The first thing I notice in Syracuse are the barbed wire fences. There’s a lot of new ones around lots of empty lots.

Syracuse shares a story with Flint, Michigan once a boom town, high industry, culture and progress. It once used to be a progressive place. Syracuse is remembered in the history books as a major hub of the underground railroad.

Despite recent polls indicating major support for candidates who could provide an alternative to the Democrats or Republicans, incidents against candidates running in the 2010 midterm election continue to persist. One of the most recent incidents is the arrest of California gubernatorial candidate Laura Wells.

Before the deep freeze starts here in the East-
A brief summary of another bummer of a summer…

First, a clear statement of what this is not. It is not a call to arms, a sly suggestion for “second amendment solutions,” a discussion of the French Revolution, or a call for violence of any kind. Rather it is a different perspective on the problems we discuss here endlessly and my take on the only viable solution.

Corporations given okay to trade slaves in ruling.

With so many moving parts, is America governable?

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.

Remember how it became a running joke that the surest way to see if George W. Bush was going to cut a group’s funding was if he’d done a recent photo-op with it? I mean, it happened again and again.

Well now, today we see Tom Emmer, a tax cut fanatic in the mold of George W. Bush and outgoing governor Tim Pawlenty, had a photo-op at a company that, if Emmer had had his way, would likely have gone under.

Those who read my posts (and there are a lot more of you than I ever thought there would be) know that I am not really a fan of divisive politics. This comes from the teachings of my Mom, who spent her political career reaching out to Republicans to get things done in Washtenaw County. Her argument was always that while you might hammer your opponents in today’s fight, you’re probably going to need them to get tomorrows work done. It is generally good advice, but it is predicated on the premise that your opponents want to get things done and really are working for the best solution for everyone.

Sadly Mom’s good advice can not be used right now. There has been too big a shift in power in the nation for us to look at the Republicans as any kind of honest partner in anything. The efforts of the folks like the ultra-wealthy Koch brothers have shifted our discourse so far to the right that things which would have had politicians thinking about spending more time with their families in the past can be said with a straight face and taken as serious.

From TomDispatch this morning: A remarkable and original exploration of the real damage and real cost to society of Big Oil’s depredations in the Gulf of Mexico and elsewhere — Mark Engler, “The Gulf at the Gas Station, Can We Calculate the True Cost of Our Dependence on Oil?”