June 14, 2013

Obama To Arm Syrian Rebels: Does Anyone Remember The Sequester?

Never mind whether it’s a good idea to go along with old-man John “get off my lawn” McCain and arm the Syrian “rebels,” I ask, can we afford it? I mean, remember “the sequester” cuts? It was the across-the-board cuts to all kinds of government programs including defense. This was what we got instead of a sensible budget deal. It’s also what we got instead of tax increases above the rather minimal tax increase for top income earners that happened at the beginning of the year. Because why raise taxes on those who can afford to pay more taxes when you can just fuck the poor instead.

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February 26, 2013

Conservatives Believe The Sequester Is Moral

George Lakoff, professor of linguistics at UC Berkeley, has a blunt analysis of conservative support of the automatic spending cuts (the sequester). “They [conservatives] believe that Democracy gives them the liberty to seek their own self-interests by exercising personal responsibility, without having responsibility for anyone else or anyone else having responsibility for them,” says Lakoff. “They take this as a matter of morality. They see the social responsibility to provide for the common good as an immoral imposition on their liberty.”

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February 24, 2013

Sequestration: Blame President Obama? – Only Congress Can End It

There’s plenty of talk about who is to blame for the sequestration, the automatic spending cuts set to kick in on Friday. Obama blames congress. Prominent Republican members of congress, like Speaker John Boehner, blame the president. Bob Woodward wrote an op-ed in The Washington Post putting the blame squarely on White House. “My extensive reporting for my book ‘The Price of Politics‘ shows that the automatic spending cuts were initiated by the White House,” said Woodward. It was the “brainchild of [Jack] Lew and White House congressional relations chief Rob Nabors — probably the foremost experts on budget issues in the senior ranks of the federal government.”

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