’s top-down class warfare all the way down.
1. North Carolina has been viciously savaging its unemployed, and the results are exactly what liberals predict. Back in July the state cut unemployment benefits from 99 weeks to 19, and reduced the weekly payout from $535 to $350. Here’s Evan Soltas on what happened next:
North Carolina’s labor force began to shrink. The state is experiencing the largest labor-force contraction it’s ever seen — 77,000 fewer people were working or searching for work this October than a year ago. To get unemployment insurance, you have to actively search for work and prove that you’re doing so. The drop in the labor force suggests that this incentive was effective. Without it, more people just give up.
and they speak of an abysmal jobs problem, but they are largely the reason, kinda hard to promise employment when you are systematically creating it
2. Meanwhile, the ultra-wealthy are shirking stupendous quantities of inheritance taxes through financial chicanery. The numbers are in the $100 billion per year range. A Bloomberg report laughably calls these tax loopholes “accidental,” but the truth is Republicans love stuff like this. Any effort to sic the IRS on these people would never, ever pass this House — that’spunishing success, remember? Here’s one example in the form of Sheldon Adelson:
By shuffling his company stock in and out of more than 30 trusts, he’s given at least $7.9 billion to his heirs while legally avoiding about $2.8 billion in U.S. gift taxes since 2010, according to calculations based on data in Adelson’s U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission filings.
this is one reason they are fighting and cheating you out of your vote to keep the Benjamins flowing. remember with all that cheddar floating within our political establishments we still beat them down twice not including all the legislation he has been able to pass without and not offered help by the republicans. sure they are pissed but because they keep getting OutBama'd and not as many haters as they thought and they are dwindling as we speak.
