It simply makes me weep to think of the plight of American corporations and their Republican defenders… Crucified on a cross of expropriatory taxes! Poor babies.

No wonder we have to snip away at the social safety net. Well, according to our friends across the aisle, that’s a sacrifice we have to make to protect our children and grandchildren.

Assuming they survive.

This story  appeared on Alternet.com

As of July 13, 29 public companies had more cash on hand than the U.S. Treasury Department, according to the site Zero Hedge based on numbers from Capital IQ. It’s a stark reminder that if Congress refuses to raise the debt ceiling, the government won’t have nearly enough money to continue funding essential services and programs.

In the first half of July alone, Treasury cash balances were depleted from from $130 billion to just $39 billion. That means the most powerful nation on earth currently is tied with Google for the amount of cash that it has, and is less flush than Bank of America, JP Morgan Stanley, and Goldman Sachs, among others.

Slide 1 of 1.

The primary source for the financial data was Capital IQ, a Standard &Poor’s Business

Capital IQ delivers comprehensive fundamental and quantitative research and analysis solutions to over 4,200 investment managers, investment banks, private equity funds, advisory firms, corporations, and universities worldwide. www.capitaliq.com.

Hardly a pinko, lefty, source I would judge.

The genius of American politics has always been pragmatism. This pragmatism has been evidenced, until now, in  the major parties’ refusal to pay any lasting attention to their own platforms.

Every four years the platform committees of our major parties groaned and heaved and gave birth to documents that the parties as a whole had every intention of completely ignoring once the conventions were over.

It used to be that party platforms were easy to ignore. They were ill-written, stupefyingly dull, and seldom printed in the public press. No candidate ever pointed with pride to his party platform, or promised to work to realize it. No voter had the attention span to slog through it.

The only justification for a party platform was that it provided a place for the single-issue wackos and passionate ideologues to have their say. It created the impression that all the folks in the big tent  had the same mind-set. It was the glue of party unity.

In the past, extreme views got stuck into platforms like bugs in amber and were forgotten with the platforms themselves.

On the whole this  has been a good thing. When it came time for the down and dirty of political legislation what was practical and what was possible took precedence over ideology; deals were made, compromises were accepted, and some sort of legislative progress was made.

No longer. The Teapublican platform is short: Cut spending, cut taxes.

It used to be that the last thing it occurred to anyone to say was..  “By golly we’ll die in the last ditch before we give ground on this crucial part of the sacred platform.”

Although there were always great general  differences between the parties, there were no fixed doctrinal statements or single issues to which they were wed without possibility of divorce.

Now all that has changed. A significant part of our political establishment is not only ready to die in he last ditch, it is ready to pull the rest of us in after it.

There are two stories in today’s Arizona Daily Star that mesh nicely with yesterday’s “Loading Dock Manifesto” post.

The first was on the front page of the business section and headlined, “Recovery is most off-kiter since ’30s.”

Not surprisingly the rich have gotten richer and the rest of us have been done the dirty. There are still 9.1% of us unemployed, but none of the 9.1% happen to be the CEOs of major corporations. .

An associated Press analysis found that the typical CEO of a major company earned $9 million last year, up a fourth.

In the meantime, worker’s wages have slipped from where they were in the mid 2000s (64% of the economy)  to 57.5 percent and any new jobs being created pay less than the ones that have been lost.

As this wealth-shift has gone on Republican state legislators have persisted in their refusal to include tax increases in a program of budget balancing; and at the Federal level they have fought controls on the financial industry whose rascality got us into the recession in the first place.

Have our masters kept an eye out for the welfare of their workers?

Au contraire, mon frere…they have pushed for more tax cuts (the Laugher Principle…they cut taxes and laugh all the way to the bank) and cut the services that constitute the workingman’s safety net.

Mark Dayton, the governor of Minnesota, has shown remarkable courage in digging in against  his Republican legislature’s refusal to make tax increases a part of the state’s budget. Absent a new budget the state is now idle.Turn out the lights…for now the party’s over.

The soft-spoken Dayton refuses to cave to the GOP’s stance that higher taxes are verboten. Since taking office, he has championed tax hikes on rich Minnesotans – or at least some form of new state revenue – as a necessary part of any solution to closing the state’s $5 billion budget deficit.

Read more here.

RELATED POSTS

The Rat Bike State

The One Tool Party

Chuckle From The Class War

Raising Arizona Taxes