New (Junior) Senator Mark Kirk from Illinois made an interesting statement now that he is in political power for 6 years, unless impeached or recalled or…whatever. That statement contradicts the overall attitude of the State of Lincoln and Percy, and Dirksen and Simon and Durgin and Obama. Kirk’s attitude mirrors that of Goldwater, Reagan and, most closely, Bush and Cheney. Or Karl Rove and Tom DeLay.
As a congressman, (Junior) Senator Kirk voted with Bush to expand government spending $8 trillion more than incoming revenues, creating a soon-to-be $14 trillion national debt. But now he says he wants to reduce that debt. And how does he propose to eliminate that debt? On the backs of the Middle Class and the Lower-class workers of the State of Illinois. Oh yes, he also wants to give more tax cuts to billionaires.
Here are a few of gems from this “moderate” Senator, whom the citizens of Illinois will wear like an albatross around their, apparently, “red” necks for the next six years. Firstly, he says that the stimulus policy has failed.
Junior Senator Kirk is wrong. Most Americans do not know whether this this policy has succeeded or failed. The simple fact is that it has succeeded. The only part that did nothing to create jobs was the one-third of the bill composed of tax cuts insisted upon by Republicans like Junior Kirk.
The Republicans insisted that if the Administration did not include more tax cuts (the largest one-year tax break in history) that they would hang 300 million Americans out to dry. They would let the country fall into the second Great Depression. Despite the fact that, just as in ALL previous tax cuts there have been no demonstrable economic benefits…none…the stimulus did otherwise in fact create a minimum of 3 million jobs (you can read this, congressional district-by-congressional district on www.recovery.gov.)
Junior could have read this about Illinois, had he not been hanging out with the rich who need no jobs and whose tax cuts he wants to renew. Illinois received $251,415,322 in awards which created a verified 675,179 jobs since the act was announced in April 2009. Some of those jobs were to cancel out huge job cuts in schools, and maintain employment for members of fire districts, police forces and other essential services. Even more new jobs were created with road and infrastructure improvements. Some would actually counter job losses from Republican corporations outsourcing jobs to foreign countries.
Junior would rather extend more tax cuts to millionaires, like Junior himself, his friends in the Chamber of Commerce, his friends along the North Shore of Chicago and the Koch family oil money. If the Bush tax cuts are renewed, the top one percent, those averaging $1.4 million dollars annually will each receive a tax cut of $83,000. If those tax policies were not renewed, those tax rebates could instead be used to create 3 million new jobs for one year, of which Illinois would receive approximately 600,000, almost the exact amount that Junior decries as being the fault of “policies of the past.”
Perhaps we should remind Junior, as we should have reminded Illinois voters, that these were exactly the policies that he supported as a Congressman!
We can’t call him stupid. He was supposedly in Naval Intelligence. (Don’t say that to Army Intelligence because a dirty little secret is that Naval Intelligence has long been considered a joke, doing mostly background checks for personnel going into key positions…about as sensitive as a private detective agency.)
So if we can’t call him a fool, and he says he is a moderate but votes for arch-conservative policies, then what is he? We can’t call him a liar…can we? Yes. We can. He’s a liar. Junior is a liar who thinks that you are too simple-minded to see that when he says he wants fiscal conservatism and then calls for government to spend another trillion on the rich who are less taxed than they have been since the end of the 1920s…you just won’t get it.
And do you?
Junior says that “ten years ago, Illinois had at least 150,000 more jobs than today.” We don’t have to go back ten years. We have lost a very substantial number of the jobs we had as late as 2005. But if you want to know why we have fewer jobs, you could look to the millions upon millions of jobs that were sent abroad by Bush policies that Junior voted for. Remember, Bill Clinton created 22 million new jobs. Unemployment was down to 5%. Then came Bush and Junior and the 150,000 jobs that were sent abroad would be at least 50%. If you wanted to add jobs in Illinois, you would not elect someone like Junior. Junior wants profits for big corporations here in the U.S. and jobs in China and India. Remember the first principle…Junior is a liar.
And how about Illinois? How does Junior feel about Illinois? Here is what he says about his own state: “Among bad “sovereign debtors” (i.e., governments) the Illinois ranks in the top 12, sharing infamy with the likes of Venezuela’s Hugo Chavez.” See how he does that? He doesn’t compare us to Ireland because there are a lot of Irish voters up there on the North Shore where he hangs out. He compares us to a Socialist like Hugo Chavez who inherited a mess and has made life at least a little better for Venezuelans and some in Massachusetts of all places, against whom Junior voted for assistance.
So Junior hates “the Illinois” (“the” Illinois?) and Venezuelans (and by implication, Hispanic-Americans) because they are not as frugal as he. Well, did Venezuelans, or even citizens of Illinois vote for tax cuts for the rich, thus indebting us by $13 trillion? No. That was the Southern Republican Party and their Neocon-Republican Illinois cohorts, like Mark Kirk, Peter Roskam and Judy Biggert.
If Junior is so concerned about debt, he should not be proposing reducing revenues. He should tell the country to do what George W. Bush was so happy to see from one citizen in one of his campaign stops. She told him that she had three jobs to make ends meet and he shook his head positively, smiled and said, “Yes. That’s what I’m talking about. Only in America.”
Only in America, indeed, Mr. President, would some privileged jerk of a President think that making someone work three jobs to stay out of debt was a good idea, something to be applauded. Only in a place where the privileged, like George W. Bush or Junior Kirk can rise to power on lies and innuendo would someone think that you can solve debt by creating more debt with no way to replace it.
Jobs create more jobs. Tax cuts create nothing…and that is according to a report by the CBO under Douglass Holtz-Eakin, the first President Bush’s Director of the CBO. In the most optimum scenario imaginable, says CBO, tax cuts only get back in economic activity one-fifth of what they cost. So for every $80 in tax cuts, we get back $20. That’s a great deal! Brooklyn Bridge anyone?
What tax cuts for the rich have done is to split this country wide open. More money in the pockets of a segment of the rich has created a Right Wing media and political communications empire that does not allow any truth to reach the public. Tax cuts are good, they say. Social Security is bad. Military expenditures literally more than the rest of the world combined are good. Medicare for the elderly is bad. Health care CEO salaries averaging $15 million a year are good. Assistance to poor families to simply be able to purchase health insurance for their kids is bad. Junior voted against it. He’s a bad person. And he’s a liar, because he says he’s not.
Junior lies again. “Americans already pay some of the highest corporate taxes in the world.” Last year EXXON/Mobil made $45 billion in profits. They paid no federal corporate taxes at all. General Electric, GE, made $10 billion dollars and actually received from the government of $1.1 billion. U.S. corporate taxes are the second highest, in principle, at 35% but because of tax loopholes created under successive Republican Conservative administrations since Reagan, our corporations are the fourth least taxed among all advanced countries of the world. The corporate share of taxes has dropped to the lowest since the Great Depression, only 7% of all government revenues come from corporations.
No one is saying that they should pay even, let’s say, one dollar out of every ten that they make for the privilege of being a key player in the largest and most dynamic economic market in the world. All we are saying is that they should shut the hell up about more tax reductions. And stop idiots and liars like Junior from claiming that they are over taxed. If you are over taxed, get a new tax accountant for Christ’s sake. That’s your problem…you’ve got a lousy CPA. Get a new one.
“How do we get out of this mess,” Junior asks, rhetorically. Well, Junior, we don’t cut taxes. That’s for damned sure. When you’re credit card debt is $600,000 and your income is $100,000, it is not time to agree to a pay cut, especially when your annual expenditures are $125,000 already. We need to raise revenues. If anything we need to raise income taxes on the rich by at least 10% and put a floor under corporate taxes so that corporations pay at least 10%. If they can’t afford one dollar out of ten…if they are making profits…then they don’t deserve to be in business. Not in this country. And if they want to move elsewhere…fine. Just pay import duties like all the un-favored nations.
Of course we have to cut some government expenditures, too. Lots of them. So what should we cut? That’s not hard. We spend $700 billion a year on military forces to catch a couple of hundred bozos who can’t spell America let alone attack us from some desolate God-forsaken mountains East of Nowhere. While we have 100,000 troops there and untold numbers still in Iraq…totally irrelevant…the FBI and NSA are doing all the work here, in the U.S. in protecting us. We have hundreds of unnecessary military posts around the world that we can close down. We have military systems that we can mothball and merely do basic research. It is estimated that we can save at least $50 billion a year just in the way we award and supervise our contracts.
Why should a man who makes $100,000 a year in guaranteed retirement income get Social Security? Why should someone who makes $1,000,000 need Medicare and why should he spend a great deal of time and money trying to deny it to his fellow citizens? Someone is spending a fortune or two trying to simply delete like an Email our social services so that they get more money in their bank accounts. They hire the Dick Armeys and the Rush Limbaughs and the Mark Kirks of the world to cut government so that they can have even more money than the mere billions they have now.
The answer is simple. George W. Bush even said it. Cops know it. Even the brightest and best educated among us can be evil, or lack compassion, or be greedy. Hitler and Mussolini were not stupid. They were very bright but they were terminally evil and destructive. Just as the current Neocons do with President Obama, they called others exactly what they themselves were. They tried to deflect their guilt and their criminal habits by accusing others of what they themselves were doing. Junior Kirk calls himself a “moderate” yet he votes against poor children, the unemployed and the elderly and in favor of billionaires and the military industrial complex.
Here’s what Junior wants: tax cuts for billionaires. No taxes for corporations. A balanced budget…which means….Social Security cuts and eventual privatization (the Ryan proposal) added fees to the already high Medicare fees. A $700 billion military budget. Complete control of the media by the Republican Party. No restrictions on campaign spending by the richest people in the world, including the Chinese government and Arabs influencing your local elections. A complete alignment of government, corporations and the military to run everything. And American jobs to continue to go overseas. No increases in the minimum wage…ever…at least that’s how he has voted in the past. No abortions under any circumstances (his…the Republican position) and finally no more unemployment benefits to those whom the Republicans’ biggest supporters…Wall Street…whom Boehner visited to assure them of repealing legislation against them…caused to be laid off…14 million…and unemployed for two solid years. Try living without any money.
This is what Junior wants, and according to the new “red” state voters who voted him in, voted in Peter Roskam and Judy Biggert who both vote with the Southern bloc of states more than they do with their own Illinois delegation in the House…apparently this is what the people of Illinois, formerly a “blue” state want in a Senator.
Bon Voyage, Junior! God help us all.
