Alms For The Rich

A recent op-ed piece by Paul Krugman in the New York Times on-line got me thinking.  And his further comments about how he has been attacked in his blog Conscience of a Liberal even more. 
The first bit was about how Colorado Springs is turning off one-third of its street lights to save money.  And towns and cities across America are firing teachers, furloughing policemen and cutting back on services everywhere they can. 
Meanwhile, the debate in Congress is about extending the Bush tax cuts for the rich.  This would increase the already huge projected budget deficit by $ 700 million dollars over 10 years. 
The fight, of course, is being led by the republicans and centrist democrats who are known as deficit hawks.
So, Paul’s point is that apparently we are willing to give huge tax breaks to the wealthy among us, while turning out the street lights all across America.
This is the sort of thing that I want to post about.  Because it shows why Economics used to be taught as Political-Economics.  And maybe it still should be.
Because economic decisions are made for a lot of reasons having nothing to do with the (dubious in the extreme) economic facts.
Two other articles I think connect to this subject.  They are Medicare Stronger…by Bill Scheer on ourfuture.org and What the Social Security Report Says… by Dave Johnson at alt-media.net.  Both of these posted blogs talked about how the latest data shows how the government bailout has helped the auto industry return to profitability, the health care bill has strengthened Medicare, and the Social Security Trust fund is in excellent shape.
Now have any of you seen this sort of story in your newspapers or on TV.  Probably not.  I did see a small article on part of this in my local NJ paper.
But the overwhelming fact of media coverage on these issues is that the government never does anything right, the SS system is bankrupt or will be tomorrow, and Health Care Legislation will create death panels and end Medicare.
This from the “Liberal” media.
This sort of story is what I wish to deal with in this and my other blogs.  How the reality of what the world is about is, at best, presented in a distorted way. 
And maybe, propose some ideas on dealing with this.
Meanwhile, go out there and vote for republicans in November.  We need more multi-billionaires. 

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