Thursday, August 30, 2012

Local Candidate Driskell - Hard to Smear, but Her Opponent Will Try


If you are in the 52nd State House District or are interested in seeing Saline Mayor Gretchen Driskell defeat Republican MarkOuimet and regain that historically-Democratic seat for the Democrats and retake the House, you'll want of read this interview by Chris Savage at Eclectablog.


Please consider sharing it with others. We need to defeat Mark Ouimet and help switch the State House back to a Democratic majority.


Wednesday, August 29, 2012

Republicans and the US National Debt

Today, as I was thinking about what little attention is being paid to the effect that two "off the books" wars and the absence of any requirement that the super-rich pitch in to pay for them has had on the national debt, I came a post on the topic by Kevin Drum at Mother Jones.

Here's the link: http://www.motherjones.com/kevin-drum/2012/08/republicans-are-responsible-our-soaring-national-debt

Drum reminded me that the Bush-era tax cuts are the biggest contributor to the debt.  To quote him on the role of the Republicans:
Nearly every single thing driving the current increase in public debt — tax cuts, wars, the recession, and measures to fight the recession — was a result of Bush-era policies that were enthusiastically supported by nearly every single Republican currently hanging out in Tampa (at the Republican National Convention). They only got religion after a Democrat won the White House and had to clean up the mess they left behind.
Take a careful look at the Ryan Budget to see how it fails to address the above and instead shifts the burden of reducing the debt to those of us in the 99%.

Friday, August 17, 2012

Does the Back & Forth on Medicare Give You a Headache?

The current debate about the future of Medicare is often reduced to sound bites.  Here are a couple of recent blog posts that might help Involved Voters dig a bit deeper.

From Ed Kilgore at Washington Monthly's Political Animal Blog: http://www.washingtonmonthly.com/political-animal-a/2012_08/waldman_boils_it_all_down_on_m039279.php

From Kevin Drum at Mother Jones: http://www.motherjones.com/kevin-drum/2012/08/programming-note-ryan-2013-not-ryan-2012

So, what is government's role when it comes to ensuring access to health and stemming the growth of health care costs?  And what's the value that for-profit insurance companies add?

Wednesday, August 1, 2012

Republicans United in Preserving Tax Cuts for the Super-Rich Despite Increasing the Deficit

Today, House Republicans united to pass legislation extending all of the Bush tax cuts for one year, defeating along the way a Democratic proposal to allow Bush tax cuts benefiting only the wealthiest two percent of earners to expire.

If it seems unbelievable that Republicans would ignore the deficit and hold extension of the tax breaks for middle income people hostage, try to wrap your head around what Mitt Romney is proposing.  Blogger Kevin Drum's analysis can be found here: http://www.motherjones.com/kevin-drum/2012/08/mitt-romneys-plan-screw-middle-class  Are Republicans thinking that we won't believe they'd increase the tax burden on middle income Americans to off-set the cost of tax breaks for the super-rich?

From the Congressional Research Service, July 18, 2012:
Compared with permanently extending all of the Bush tax cuts (with more than $7,000 billion in total deficits), (the Obama Administration's) proposal is projected to increase tax revenues by $312 billion over five years and by $789 billion over 10 years. The 10-year reduction in estimated debt service is $140 billion. In total, (the Obama Administration's) proposal could reduce budget deficits by $931 billion over 10 years.
The Obama Administration has proposed to allow the Bush tax cuts to expire at the end of 2012 for high-income taxpayers (single taxpayers with income more than $200,000 and married taxpayers with income more than $250,000—the richest 2% of taxpayers) and permanently extend the tax cuts for other taxpayers (the middle-income tax cuts). The specific proposals are to reinstate the 39.6% tax rate, reinstate the 36% tax rate for high-income taxpayers, reinstate PEP (personal exemption phase-out) and Pease (another phase out) for high-income taxpayers , and increase the long-term capital gains and qualified dividend tax rate to 20% for high-income taxpayers.