It’s been nearly 35 years since we’ve had a “tax and spend” political party. During the 1970s, the Democrats gave up fighting the Republicans about the “tax and spend” label, and the Carter Administration tried to escape from that charge by making very serious attempts to balance the budget. During the 1980s, more and more Democrats emphasized their concern for reducing deficits and balancing budgets as a way of distinguishing themselves from the Reagan Administration’s unprecedented peacetime deficits. This didn’t work for them during Reagan’s time, but they finally were able to use the balanced budget old-time religion game to get George Bush to violate his no new taxes pledge, which both contributed to the Bush recession and, as a further consequence, was a big reason why Bill Clinton was elected.

I’d love to be guaranteed good healthcare, a decent paying job, and a roof over my head. If only it were a possibility in this United States of America…

Given the problems the United States has been having and the unnecessary, misplaced, and wrong-headed, but very real angst of people about becoming insolvent if we continue to increase the size of the deficit, I find myself wondering why we have not turned to another time-tested and very effective New Deal solution to the problem of growing employment. That solution is the Fair Labor Standards Act.

Seeing as how the word “Fascism” is being bandied about lately, I thought I’d add something to the mix:

“The first truth is that the liberty of a democracy is not safe if the people tolerate the growth of private power to a point where it becomes stronger than their democratic state itself. That, in its essence, is fascism—ownership of government by an individual, by a group, or by any other controlling private power.”

— Franklin D. Roosevelt

Think about it.

America faces an actual unemployment rate of about fifteen percent. Currently, the “official unemployment rate stands at 9.5% for June of 2010. The additional five percent are people who have fallen off the unemployment role, or given up looking for work. I have a hard time understanding that whole “given up looking for work” mantra. I don’t think it describes what’s really going on.

We have always had around a five percent unemployment rate. For whatever reason, some people seem to return through the unemployment door more than others. Republicans call them lazy; and maybe they are. But they still only make up five percent of the population. That doesn’t explain Republican disdain for the other ten percent of people who are out of work. I think it’s a mistake to confuse that ten percent with the five percent who might realistically be called “unmotivated”.

As we all now know, a second alleged job ‘dangle’ was made by the White House to a potential Senate Primary candidate – this time it was Andrew Romanoff to prevent his primary challenge to Appointed Senator Michael Bennet.
Republicans like Darrel Issa (who it now seems is less than honest about his military record) are trying to gin up an attack on the President over this non job offer. Is there something there? I doubt it. But the fact that the White House has been meddling in primaries by the clearing the field for Kirsten Gillibrand and by endorsing Conservative Dems like Arlen Specter, Blance Lincoln, and now Michael Bennet for Senate races is both historically unwise and potentially dangerous to Obama.
If you are like me, you can see that there is a distinct difference between the Obama organization on the campaign, and the Obama White House.
I smell a rat, and he is Rahm Emmanuel. If Obama is as smart as I know he is, he will learn from FDR’s mistake and change course in regard to Rahm.

The executive order Obama released today effectively rescinds rights the Supreme Court previously extended to over half the people in America. What a cruel and bitter joke identity politics has played upon us all. Today America’s first person of color in the Oval Office robbed a greater part of our neighbors of their rights than any President since the Great White Fathers in their White House made war upon the First Peoples. Hey – at least Obama’s consistent. He’s the finance and insurance sectors’ faithful servant. The Hamilton Project chose their candidate wisely.

For all practical purposes, Obama’s proposed executive order effectively rescinds rights the Supreme Court has extended to over half the people in America. What a cruel and bitter joke identity politics has played upon us all. America’s first person of color in the Oval Office is ready to rob a greater part of our neighbors of their rights than at any time since the Great White Fathers in their White House made war upon the First Peoples.

Historian Stanley Kutler is best known for his role with the Nixon Presidency and Nixon’s infamous tapes. But in a recent column, the Professor Emeritus at the University of Wisconsin, Madison, nails the Obama Presidency.

The Republicans are fond of saying “You can’t bite the hand that feeds you.” This, of course, is in reference to the Progressive tax system in America, and that line of thought is directly responsible for the flurry of tax cuts for the wealthiest Americans since 1980. In 1979, the top marginal tax rate was 70% for any earned income above $215,400, which, with inflation, would be somewhere above %500,000 today.

Beginning in 1981, and ending with the Bush Tax cuts in 2002, that marginal rate fell to 35% on income over $311,950. In 1979, the top bracket earned forty times more income than the average American. Today, that gap has widened to 500:1. Average wages are stagnant, we have ten percent unemployment, and nearly twenty percent Under-employment, with one in five American men out of work. How to fix it…