THEY Are Taking OUR Money

This amazing chart from the Center for American Progress (to me via the Rag Blog) looks at the budget cuts in social programs now making their way through Congress and shows how the amount in each cut is covered by a tax cut or break being offered to rich people and corporations (Click on the chart to see it larger). As Michael Moore said in his recent speech to the Wisconsin protesters, "America Is NOT Broke." (That speech is strongly recommended...you can watch it here.)

It couldn't be clearer. THEY are taking OUR money. The Republicans (to be fair, enabled or far from adequately opposed by Obama and the Democrats) are first trying to make the American people pay for their mistakes, and then trying to restructure things to make conditions more favorable to the corporations who have made them rich and powerful.

It's not often reported, but Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker signed unfunded tax cuts -- including hefty tax incentives to corporations -- amounting to well over $100 million before he then turned around and claimed that state workers would have to bear the cost of the state being "broke." He manufactured his own crisis before turning around and insisting that somebody else pay the price. This is called class war.

And WE don't actually have to just sit and take it.

As the joke running around facebook last week went, "A unionized public employee, a teabagger, and a CEO are sitting at a table. In the middle of the table there is a plate with a dozen cookies on it. The CEO reaches across and takes 11 cookies, looks at the teabagger and says, 'Look out for that union guy -- he wants a piece of your cookie.'" A friend of mine added a coda to this: "A CEO is at a table. Without labor (aka people - unionized or brainwashed or both) there ARE no cookies and there is no CEO and there isn't even a fucking table."

It's time for the table-makers to start flexing their power.