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Robert Reich Debunks 6 Big GOP Lies About The Economy

Worth watching. The lies are these – (watch the video to see how he debunks them):

  1. Tax cuts for the wealthy and corporations will trickle down to benefit the middle class and the poor. Corporations are having higher profits now than we have seen in 35 years. Ratio of profits to wages is higher now than it ever has been since before the Great Depression of the 1930s.
  2. If you shrink government you create jobs. (No, you get rid of jobs that way.)
  3. High taxes on the rich hurts the economy. (No, the economy grew when the US did this under Eisenhower.)
  4. Debt is to be avoided and it is mostly caused by Medicare. (No, if debt is properly used to grow the economy, it becomes a smaller part of the budget because of increased revenue and Medicare has the lowest overhead of any health insurance plan out there.)
  5. Social Security is a Ponzi scheme (No, its solid for 26 years. Social Security is solid beyond that if the rich pay the same percentage in social security taxes as the rest of us do.)
  6. We need to tax the poor. (This is what Republicans have been proposing when they say any “tax reform” needs to involve all Americans because poor people pay no income tax. The poor have no money and taxing them will not solve our budget problems.)
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Anecdotal Evidence

People I know who have either been laid off or are on the verge of having it happen, or who are otherwise struggling financially:

8

Yes, that would be 8. Eight.

There’s no way you can tell me we’re not in a recession. And I’m frustrated with anyone thinking about voting in more of the same old crap. There’s at least one guy I work with that I really want to kick in the shins every time I hear him start in on politics. Even the sound of his voice sets me off now.

When it was one person, we thought, “oh, we could help them in an emergency, if things get too bad.” When it’s eight people – OMFG. We can’t float loans to eight people.

And though we’re doing okay, it’s bound to swing around and affect us soon, so we’re frantically saving every penny, which is good for us, but bad for the economy as a whole.

I’m as anxious for January 20, 2009 as everyone else, but it won’t mean a thing if McCain “Four More Years” gets in office.

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Quote

“Your time is limited, so don’t waste it living someone else’s life. Don’t be trapped by dogma – which is living with the results of other people’s thinking. Don’t let the noise of others’ opinions drown out your own inner voice. And most important, have the courage to follow your heart and intuition. They somehow already know what you truly want to become. Everything else is secondary.”
-Steve Jobs

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It’s all Cyclical

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Elizabeth pointed out a NYT article to me about employers checking myspace and facebook pages on job applicants that I thought was interesting and a bit odd.
It strikes me as strange because this has all be done before… It sort of happens in waves over the years as more people get online. A lot of this has happened back in the 1990s when people were first starting to build their own web pages; geeks went overboard posting edgy stuff, and tech employers went overboard freaking out about it. Eventually tech companies realized they were overreaching themselves by telling people what to put on their personal sites, and the employees learned where the “too far” line was, and they met somewhere in the middle.
Now it’s happening as non-geeks have ways to create their own pages online in myspace or in blogs — they post questionable stuff, and their non-tech employers freak out. The furor over people’s blogs and myspace pages will correct itself over time.
You know how whenever someone new gets on the internet, they start forwarding all the goofy neiman marcus cookie recipes and chain letters until they realize how silly that is? Then their mom gets e-mail four years later, and does the same thing. Then four years later, grandma does it.
It all goes in cycles.

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Four Things Meme

Four Jobs I’ve Had

  1. Public Library Page
  2. Assembly Worker of Industrial Gas Shut-off Valves
  3. Chicken Restaurant Cooking Staff
  4. Website Designer

Four Movies I Can Watch Over and Over

  1. Auntie Mame
  2. The Wizard of Oz
  3. Southpark: Bigger, Longer, Uncut
  4. Much Ado About Nothing

Four Places I’ve Lived

  1. Ankeny, Iowa
  2. Canton, Ohio
  3. Muncie, Indiana
  4. Indianapolis, Indiana

Four TV Shows I Love

  1. Veronica Mars
  2. Lost
  3. Gilmore Girls
  4. Buffy the Vampire Slayer

Four Places I’ve Been On Holiday

  1. Munster, Germany
  2. Luray Caverns, Virginia
  3. Chicago, Illinois
  4. New York City

Four of My Favorite Dishes

  1. Lasagna
  2. Pizza
  3. Fried Chicken

Four Sites I Visit Daily

  1. Flickr

Four Places I Would Rather Be Now

  1. At home in bed
  2. New York
  3. In the car on a roadtrip
  4. London

Four Bloggers I Am Tagging

  1. Stephanie
  2. Anyone else
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