A dystopic look at two lives sold in the name of Constant War.

This week Republicans made a Pledge to America in a bid to win votes in the mid-term elections. The GOP promised to indulge the rich with tax breaks and penalize the middle class with rescinded health care benefits and eliminated regulations protecting workers. When Republicans ran Herbert Hoover, they pledged a “chicken in every pot.” They gave the U.S. the Great Depression instead. The most recent Republican president gave the U.S. the Great Recession, and the GOP has responded by downsizing its promise to America. This time it’s just an egg — a rotten egg hurled at the middle class.

Conservatives, including those of the Tea Party variety, aren’t “anti-government.” In most respects they are pro-government to the point of authoritarianism. What they really oppose is any form of cooperative or collective solution to the problems of a complex industrial (or post-industrial) society – especially when the beneficiaries are people they regard with suspicion or fear.

Barack Obama and Bill Clinton — Have they given Americans the good government they deserve?

There is something about Washington and taxes that seems to destroy the ability of law makers to do simple math. This seems to afflict Republicans and Blue Dog Democrats the worst. The Washington Post is reporting about the roll out of the Republicans Orwellianly named tax plan, the Tax Hike Prevention Act. Sen. Mitch McConnell (the man voted most likely to turn into a snapping turtle in our lifetimes) has put the idea on the table permanently extend all of the Bush era tax cuts, including the ones for the ultra wealthy, that top 2% of all earners.

From the WaPo :

"We have a spending problem. We spend too much. We don’t have a taxing problem. We don’t tax too little," McConnell told reporters Tuesday. "And if we want to begin to get ourselves out of this economic trough that we’re in, the only way to do that is to grow the private sector."

This is insane. We are currently collecting tax revenues at the same we did in 1950. In 2009 taxes were 9.2% of all personal income, just like it was when Harry Truman was president. A lot of things have changed since that time, the population has doubled and unlike now, in 1950 the United States was running a surplus. For Senator McConnell to say we are taxing too much is just another example of Republican bizzaro world, where black is white and up is down.

With unemployment so high and middle class job prospects so low, this Labor Day is overcast by gloom. We can surrender to it. We can rant with Glenn Beck and kick the dog. Alternatively, we can join with our neighbors, employed and unemployed, our foreclosed-on children, our elderly parents and together create a grassroots groundswell that gives government no choice but to respond to our needs, the needs of working people.

While black political leaders and activists focus on turning off Fox News, and clownish disputes with Tea Partyers and the likes of Sarah Palin and Glenn Beck, are they missing something more important? Can any good come from a Democratic president reaching across the aisle to team up with Republicans for a bipartisan “fiscal reform” that targets “entitlements,” meaning Medicaid, Medicare, and Social Security? Is the silence of black leadership on the president’s Cat Food Commission still more evidence of their irrelevance?

Though we live in a world of sound bites and 140-character-driven narratives, life is simply more complex than this.

Building Bridges: Your Community and Labor Report, National Edition
Produced by Ken Nash and Mimi Rosenberg

Republican Representative Paul Ryan ranks high on the Washington Post’s list of serious budget analysts. Unfortunately, like the Post, he has difficulty with the truth