"I would find it unimaginable if it wasn't actually happening."

[dajoki]

republicans say raising taxes on the wealthy would hinder Gulf Coast revival. HUH?
----------------------------------------------------------------------

NYT
http://www.nytimes.com/2005/10/11/politics/11poverty.html?ei=5094&en=985822270f6ea08b&hp=&ex=1129003200&adxnnl=1&partner=homepage&adxnnlx=1128998003-5hp1hDkYoTaPD7lo/rf2dw

Liberal Hopes Ebb in Post-Storm Poverty Debate

By JASON DePARLE
Published: October 11, 2005

WASHINGTON, Oct. 10 - As Hurricane Katrina put the issue of poverty onto the national agenda, many liberal advocates wondered whether the floods offered a glimmer of opportunity. The issues they most cared about - health care, housing, jobs, race - were suddenly staples of the news, with President Bush pledged to "bold action."

But what looked like a chance to talk up new programs is fast becoming a scramble to save the old ones.

Conservatives have already used the storm for causes of their own, like suspending requirements that federal contractors have affirmative action plans and pay locally prevailing wages. And with federal costs for rebuilding the Gulf Coast estimated at up to $200 billion, Congressional Republican leaders are pushing for spending cuts, with programs like Medicaid and food stamps especially vulnerable.

"We've had a stunning reversal in just a few weeks," said Robert Greenstein, director of the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, a liberal advocacy group in Washington. "We've gone from a situation in which we might have a long-overdue debate on deep poverty to the possibility, perhaps even the likelihood, that low-income people will be asked to bear the costs. I would find it unimaginable if it wasn't actually happening."

[texpatriot2004]

1. Republicans say raising taxes on the wealthy would hinder Gulf

Coast revival.

I am sure that they do say that the greedy criminal bastards.

[dajoki]

2. with a straight face n/t

[intheflow]

3. Nominated.

This is important. The people are not behind this, business is. And the people know the truth. It'll all come back to haunt their conservative little souls, one way or another.

*Edited for really bad typo.

[dajoki]

4. how much more can low income people bear?

"We've gone from a situation in which we might have a long-overdue debate on deep poverty to the possibility, perhaps even the likelihood, that low-income people will be asked to bear the costs."

[mom cat]

17. And where are the Dem? Why are they not screaming? Have they written off

the poor too? The Dems should be united as a single voice on this. Since the slaughter of the natives of this land, nothing has highlighted the utter contempt that the ruling class shows for the poor. If we do not make a united effort as a party to voice our moral indignation at this utter betrayal of the poor of New Orleans, then we are as complicit in the betrayal as the worst of the neocons.
What happened in New Orleans was a premeditated catastrophe aimed at the poor. The years preceding it were full of intentional funding cut for the very things that would have made a difference: levee construction, wetlands restoration and a viable emergency preparedness agency. All of these were stripped to the bone because the ruling class has written off the poor.
And now that this has happened..they are escalating their drive to drive the poor into utter destitution..And the middle class is next in their sites. If the Democratic Party does not stand up and make a stand for the poor in their hour of greatest need, do you really think they will be there for you?

[Dora]

27. Amen to that. n/t

[mom cat]

32. Then "We the people" had better rise up and make Katrina our rallying cry.

Our request for a Katina Forum is still on the table. Why has there been no responce? If DU cannot organize to be the voice for the outrage, then who the hell will? We deserve an answer.

[ladjf]

5. Remember, in the Republican reverse Universe, the truth is

exactly the opposite of what they say.

[dajoki]

6. like the bizzaro world n/t

[mom cat]

31. Thanks for posting this important issue. The poor have been screwed and

we are all next. Katrina laid bare all that is wrong with the agenda of the power elite. We must make this our goal line stand, or we will all end up like the poor destitute dispossessed from New Orleans. We must come up with a better agenda for the planet or we can kiss it goodby.

[dajoki]

33. we all will be next...

the division this administration has created between the rich and poor is just way too much for words. and the middle class is going down the tubes just as quickly.

[kestrel91316]

7. "Only The Little People Pay Taxes", Episode 2

[LittleClarkie]

8. How can we help the poor? I know,

let's get them some playmates so they won't feel lonely.

How do you think the Republican strategy of getting more minority voters is going, eh?

And when the riots start, they'll have the gall to wonder why. Goodness, the poor surely are lawless, aren't they.

[Savannah Progressive]

9. I honestly don't know what bothers me more

I don't know if it's the audacity of the Repugniks, or the shock on our side. What makes any of us think the Repugs will slow their bankrupting of the Nation much less stop it? How many times have we declared the repugs dead politically only to be caught off ballance the next day as they do something else? My friends, you can't beat them in the press. They don't care about the polls, if anything they push harder when down in the polls. They are doing as much damage as they can until pushed out of power, and diebold will never allow that. We can't celebrate low poll numbers, it doesn't even phase them.

[AllyCat]

13. Welcome to DU SavannahProg...and you are right.

This is exactly the kind of thing we have all come to expect out of the Repugs. As soon as Bush* started talking about "poverty" in the late days of the Katrina aftermath, we all went..."hmmm, wonder where this is going?". Well, this is where it was going. They were all there trying to figure out how to make a buck on disaster.

Cashing in on tragedy. That's the Repug way. Nothing else would or should have been expected out of these bleak souls.

[mom cat]

20. "We the people" must keep the fight alive. And Dems are selling us out

too. Where is the moral outrage. Now that the superdome is empty, is it all over. Damn it. The flood of New Orleans was calculated, premeditated murder of the poor.
The foreknowledge of the disaster is legendary and massive. The attempts to mitigate the disaster in earlier administrations is well documented. The brazen gutting of those attempts by the Bush administration are common knowledge. Where are the voices in our own party (with a few notable exceptions) that are screaming in moral outrage? The flooding of New Orleans was murder.

Has the insatiable power quest by the elites in both parties have written off the poor?
edited for spelling

[ClintonTyree]

28. Ramen to that........

Welcome to DU, Savannah Progressive. :hi: BTW, I love the Savannah area.
The importance of making sure all the votes are counted and for the correct person cannot be overstated. By '06 we must have all Diebold machines off line, either that or the codes must be open and accessible for all to see. We cannot leave things the way they are or the slugs will continue to steal election after election. It's up to each and every one of us to make sure that our local voting machines are accurate and reliable.
I have a feeling you'll be keeping your eyes open for election fraud in your area, as we all must wherever we are. :woohoo: Now let's go get the bastards!

[kitkat65]

10. Sounds like robbing Peter to pay Paul. Gee, maybe Bush IS a Christian! n/t

[orwell]

11. The net result...

---of zero political power, a poor messaging strategy, and broadcast and print media dominated by your opponents.

What do they expect.

[Totally Committed]

12. This situation, I am sorry to say, is once again partly the fault

of the Democrats. How, you ask? They, once again, sat on their hands and did nothning, and said nothing while the Republicans quickly took they chance to dismantle many programs for the benefit of corporate interests and big business. Some Democrats even voted with them as they did the dismantling.

Increasingly, by the day, I am becoming more and more disillusioned and disgusted with this Party. For the most part.... I see it going in directions I am sure are wrong. I see it remaining mute when it should be screaming. I see it remaing polite when it should be definitely impolite as hell and pointing fingers.

There is a point at which something become unviable. It is called "The Tipping Point". We, as a Party, are dangerously close to that place right now. I feel as if I am at the edge of the abyss. Like it or not, you are all there with me. How the hell do we get this Party to turn itself around, and do what is right? Personally, if this situation continues much longer, I will not wait for them to commit the suicide I see coming with the nomination process for 2008. I may just disengage now and forget about it. We will be doomed anyway.

It is not possible to be optomistic any longer.

[Asgaya Dihi]

15. Glad someone is saying that.

Yes, the situation is the responsibility of both parties. The Republicans are pretty disgusting with their urge to cash in on the hurricanes and on the war, but the poverty was built by both parties.

One in eight young black men between the ages of 25 and 29 is *currently* in prison or jail, a full 12.6% of the total population in that age range. We lock up our black population at a rate 5.8 times what segregated South Africa did in 1993 before the system fell. That's not something that happened overnight, it's something that's been developing for decades now and under the rule of both parties.

Quick stats with links to more detail
http://www.prisonsucks.com/
Charts at the bottom of the document
http://www.sentencingproject.org/pdfs/1044.pdf

All those mandatory minimums, those three strike laws, those tough on crime and anti drug measures we fell in love with to show we were as tough as anyone didn't come without a cost. Now, we're seeing that cost. It's not new though, it's just visible for a change and both side built it, year after year, without ever pausing to look at the results of their actions. We've decimated whole generations in some neighborhoods, taken fathers and families apart then we wonder why those neighborhoods can't pick themselves up. One in eight, currently in prison or jail, with many many more who can't get past the record of it. Loss of housing, of education, of jobs, of families, and then we wonder at the crime and gangs.

Bush did cocaine, so did Freud, Carl Sagan smoked pot and his wife was an official at NORML, so did Clinton and Gore. If any one of them had been imprisoned that would have ended their hopes. You can recover from drugs, but not from prison.

[mom cat]

18. I don't see Kennyboy Lay anywhere near a jail. How long has it been?

The responce to Katrina from the Dems has been worse than shabby. With a few notable exceptions, it has been business as usual.If we do not make this our goal line stand, then our party stands for nothing. Is the Democratic party just the left hand puppet of the same puppet master...the one designed to cool out the mark, to take the peoples passion and snarl it up. Where are the promices I heard at the Democratic Convention? Damn it . Where is the Party I believed in?

[dajoki]

38. i have been asking that...

same question for years. where is kenny boy?

[dajoki]

19. i agree with most of what you say...

our party has sat by and let the repugs run roughshod over our country. this is inexcusable. like you i feel dangerously close to the edge right now, but i will not jump over. i know it is very difficult to even try to be optomistic, but i just can't give up hope.

[mom cat]

24. I am screaming inside at our party too.Katrina should be our rallying cry!

The sellout of the poor has been the agenda of the neocons since before Bush stole the office. But he could not have the power to do what he is doing without substantial complicity from the Dems. The Dems should be screaming about this from the rooftops. If not, then the dems are selling us out too.
By the time it gets to you and yours, it will be too late.Do not say you were not warned.
We must keep up the pressure on the Dems to stop the destruction of this country. We are being milked dry. And the same ideology that is bleeding us to death is doing the same thing to the earth. We may already be beyond the tipping point in to runaway ecological collapse. then all of us are going to be treated by the elitists with the same contempt at they showed for the poor of New Orleans.
Welcome to Planet New Orleans unless we fight like hell.

[windbreeze]

14. I keep waiting

for the revolution to begin....what's holding it up? When do people realize if we don't take it to the streets soon...they will have everything in place, to keep us from doing it at all?
windbreeze

[dajoki]

42. i thought we had...

something going there with Cindy Sheehan, but the MSM muzzled her quickly.

[LiberalArkie]

16. Everyone forgets that there are no liberals in Congress

to fight for these causes anymore. They all became Reagonites.

[dajoki]

41. they're afraid to ...

stand up to those in power, afraid to lose elections.

[zann725]

21. But It IS. This morning on "Today Show" Shrub & Pickles stood idly by

as Habitat for Humanities hammered away at a future home for a hurricane victim (family). There Shrub stood, grinding that jaw of his at least FOUR times when Matt asked the tough questions.

In what was clearly a photo op of Shrub's "compassion" for the poor, neither he nor Pickles lifted a hammer to at least PROVE even a hint of that compassion. But I guess lifting a hammer for HFTH is significantly "harder work" than brush cutting at Crawford. I also did NOT observe the family receiving the HFTH home doing any "work" at all on the home. My understanding is that helping building said home is a REQUIREMENT for receipt of same.

Most UNcompassionate of all was when Shrub actually brought out the family/recipient of this rough shell of a future house...and handed them the keys...pointing out in the empty shell where the livingroom, bedrooms WOULD BE some day??? The shell of a house offered to this unfortunate family had no insulation, electrical wiring OR ROOF...and thus was about as adequate to shield and protect this family from the cold and dangers of the outside world...as the budget cuts in Food Stamps and Medicaid, etc.
Though I guess Shrub hasn't noticed in the warmth of the WH at night lately, that Winter is upon us in quite chilly, damp nights lately. Certainly NOT warm enough to live in a shell of a HFTH house, OR a tent somewhere...where MOST hurrican victims still remain..while Shrub donates millions and other aid to Pakistan victims.

[dajoki]

23. he just made his eighth photo-op trip...

to NO. if he parked that 747 for awhile along with the rest of his entourage they could probably heat a small city for a few months.

[Throckmorton]

22. I am fairly sure that Czar Nicholas II didn't see it coming either. N/T

[LSK]

25. no taxes on the rich, no military cuts

But everything else is fair game. IM SO SICK OF THIS FUCKING CRAP!!!!

:grr:

[dajoki]

29. but cut every...

social program that helps the poor. dirty bastards, i can't stand it anymore.

[Arkansas Granny]

39. They've heard too many stories about the "welfare queens"

with their Cadillacs. They see someone needing Food Stamps and Medicaid and assume that they are in that position by choice. They think that the very programs that serve as a safety net are the cause of the problem. If poor people didn't have these programs to feed and house them, then they would take more responsibility and get themselves a better job. Simple reasoning, right?

While there are some, unfortunately, who abuse the system, not everyone who takes advantage of social programs adopts them as a way of life. The gap between rich and poor is growing. More and more families are slipping into poverty each year and the number of uninsured persons is growing all the time. Unless you are personally affected by these circumstances, it is hard for anyone to imagine the hardships that face a lot of American families who are trying to make it on lowpaying jobs.

[ClintonTyree]

26. Yeah, the rich pricks are creating SOOOO many jobs....

with their obscene tax cuts, aren't they? :eyes: If there's ever any opening for the Slugs to screw over the poor they'll jump on it faster than Halliburton on a no-bid contract. This country has to be turned around and if Americans have the least bit of pride left in this country they'll vote Democratic in '06 and '08.
I'm beginning to think there are no countries anymore, just corporations hiding behind flags, creating the illusion of Democracy to keep The People fat, happy and complacent.
Republicans aren't capable of taking care of The People, they're only in it for themselves and their corporate masters. There's more than a few supposed Democrats on that train as well, and we must make sure they're not trusted with our Democracy, or what's left of it.

[dajoki]

30. if the people don't...

wake up SOON there will be nothing left of it.

[Peace Patriot]

34. Two far rightwing Bushite corporations--Diebold and ES&S--counted...

...80% of the nation's votes using SECRET, PROPRIETARY programming code, with not even a meager paper trail in one third of the country (let alone a real ballot backup) and miserably inadequate auditing and recount provisions everywhere.

That SECRET, PROPRIETARY vote tabulation, by Bush's buds, is the ONLY evidence that Bush won. All other evidence points to a Kerry win (a landslide, actually) including the national and state exit polls (which the TV networks FALSIFIED, late on election day, to "fit" the "official result" of Diebold's and ES&S's secret formulae), voter reg figures (a Dem blowout success in new registration, nearly 60/40), data analysis showing weird, anomalous numbers favoring Bush all over the map (but especially in the east coast time zone, and in swing states), evidence of machine tampering (many reports of touchscreens changing Kerry votes to Bush votes), preelection approval polls (with Bush numbers so low that Zogby said he couldn't win), long term issue polls (showing 60% to 70% of Americans in disagreement with every major Bush policy, foreign and domestic), postelection approval polls (Bush sinking like the Titanic, from an unprecedented low of 49% of the very day of his inauguration), and on and on and on.

It couldn't be clearer that the 2004 election was fiddled. It was all set up for it, including making audits and recounts virtually impossible.

And, given the total non-transparency--and partisan OWNERSHIP--of our election system, after this conversion to extremely insecure, unreliable and hackable electronics (with $4 billion from Bush's "pod people" in Congress), WHAT DO YOU EXPECT?

Most of Congress was ALSO "elected" this way--with complete non-transparency.

The question is not: Why are our elected representatives robbing us blind? The question is: How did this illegitimate Congress, and illegitimate President, get put into place? And, why has there been not one word of objection to Bushite SECRET, PROPRIETARY vote tabulation by the Democratic Party leadership?

I have my thoughts: Bipartisan corruption of state/county election officials in the billion dollar electronic voting boondoggle.* And, too many War Democrats among the leaders, who didn't want a president who was beholden to the antiwar grass roots.

The Bushites are motivated by greed. That is what they do, they take advantage of, or manufacture, opportunities for looting. Some Dem leaders are also war profiteers, or closely tied in with the war profiteering military-industrial campaign contribution and lobbying machine. And every damn one of them--with few exceptions (Dennis Kucinich, John Conyers?)--is benefiting from the tax cuts for the rich.

We need to throw most of them out. And we need to throw Diebold and ES&S election theft machines into 'Boston Harbor' NOW!


--------


* A week of fun, sun and high-end shopping for election officials from around the country, at the Beverly Hilton this August, sponsored by Diebold, ES&S and Sequoia. Check it out. It'll set your hair on fire...
http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=203x380340

[dajoki]

36. it's all done...

with a wink, wink and passing of the white envelopes, loaded white envelopes.

[Totally Committed]

35. Does anyone here know how to find out

how many jobs have been created inside the US, and how many have been outsourced, off-shored, and just plain lost since Bush's Tax Cuts that are supposed to be "stimulating" the economy and job market?

Why do I feel we are giving them a tax cut to shiv us in the ribs? And, where are the Dems on THIS, as well as Katrina?

I hear nothing. I see nothing. It's an outrage, so why aren't they OUTRAGED?

[dajoki]

37. I'M OUTRAGED...

lets try to find something on that subject.

[leftchick]

40. Oprah's Wednesday Show Will Be About American Poverty

http://www.oprah.com/index.jhtml

I sure hope this helps to grab some attention.

[Norquist Nemesis]

43. Are you kidding?

Republicans always say "Raising taxes would hurt <insert topic of the day here>" It's their mantra #1.

[dajoki]

44. there is going to come a time...

when their greed topples them. i don't know when, but it will, it has to.