We’ve been hearing a lot of commotion lately by the Republicans about how we need a balanced budget.

At first blush, this might sound like a great idea. After all, don’t you and I have to balance our checkbook at the end of each month?

No, actually, we don’t. We can go out and borrow any time we feel like it.  In fact, if our federal government becomes hamstrung with a limitation like this, it would be the best thing for the billionaires and the worst thing for you and me. That’s why the Tea Baggers are all over this. Their billionaire leaders (behind the scenes) are telling them how important it is that the government can’t borrow money.

But, let’s look at what would have happened if our founding fathers were as stupid as a Tea Bagger. Without being able to spend more money than they had, we would never have been able to protect ourselves from attack as a young nation. In fact, we wouldn’t even be able to protect ourselves from Hitler during the second world war if we hadn’t been able to borrow money.

Imagine what we would have done during the Republican Great Depression of the 1930s. Without being able to borrow money to get our people back to work, this great country of the USA would have gone broke. We wouldn’t have been able to start up all the jobs programs that saved us from republican stupidity.

Here we are, a century later and the Republicans are trying to destroy our country again. When will America ever learn not to listen to the Republicans?

I hope the Republican voters get a good look at their party. I hope this doesn’t all go unreported in the news.

The Republican party held the middle class tax cuts hostage and refused to allow their stimulus benefit unless the billionaires got their tax cuts. The past 30 years have taught us many things but it has taught, even the most ardent Republican voter, that tax cuts for the rich got us into this mess and more tax cuts are only making it worse. Still, the Republican party held our stimulus money hostage for tax breaks for the rich.

Now the Republican party is threatening to destroy America’s credit standing and possibly cause the next worldwide depression in order to take more away from the middle class and the poor to give to the rich. Their argument is that if they refuse to raise the debt limit and America defaults on our loans, that they can get the media to blame Obama.

Got that? They don’t care what harm comes to you or me or even to our country, as long as they can play politics and make Obama look bad. Of course, if they can send us all to the poor house in the process, that’s just a big plus.

Hey, you! Are you a Republican voter? Do you see what your party is doing? When will you do something about it? Don’t you care what they’re doing to your country? Don’t you care what they’re doing to the Republican name? Don’t you care about anything?

Why are they willing to gamble with our country to get their way? Why do they so badly want to end the booming years of the 40s through the 80s? Why won’t they just do what’s right for the country and raise the debt ceiling?

Imagine for a moment, or maybe you don’t even need to imagine, that your employer decided that even though the business was doing good, it was time to cut your wages and improve profits. No better time to take advantage of the times than right now, when people are worried about their jobs.

So your wages have been cut and you can no longer afford to enjoy the lifestyle you’ve grown accustomed to. What do you do?

If you’re a typical American, you’ll look for better work. No one needs to put up with unethical employers. That’s right, you look to bring in more money. When would anyone say, “oh darned, I better sell my house and start living out of a cardboard box?”

No one would, except the mentally challenged.

So, when our country is dealing with insufficient funds, do we just say, “okay, it’s time to move into that third-world-country?” No! Only the mentally challenged would consider that as the first option.

So, why do we Americans ever listen to the Republican party saying that we have to start expecting less? We’ve been doing with less for over 30 years now and it’s time we started demanding more.

What happens to America if the fools get away with convincing us that we need to expect less from our country? America becomes less of a country. It’s the same thing that happens if you choose the cardboard home rather than a better job.

We can’t afford to listen to the Republican failed misconceptions any longer. If we want America to remain strong, if we want to remain a first-world country, we have to act today and say we don’t want the cardboard box.

Will we ever get back to prosperity if we keep expecting less?

Do you want to live in the best country in the world or the cheapest?

Why is the billion dollar corporate media downplaying the 100,000 person rally going on in Wisconsin? You would think they have a personal interest in keeping the middle class uninvolved. Maybe they’re afraid we’ll start demanding that they pay their fair share.

If this was a rally of Tea Baggers, there wouldn’t be any room in their programming to cover Japan but since it’s only the middle class…

Here is what it looks like from CNN’s coverage:

Wisconsin Rally according to CNN

And this is what it actually looked like:

The actual size of the march on Madison

Amazing!

If you voted for them you should be paying close attention. After the election is when your real work begins. You have to pay attention to what your representatives do so you can have half a clue if you want to re-elect them come next election.

So, what have they done for America? There are endless polls out there saying what is most important for the average American. The first thing on every poll is the economy. So, what have the Republicans brought us to address the economy?

Nothing! Zip, Nada!

In fact, they did the one thing that would have a tremendous negative impact on our economy, reversing the health care reform that almost every American, including all the Republicans, has been trying to do for over a half a century. Fix the health care system. They want to repeal it even though by impartial non-partisan analysis, is to save our economy hundreds of billions of dollars.

They have even taken the word, Labor, out of the labor commission.

Okay, so they haven’t done anything for the A-number-one-most-important thing. So how about other important things?

Have they fixed the Free Trade disaster sending all our jobs over seas? No, I guess not.

The second most important thing to most all Americans is unemployment. What have they done for the unemployed? You guessed it. NOTHING!

How about corruption in government? Nothing! In fact, they’re making it harder to expose the Republican corruption.

The next most important thing to most all Americans is the broken health care system. Have they done anything, anything at all to fix it? No. They have absolutely no ideas or plans for anything.

Okay, so they haven’t done anything at all that the average American needs done. But what have they done?

Well, they have done two things. They spent hundreds of millions of our tax dollars playing politics with the Health Care Reform bill.

And, their second most wonderful accomplishment — they have spit in the faces of all American women by marginalizing the crime of rape. They have spent our tax dollars and wasted precious time redefining Rape while failing to address anything that matters.

I have to admit, if I was a Republican voter, I’d feel pretty darned stupid by now. Hey Republicans, is it time to wake up yet? Is it time to come to your senses? It’s too late to take back your party. Your party is toast. It represents no one but the crazies and the billionaires.

Unemployment in many states is still on the rise. We saw a short glimmer of hope over the holiday season but now we’re back to further and further declines in the economy.

The stock market is improving though, but so what? The stock market doesn’t provide jobs for Americans. In fact, it’s time we quit considering the stock market when remarking on the state of America’s economy. For Americans the things that mean anything when considering the country’s economy is jobs, pay, benefits, and pensions. Also included in evaluating the economy is the state of our social safety net, not the stock market.

All these things affect the economy of Americans. The stock market does not. I know, I know, there many people (one hundredth of of one percent of Americans) who actually make any reasonable money off the stock market but that in no way reflects the state of America’s economy.

This simple difference explains why we haven’t dug ourselves out of the Bush years yet. We’re putting our resources and attention in the wrong things. Did we learn nothing during the last Great Depression? The conservatives are telling us that it was the second world war that got us out of the last Great Depression. Well, now we’re in two and a half wars. Our economy should be the best it’s ever been, right? Well, no, not really. Wars don’t cure depressions. Job do. The stock market doesn’t cure depressions, jobs and benefits and pay do. So when are we going to start addressing these problems?

Want to fix the economy? Here’s how:

1. Stop with the tax give-aways to the billionaires and multi-national corporations. Put taxes back where they were before Reagan began the destruction of our economy,
2. Increase the minimum wage to a living wage and keep it there,
3. Require all major corporations and all multi-national corporations provide substantial pensions to all workers, full time and part time,
4. Stop the Social Security tax give-away for billionaires. Expect billionaires to pay the same percentage of tax for Social Security that you and I do,
5. Temporarily create government jobs for Americans (no tax dollars spent on non-American incentives, you know, the bill the Republicans opposed), and
6. Fix our broken trade policies, get out of NAFTA, GAT, WTO, and all the rest of the trade agreements that are destroying our manufacturing jobs. In other words, protect American jobs.

The nice thing is these don’t have to be done all at once but the more that we enact, the faster our economy will improve.

Now if you see these points brought up over and over in the blogisphere, they must not be rocket science, so why hasn’t our government thought of them? They have, but the big businesses controlling both parties are preventing us from stopping the rape and pillage of America’s economy. Remember, someone is making out like bandits while the rest of us suffer, and those bandits donate to make and break our politicians.

Get involved! Get active. Participate on our political process. Run for the local dog catcher or school board. That does make a difference.

[Update: ] Check out this post at Open Left for an good example of what the economy really means.

By now most people have realized that when the press reports that the economy is strong or getting better, it mean nothing to them. The working conditions or unemployment problems for the average American are not reflected in the reports on the economy. Why is this?

The answer is simple. The media does not report on the state of labor in this country. The most you will see the press report on is the unemployment rate and doesn’t even care to investigate the real numbers.

So, why is the state of the economy so different than the state of labor? The GDP, or the amount of product produced, used to closely track the income levels. In other words, as we made more in America, both the workers and the rich got richer. Over the past 30 years this has changed. Now the workers pay goes down as the rich get richer.

That is why you will often see the stock market go up as the unemployment rates go up. The more they can squeeze the worker, the more the companies are worth, at least short term.

Of course, when the stock markets go down, wages usually go down as well, so the American worker never gets a break.

What’s the solution?

Germany has a wonderful solution. We should investigate it, but you will never hear about it in our news. In Germany, half of all board members in a corporation must be representatives of the workers. Sounds reasonable doesn’t it? After all, the corporation would be  nothing without the workers. Shouldn’t they have some say in how things are run?

Hey Nevadans! Our state has come dead last yet again. Well, actually we came in first place. That’s first place in the WORST place to retire, IN THE ENTIRE COUNTRY!

Here’s why, according to MoneyRates:

No. 1: Nevada
Economic factors: Cost of living is 105 percent of the national average, unemployment is at 14.3 percent, and the average state and local tax burden is 6.6 percent.

Climate: Average monthly temperatures range from 30.43 degrees in January to 71.94 degrees in July.

Crime rate: 3rd in the nation in violent crime, and 13th in property crime.

Life expectancy: 75.8 years.

Reason for low rank: Nevada has the second lowest tax rate in the country, but scored poorly on just about every other criterion. Gambling enthusiasts may disagree, but high crime rates and a dismal economy make Nevada a bad bet for retirees.

Now, sure, we can’t blame all that on ignorant voters. You can’t blame the weather on stupidity. But you can blame every other reason Nevada comes dead last in everything on the way we vote. More importantly, our state is dead last in everything that matters and first in everything we don’t want because WE DON’T VOTE!

Believe it or not, most Nevadans are smart people. If only the majority would start voting.

Since Nevadans don’t spend 5 minutes researching candidates and only a handful of the Palin fanatics and Tea Partiers vote, the state has gone down the toilet. Contrary to what most of the rest of the country thinks, Nevadans aren’t trailer park people. But only the nuts seem to vote. When will we Nevadans wake up and start voting and start learning about politics and start taking our state back and start taking our country back?

But, when we don’t care enough to research the issues and we don’t care enough to get out there and vote every time, we get just what we deserve. We get a state run by nuts making all the wrong decisions.

There are numerous quotes stating that America lost over 40,000 factories during the Bush years. Doing a quick Google search for “factories closed” and “plants closed” is a ballpark confirmation of these quotes. Why is America losing all our jobs?

I’m pretty sure there’s little argument amongst Americans as to the cause. All our jobs are being shipped out of the country. That presidential candidate with the big ears, Ross Perot, was right. Free trade is destroying America. That “giant sucking sound” has come true. But, what caused this? How did free trade do this. We were told free trade is the best thing for America.

It’s simple. If it’s cheaper to build things in a third world country where there no laws to protect the workers and no laws to protect the environment, then there’s nothing to stop companies from moving out of the country. The best defense we had against this, since the founding of our country, has been tariffs. PROTECTIONISM! We used to protect our industries and our jobs.

The Democrats in Congress tried passing a bill that would discourage companies from doing this but, as in everything else good for America, the Republicans obstructed it; they wouldn’t even let it go up for a vote. Now, let’s be fair, here. This problem isn’t just Bush and it’s not just the Republicans. Clinton was the one who started this whole screw-the-workers program. But, the Republicans have done more than their share to increase the problem and obstruct any solution.

We all need to start putting bumper stickers on our cars saying “BRING OUR JOBS HOME NOW!” We need to start chanting that at every town hall meeting we go to. We need to start calling our representatives and telling them. We need to start writing letters to our newspapers saying it.

It’s the only way we can drown out the noise of all the money telling Congress to keep it up. More tax breaks for companies sending our jobs out of the country. More tax breaks for the rich. That’s what got us in this mess and Obama wants to continue it.

Nevada’s Senator, John Ensign, blamed the Democrats for the Republicans opposing the middle class tax cuts by saying:

“Today we witnessed that political stunts are still alive and well on the floor of the United States Senate.  At a time when both sides of the aisle could and should be working together to ensure that we are not raising taxes on Americans during this economic downturn, Democrats are playing games.  By setting arbitrary income limits for tax relief, our nation’s job creators will be forced to suffer under increased taxes; greatly limiting their ability to create jobs for the many unemployed people across our country.  The American people expressed their outrage at this kind of wasteful legislating, but their voices have fallen on deaf ears in the Senate.”

Let’s look at that comment for a moment.

Say you are the CEO of a big corporation and taxes on every dollar over one million dollars was 90%. Would you take lots of money out as income and give 90% to the country? No, probably not. You would probably keep most of the money in the business where you can use it to reduce your taxes by claiming expenses. Keeping the money in the business is like money in the bank. You can take it any time you want.

Now let’s add in a competitor. This makes it even more realistic since most businesses have competitors. If you took your money out of the company (and paid high taxes) and your competitor put his money back in the business, which of you would be going out of business?

So, ask yourself, does it help the economy when people keep their money in their businesses or when they take it out of the company? It seems pretty obvious doesn’t it? The business that is reinvested in becomes more valuable and provides more jobs. The company that takes the money out in profits and taxes hurts the economy by losing jobs.

Let’s play along with this scenario just a bit further. If it is good for the economy to have lower taxes on the rich, then why did lowering the taxes on the rich cause recessions and depressions every time? Remember reading about the roaring 20s? That was a time when the taxes on the super rich were reduced into the 20% range. What happened right after that? The Great Depression. What happened right after Reagan lowered taxes on the super rich? The Reagan Recession and bank failures. What happened when Bush lowered the taxes on the rich? Possibly the second Great Depression in a century. See a graph of top tax rates and compare the dates with 1) the Great Depression and 2) the steady decline of our economy since the 1980s.

If you stick your finger in a light socket and get hurt, would you stick it right back in there? No, probably not. Then why would you vote for a candidate that wants to put the country’s finger right back in that tax-breaks-for-the-rich light socket?

It’s really not that hard to understand.

And one last point. The Republicans have been using and abusing procedures for the past three years trying to obstruct everything the Democrats try to do. They have broken all records for filibustering. That’s how they used procedure abuse to stop this last attempt to fix our broken tax system. They abuse the political system and then go and lie to us about how the Democrats are abusing the system.

Ah, the party of lies. If we want to save our country we’ll have to start pushing back and exposing the lies. After all, ALL the Republican congressmen are chanting the same lies. After all, the lies were tested out on the blind followers before being released to the talking heads.