A collection of relevant news articles from this week…

LiveJournal Tags: Senate,senators,debt ceiling,debt,ceiling,social programs,women's rights,taxes,balanced budget,Republicans,Democrats,War on Women

Regarding the Debt ceiling deal that will be cutting way too much from social programs and not tax the people who really wouldn’t feel much, if any financial burden by paying their fair share. The top 1% percent of wage earners really need to pay the taxes they should have been paying before Bush instituted the Tax cuts for them instead of for the rest of us that are hard pressed to scrape by.  http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/07/31/debt-ceiling-deal_n_914538.html?1312165132&ncid=edlinkusaolp00000009

Another article about the debt ceiling and the Democrats completely caving in to the Far Right Wing that even McCain was questioning the Teabagger’s sanity last week. http://www.nytimes.com/2011/08/01/opinion/the-president-surrenders-on-debt-ceiling.html?_r=1&smid=tw-NytimesKrugman&seid=auto 

One more article about the debt ceiling deal http://www.nytimes.com/2011/08/01/us/politics/01FISCAL.html?_r=1&smid=fb-nytimes&WT.mc_id=PO-SM-E-FB-SM-LIN-LRD-073111-NYT-NA&WT.mc_ev=click

Here’s where we are headed if we don’t start fighting back – A Banana Republic: http://egbertowillies.com/2011/07/31/paulbegalatdb-republicans-on-the-debt-ceiling-screwing-over-america--the-daily-beast.aspx?results=1#SurveyResultsChart 

Here’s a sad statistic:

Based on 1980 dollars and IRS data, this is how U.S. income has been redistributed since that time:

• Incomes for the top 1% have gone from $148,000 to $450,000
• Incomes for the next 9% have gone from $46,000 to $50,000
• Incomes for the next 40% have gone from $17,500 to $15,000
• Incomes for the bottom 50% have gone from $5,400 to $3,750

http://www.commondreams.org/view/2011/07/26-1

Wow, here’s an interesting chart, I’m going to print this one out for my notes that I keep just in case I get into a debate with some right wing Tea Party disillusioned individual.

“The chart above, taken from US census data, shows productivity in constant dollars of private versus government funding, together with per capita GDP from the period 1929 to 2002. Republican administrations are marked with a red background and Democratic with blue.”   http://home.roadrunner.com/~markwrede/NonFic/InvestProd.html

Read the rest of the info on the bottom of the page where the graph was located.

In the same website, I found Maslow’s “Hierarchy of Needs”. It seems that the top one percent wage earners believe that the majority of Americans only need to have the bottom layer of the chart maintained, somewhat, and not even completely.

 

They are the only ones that get to reach the top of the pyramid, just like the eye on the pyramid symbol on the back of the $1 bill.  http://home.roadrunner.com/~markwrede/NonFic/MarketNeeds.html 

Meanwhile, in other news, or is it really related? I believe it is related, and it’s close to my heart, since it’s my home state of Montana that is the subject of the article. http://www.commondreams.org/view/2011/07/27-4  It is so disgusting to think that the beautiful wilderness that had largely remained untouched, is being assaulted by an oil pipeline full of tar-sands oil. The article also mentioned the fact that Glacier National Park, so close to my hometown, had 150 large glaciers in 1850 but only has 25 left, the rest have melted. The remaining 25 are losing ground every year.  The state has seen an unusually high amount of flooding and they believe this caused the oil leak, since the river over the oil pipeline was running at 4x the normal spring runoff. But, did the climate change from burning fossil fuels cause the unusual runoff?  “Put bluntly, do these dual disasters have the same root?” Personally, I believe that they are extremely interconnected, and the same root is Man’s greed and wanton use of fossil fuels like the oil spilling into the Yellowstone river – which feeds into the Upper Mississippi and will end up fouling all of the water down to the gulf.

Here’s the newest information from the Office of Management and Budget regarding the budget for 2012 and Historical Tables that may provide insight for those curious enough to look at the 360 page tome. http://www.whitehouse.gov/sites/default/files/omb/budget/fy2012/assets/hist.pdf

But if you just want an individual table, you can go here: http://www.whitehouse.gov/omb/budget/Historicals/ 

http://www.dailykos.com/story/2011/08/01/1001466/-White-House-spin-on-debt-ceiling-deal-promises-Democrats-will-be-able-to-stand-firm--next-time   another debt ceiling article.

and finally, something different, slightly, regarding the Religious Right’s war on Women’s rights. They are fairly close to adopting the Burka, they just need a different name for it first.

http://skepchick.org/2011/07/the-religious-right-vs-every-woman-on-earth/?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+CommentsForSkepchick+%28Comments+for+Skepchick%29&utm_content=FaceBook#comment-130851 

Oh, in the comments Rebecca linked to a BBC news article about the abortion study she mentions in the above video:  http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/health/8305217.stm