Although I am pretty tired, I have two more for you today. I plan to catch up on sleep later.
Jig Zone Puzzle:
Today’s took me 5:00 (average 5:41). To do it, click here. How did you do?
Short Takes:
From NY Times: Like many observers, I usually read reports about political goings-on with a sort of weary cynicism. Every once in a while, however, politicians do something so wrong, substantively and morally, that cynicism just won’t cut it; it’s time to get really angry instead. So it is with the ugly, destructive war against food stamps.
The food stamp program — which these days actually uses debit cards, and is officially known as the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program — tries to provide modest but crucial aid to families in need. And the evidence is crystal clear both that the overwhelming majority of food stamp recipients really need the help, and that the program is highly successful at reducing “food insecurity,” in which families go hungry at least some of the time.
Food stamps have played an especially useful — indeed, almost heroic — role in recent years. In fact, they have done triple duty…
This Krugman editorial is a must read to understand the positive effects food stamps have, both for the families who receive them, and for the economy as a whole. He also covers Republican class warfare and their intent to eventually eliminate the program altogether. I encourage you to click through to read the entire article.
From MSNBC: Rachel Maddow discusses the use of political threats.
Visit NBCNews.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy
Considering the targets, the violence, and the ignorance, this can be nothing other than InsaniTEA, although I would think that making seditious threats against the President should be sentenced to only six months, when the penalty for Sedition is up to ten years.
From Daily Kos: Surprise! CBO report shows 50% of government tax expenditures go to top 20% of earners
And that’s not all. According to 29-page Congressional Budget Office report, The Distribution of Major Tax Expenditures in the Individual Income Tax System, the top one percent of earners get 17 percent of tax expenditures. People in the bottom 20 percent only receive eight percent of the total benefits from tax expenditures.
Welfare for the top 1% is more than double that for the bottom 20%. Isn’t that bass ackwards? Of course the Republican solution is to cut taxes for the 1%, but to raise YOUR taxes.
Cartoon:
Republicans want to give us the freedom to lose the right to elect our Senators by repealing the 17th Amendment, because they cannot gerrymander Senate seats.
