Now in its 11 day, 1000s of protesters continue to occupy Wall Street to protest the corporate greed that is running our country into the ground. Understandably, since most media is run by corporations, there has been a news blackout about our “Arab Spring”. This is not unlike the media blackout surrounding the early pro-union protests in Wisconsin and sympathy rallies in 66 cities across the US.

Here are some links from the Huffington Post. Their bloggers have been covering the Occupy Wall Street story, although it has been absent from the Huff Po front page– until yesterday when there was a small thumbnail story (probably due to the 14,000+ facebook Likes and the 7,700+ facebook Shares).

Occupy Wall Street Protest Escalates On Eighth Day (VIDEO)

Occupy Wall Street Protesters Dig In As Tensions Rise With NYPD (PHOTOS)

Here is today’s story from The Nation, who rightly points out dismal coverage of Occupy Wall Street by the New York Times.

Correcting the Abysmal ‘New York Times’ Coverage of Occupy Wall Street

The Occupy Wall Street website has Live Streaming Video.

The photos and videos on these links are dramatic. It kinda makes ya wonder why we are hearing all of this yammering by the right about class warfare– against the rich– because we want to eliminate their Bush II tax cuts, which hearing no news related to Wall Street’s war on the rest of us.

I hope you can view the video that I linked to above. I had to sign in to You Tube to see it because You Tube said it may be “inappropriate”. (I thought that You Tube labeling anything inappropriate was a real lark. Come on, isn’t “inappropriateness” part of You Tube’s charm?)

Hmmmm… anyway, I didn’t see anything inappropriate in the video– unless you call NY police arresting people holding American flags and chanting “We are the 99%” (referring to the 99% of Americans who are not rich) inappropriate. (You can also check out other videos by the same videographer here.)

Approximately 25 stalwarts representing National Nurses United, Progressive Democrats of America (PDA), and MoveOn.org braved 108 degree temperatures to protest outside of US Senator Jon Kyl’s suburban Tucson office on September 1, 2011.

The lcoal demonstration was part of a national movement to encourage Congress to think about Main Street– rather than Wall Street– when making spending (and cutting) decisions in the near future. Kyl’s office was chosen as the site for the local demonstration because he has been appointed to the Super Congress, which will make tough spending and cutting decisions this fall.

Kyl’s staff locked themselves in a conference room as peaceful protesters knocked on the office door and chanted outside.

Since Kyl’s staff refused to open the doors and listen to local constituents, activists left dozens of Post-It Note messages on his door encouraging him to save social safety net programs (Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, food stamps, and unemployment), tax the rich and corporations to raise revenue, and put Americans back to work.

To watch other videos from around the country, click here.

It’s highly ironic that the current social and political battle over our nation’s debt and deficit is occurring this week with the 46th anniversary of the signing of Social Security Act of 1965 on Saturday, July 30.

After a long political battle dating from Harry Truman’s presidency to Lyndon Johnson’s, Johnson signed this legislation creating universal, single payer healthcare insurance for the nation’s elderly (Medicare) and indigent (Medicaid).

From The Nation…

With reporters and photographers surrounding them, Johnson took a place beside former President Harry Truman, who the sitting president thanked for “planting the seeds of compassion and duty which have today flowered into care for the sick and serenity for the fearful.” [Emphasis added.]

These healthcare reforms were part of Johnson’s Great Society, which had two primary goals: to eliminate poverty and to eliminate racial injustice. After his landslide victory over Barry Goldwater in 1964, Johnson and his progressive Democratic Congress enacted forward-thinking reforms that were reminiscent of President Franklin D. Roosevelt’s New Deal and began the full-on War on Poverty, which reduced the poverty rate significantly over the subsequent 10 years. Many important Great Society programs– aimed at improving labor, healthcare, and education for poor and working class Americans– are still in existence: Medicare, Medicaid, food stamps, student loans for college, work study, and Head Start. These programs were strengthened under Republican Presidents Richard Nixon and Gerald Ford.

It is so sad how far we have fallen from this level of compassion. The programs of Roosevelt’s New Deal and Johnson’s Great Society– programs that have provided a social safety net for millions of Americans and wiped out many inequities of the past– are now facing a full-frontal attack by conservatives, bankrolled by big business.

Republican Congressmen would have you believe that the nation’s financial problems can be fixed by just cutting spending– specifically dramatically changing Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid (long-term spending) and dramatically cutting other discretionary (non-military) spending (ie, food stamps, children’s healthcare, food safety, pollution abatement, etc) which actually makes up less than 20 percent of the budget. Oh, yeah, and they want to protect oil subsidies, corporate tax loopholes (which allow multinational corporations like Bank of America to pay no taxes; tax loopholes for the rich; continue the Bush era tax cuts that they fought so hard for in December 2010; dismantle Social Security (so retirement funds for those under 50 can be gambled on the stock market); and offer more tax cuts (more trickle down economics).

At a time of high unemployment, high gasoline costs, high food prices, escalating college education tuition, skyrocketing healthcare expenses, a disintigrating social safety net, and soaring corporate profits– Republicans want workers, the elderly, and the indigent to “tighten their belts” to protect the profits and tax breaks of corporate jet owners, big oil, big pharma, big insurance, and Wall Street gamblers and corporate execs everywhere.

From the Associated Press (via the Arizona Daily Star)…

Two years after economists say the Great Recession ended, the recovery has been the weakest and most lopsided of any since the 1930s.

After previous recessions, people in all income groups tended to benefit. This time, ordinary Americans are struggling with job insecurity, too much debt and pay raises that haven’t kept up with prices at the grocery store and gas station. The economy’s meager gains are going mostly to the wealthiest.

Workers’ wages and benefits make up 57.5 percent of the economy, an all-time low. Until the mid-2000s, that figure had been remarkably stable – about 64 percent through boom and bust alike.

Executive pay is included in this figure, but rank-and-file workers are far more dependent on regular wages and benefits. A big chunk of the economy’s gains has gone to investors in the form of higher corporate profits.

“The spoils have really gone to capital, to the shareholders,” says David Rosenberg, chief economist at Gluskin Sheff + Associates in Toronto.

Corporate profits are up by almost half since the recession ended in June 2009. In the first two years after the recessions of 1991 and 2001, profits rose 11 percent and 28 percent, respectively.

And an Associated Press analysis found that the typical CEO of a major company earned $9 million last year, up a fourth from 2009.

Driven by higher profits, the Dow Jones industrial average has staged a breathtaking 90 percent rally since bottoming at 6,547 on March 9, 2009. Those stock market gains go disproportionately to the wealthiest 10 percent of Americans, who own more than 80 percent of outstanding stock, according to an analysis by Edward Wolff, an economist at Bard College.

But if the Great Recession is long gone from Wall Street and corporate boardrooms, it lingers on Main Street:

• Unemployment has never been so high – 9.1 percent – this long after any recession since World War II. At the same point after the previous three recessions, unemployment averaged just 6.8 percent.

• The average worker’s hourly wages, after accounting for inflation, were 1.6 percent lower in May than a year earlier. Rising gasoline and food prices have devoured any pay raises for most Americans.

• The jobs that are being created pay less than the ones that vanished in the recession. Higher-paying jobs in the private sector, the ones that pay roughly $19 to $31 an hour, made up 40 percent of the jobs lost from January 2008 to February 2010 but only 27 percent of the jobs created since then.

Hard times have made Americans more dependent than ever on social programs, which accounted for a record 18 percent of personal income in the last three months of 2010 before coming down a bit this year. Almost 45 million Americans are on food stamps, another record…

Federal Reserve numbers crunched by Haver Analytics suggest that Americans have a long way to go before their finances will be strong enough to support robust spending: Despite cutting what they owe the past three years, the average household’s debts equal 119 percent of annual after-tax income. At the same point after the 1981-82 recession, debts were at 66 percent; after the 1990-91 recession, 85 percent; and after the 2001 recession, 114 percent. [Emphasis added.]

At a time when Americans can least afford it and the income gap between the richest 1 percent and the rest of us is larger than the Grand Canyon, Republicans are asking for even further financial sacrifices from Main Street Americans AND they are willing to throw the world into financial crisis as they cling to their trickle down ideology of protecting the rich while casting the rest of us aside. If they want to “fix” Social Security, they should put Americans back to work at good-paying jobs. According to 2009 figures from the US Census, 14.3 percent of Americans (and 20.7 percent of American children) are living in poverty; 43 million Americans– the largest number ever.

What can you do about it?

Call your Congressional Representatives today and tell them to vote to:

• raise the debt ceiling (and stop the grandstanding),
• raise revenues (by cutting military spending, eliminating corporate loopholes that allow them to avoid paying taxes, eliminate Bush tax cuts for the wealthy, etc.),
• protect the programs that benefit millions of Americans: Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, food stamps, unemployment, college tuition grants, etc.
• solve the deficit problem by putting Americans back to work.

Here are the numbers:
CD8 Gabrielle Giffords: 520-881-3588 (local) or 202-225-2542 (DC)
CD7 Raul Grijalva: 520-622-6788 (local) or 202-225-2435 (DC)

CD6 Jeff Flake from Mesa (We need to lean on this guy who wants to be our next Senator.):
480-833-0092 (in Mesa) or 202-225-2635 (DC)

Senator Jon Kyl 520-575-8633 (local) or 202-224-4521 (DC)
Senator John McCain 520-670-6334 (local) or 202-224-2245 (DC)

What else can you do?

Progressive Democrats of America’s Tucson Chapter is holding a demonstration to show support for protecting Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid on Saturday, July 30 from 10 a.m. – noon at the corner of Speedway and Campbell.

No compromise! No negotiation! No discussion! No public input!

These are the rallying cries of the Tea Party in the Arizona Legislature and in the US Congress. Here is a thoughtful editorial on rigidity from the New York Times.

House Republicans have already won so much in this year’s federal budget standoff that they could easily declare victory and put an end to the maddening and dysfunctional cycle. Previous Congresses would have noticed that millions of people are still struggling in an economic downturn and tried to help, but Republicans have succeeded in shutting off that conversation.

They have won the philosophical war, compelling Democrats to agree to tens of billions in spending cuts. Yet that does not seem to be enough for the Republicans who now control the federal steering wheel.

With a hard deadline looming, talks to prevent a government shutdown have been stymied for a week because Tea Party members of the House have demanded everything: not just some of their cuts but almost all of them, and not just a reduction in spending but a reduction only in the programs they don’t like.Many are insisting Democrats also agree to nonbudgetary riders, like ending the financing of Planned Parenthood or health care reform.

They simply will not accede to anything that looks like a compromise with President Obama. Caught in this position, Speaker John Boehner knows the public is likely to blame Republicans for the pain of a shutdown, once it sees that the Democrats offered difficult compromises that his caucus rejected. That is the price he pays for riding to power on the backs of people who don’t understand that government cannot be built out of ideological rigidity.

If Mr. Boehner cannot persuade his members that the public does not want a government shutdown and will blame them, then much of the government will close its doors on April 8, when the current stopgap funding measure runs out. [Emphasis added.]

For the rest of the editorial, click on this link.

Hurray for an informed citizenry!

Rep. Steve Court (R-Mesa) has withdrawn his proposal for an Arizona flat tax, which would have raised taxes on all Arizonans making less than $100,000 and lowered taxes on everyone making more than that amount.

Court’s flat tax sailed through the Arizona House with only Democrats voting against it. It also passed a Senate panel recently– again with only Democratic opposition. I, for one, thought that Arizonans were about to be seriously screwed by the Legislature, but according to Court, he pulled the legislation because he got calls and questions from voters. Yes!

Unfortunately, Teapublicans like Court don’t give up easily. According to the Arizona Daily Star, he is going to put lipstick on that pig and come up with a spin campaign to dupe voters …er… rewrite the bill and educate the electorate about the value of taxing the working class, while letting the rich keep 40% more cash.

I agree that Arizona’s tax structure needs an overhaul, but my graduated tax plan would have added more tax brackets in the upper income levels– thus increasing taxes on the wealthy– and would have added more corporate tax brackets. (As you know, the Arizona Legislature and Governor Jan Brewer already increased corporate welfare by decreasing the corporate tax rate.)

For more details on the temporary demise of the flat tax, here’s a link to the Star article.

Republicans actually like the other Grover (Norquist) better than this one. (Photo Credit: Sesame Street)

If only the Arizona Legislature could fix the state’s budget problems as quickly as they passed the corporate welfare package this week… sigh…

In a matter of days, Governor Jan Brewer proposed a $538 million corporate tax cut package, it was passed by both the House and the Senate– with no amendments allowed– and it is expected to be signed into law today. This is a travesty.

How does giving away more than a half-a-billion dollars in corporate welfare help a state that is millions– if not billions in debt– hasn’t balanced its budget in years and is closing schools and parks, laying off teachers, and killing healthcare for the poor? The answer: It doesn’t.

At just over 6 percent, Arizona already had one of the country’s lowest corporate tax rates, and we have one of the country’s worst economies, worst unemployment rates, and poorest k-12 school systems. Reducing the state’s corporate to 4.9 percent will help no one but the corporatists. Even House Speaker Kirk Adams admitted the lawmakers don’t know the impact of the new legislation. From the East Valley Tribune:

The votes in the House and Senate came after extensive debate about whether there’s proof that anything in the package will actually create a single job in the state. Even House Speaker Kirk Adams, R-Mesa, conceded there is no guarantee.

“But this much we know: By reducing taxes on business employers, on entrepreneurs, by getting competitive again, Arizona will finally, thankfully, be in the game,” he said.

None of the Democrats and a few Republicans in the Legislature voted against the corporate tax cut legislation. Some wanted to amend it; others complained that it was ramrodded through so quickly that legislators didn’t have time to read it.

What will the Chamber of Commerce and big-business lobbyists say to Governor Brewer today after she signs the corporate welfare bill into law? Wham. Bam. Thank you, ma’am.

Ironically, it was just a few short months ago (when Brewer was running for office), that she said there was “no way” she would support corporate tax cuts after asking the voters to approve a sales tax increase. Remember that sales tax increase we approved because they said it would fund k-12 education? Gotcha. They just gave that away!

What the New York Times’ Paul Krugman wrote recently about Republicans on the federal level holds true for Republicans in the Arizona Legislature: They are sacrificing our future.

Wednesday evening, I posted a story about the proposed 300% tax on medical marijuana, which blew up in the Citizen comments section and on state representatives’ facebook pages over night.

The story in today’s Arizona Daily Star corroborated my story and offered more details.

Basically, Attorney General Tom Horne is using a loophole in Prop 203 (the medical marijuana law that voters passed in 2010) on which to base his sales tax ruling. The law says would-be medical marijuana patients can get a “doctors’ recommendation” for the drug– not a prescription. Prescriptions are not taxable; doctors’ recommendations are. (This is like saying your doctor recommended aspirin or multi-vitamins; when you go to buy the aspirin or multi-vitamins, they are subject to sales tax.)

Horne estimates that applying Arizona’s base sales tax + any applicable city sales taxes could bring in $40 million, a figure he extrapolates from sales in Colorado.

OK, fine, charge regular sales tax. My real issue is with Democratic State Representative Steve Farley’s proposal for a 300% sales tax on medical marijuana. Farley justifies this rate because it is the same rate as the state charges for cigarettes. There are several disconnects here.

• Tobacco is highly addictive and kills more people in the US than all other substances combined. Public health advocates have pushed for ever-high tobacco taxes to encourage people to quit; cost is a research-based strategy. Originally, in Arizona and elsewhere, these tobacco tax revenues were used to prevent teens from starting to smoke, to help people quit smoking, and to treat the indigent with tobacco-related diseases. Arizona and other states have just about wiped clean all those public health programs.
• Medical marijuana is a medicinal plant which provides palliative care to seriously ill patients, and its use by patients will be guided by a physician. It is not a life-threatening drug like tobacco. (Seriously, if the government took an honest look at the death and costs associated with tobacco-smoking, IT would be illegal.)
• Why would you apply a tax rate that is designed to discourage use of a dangerous product to a plant that helps cancer and AIDS patients with their treatment?

I agree with Andrew Myers, who managed the Prop 203 campaign, when he says the 300% tax would put medical marijuana pricing out of reach of most people– thus killing the goose that laid the multi-million-dollar golden egg– and when he disputes Farley’s $40/ounce base price for medical marijuana. Myers calls $40/ounce a “myth”; I’d call it 1975 pricing. My sources near the university say marijuana is sold for $40-60 for 1/8 ounce.  Let’s do the math for the low end price…

$40 (per 1/8 oz) x 8 = $320/oz x 2.5 oz (the amount people are allowed to buy every 2 weeks) = $800 x 300% sales tax = $2400 every 2 weeks.

This pricing would encourage the continuation of street sales. I think medical marijuana should be taxed the same as other herbal remedies (ie, ginkgo biloba, echenichia, St. John’s Wart, garlic, etc.)– 6.6% + applicable city taxes. (I can’t believe I just sided with Tom Horne.)

From the Star article…

“We’re not wild about the idea of increasing the cost of what essentially is medication for seriously ill people,” he said, but no challenge is planned.

But Myers said what Farley wants would be challenged as illegal.

He said it’s one thing to tax marijuana like other products. A special tax, Myers said, runs afoul of a constitutional provision barring lawmakers from altering voter-approved measures.

Farley, however, said the tax is justified. He said a 300 percent levy puts the tax on marijuana at the same general level as the tax on cigarettes, which are subject to a $2-per-pack levy.

“People use cigarettes as an over-the-counter medication for various types of things,” he said. He also doubts imposing the tax alters what voters approved.

Anyway, Farley said, those who really need the marijuana won’t mind paying the extra fee. He figures marijuana sells for $40 an ounce, meaning the sales price, tax and all, would be $160.

Myers said $40 marijuana is a “myth,” and the actual price at dispensaries will be 10 times that, putting medical marijuana out of reach of many in need, particularly since the drug is not covered by health insurance.

How will Arizona balance its budget? With the Republican trifecta controlling Phoenix, the answer is easy:

1. eliminate or drastically reduce funding for services that benefit citizens (ie, education, healthcare, parks),
2. cut corporate taxes,
3. ignore the $10 billion in tax loopholes that benefit special interest groups,
4. borrow a few hundred million, and
5. hope for an economic turn-around.

Republican Governor Jan Brewer released specifics of her budget plan last Friday. It included dramatic cuts for universities (20%), community colleges (47%), parks (100%), and commerce (82%). In addition, Brewer wants to cut the Arizona Health Care Cost Containment System rolls by about one quarter, leaving 280,000 people– virtually all adults– with no health insurance. (AHCCCS had been propped up by federal stimulus money.)

The only part of the budget that goes up significantly is corrections– surprise, surprise given Brewer’s and Senate President Russell Pearce’s cozy relationship with the private prison industry. (They do obviously get the connection between long-term unemployment, education cuts, and the inevitable increase in crime.) Arizona was already spending more on prisons than on university education; the new budget just widens that gap– corrections ($957 million) vs universities ($702 million). This budget is criminal.

Brewer did toss tourism– which had been zeroed out last year– $1 million to combat the state’s poor public image.

But, oops, with all of these budget cuts, the budget is still not balanced. According to the Arizona Daily Star (print edition), Brewer’s cuts reduce the budget from $8,518.9 billion to $8,474.3 billion– a $44.6 million reduction to fill a $2.25 billion hole. Brewer proposes to wreak havoc on post-high school education and the parks system, but all of that amounts to only a 0.5% reduction in the overall budget. What’s the point of releasing a budget that basically does nothing to alleviate the state’s fiscal crisis?

This is where the borrowing and the hoping for a brighter day enter into the Governor’s plan. She proposes to borrow $575 million to fill a hole– with the hopes that the economy will improve in the future. Brewer and other Republicans are also toying with the idea of completely eliminating the states’ Medicaid system (AHCCCS). Legislative comments from the Arizona Daily Star…

House Speaker Kirk Adams called it “an excellent framework and starting point.”

“The governor has demonstrated that she continues to be willing to make tough choices,” he said. “And I think the Legislature is ready to follow suit.”

But House Minority Leader Chad Campbell called the plan “the same policies and the same maneuvers that we’ve seen for several years that have gotten us into this mess in the first place.”

He noted that Brewer plans to borrow $575 million just to bridge an anticipated $764 million deficit for the rest of this budget year. Her longer-term plans, he said, are based on a hope the economy will get better, something Campbell said is not a realistic long-term solution.

Campbell wants “long-term tax reform,” including closing what Democrats call $10 billion in “outrageous tax loopholes.”

I agree with Campbell, we need long-term tax reform, but my proposal goes beyond filling loopholes. I think the state should consider sliding scale corporate taxes (currently at a flat rate of 6.968%) and consider adding at least one more upper income tax bracket.  Another option would be to return to the tax levels the state had before the last Republican tax giveaway (which we obviously couldn’t afford.)

Arizona State University’s Morrison Institute released a report on our “structurally unbalanced” government. The bottomline is: We can’t cut our way out of our current economic crisis. Arizona’s tax system relies too heavily on growth and sales; when the economy is down, the state’s income plummets. As a result, the state suffers cyclical boom and bust cycles.

Just how bad is it?

Here is a recap of the deep hole Arizona’s tax cuts have left us in, from AZCentral [Emphasis added].

When lawmakers return to the Capitol in January, they face a $2.25 billion deficit over the next 18 months.

“What we are walking into is major structural-deficit reduction,” said House Speaker Kirk Adams, R-Mesa. “This is no longer a $5 million solution here or a $10 million cut there. It’s a $1 billion decision.” [I guess Adams didn't send that memo to the Governor.]

GOP Gov. Jan Brewer and the Republican majority in the Legislature have ruled out tax increases, and other options for balancing the budget are nearly tapped out.

That means deep cuts are inevitable…

And because these leaders want to cut taxes to get Arizona’s economy rolling again, that means less revenue for state coffers and a larger hole to fill.

There are additional challenges as well: Lawmakers must erase an $825 million deficit in this fiscal year’s budget, compressing a year’s worth of cuts into a few months. Federal stimulus money runs out at the end of the budget year on June 30, adding to a hole of about $1.4 billion. The Legislature also has 37 new lawmakers, and they will have to quickly learn the intricacies of the state budget.

Some Arizonans already have felt the cuts – they lost child care, health services or educational programs. But many others have yet to feel the budget crunch personally beyond shuttered rest stops or state parks.

One thing is clear: After this session, every Arizonan is much more likely to experience the impact of the budget crisis. Lawmakers will wrangle with difficult decisions with potentially devastating consequences for Arizona residents.

Republicans who rode the Tea Party’s coat tails into office in 2010 are vowing to cut $100 billion from domestic spending, but can they really do it?

According to the New York Times, the only parts of the budget that would be exempt from a potential 20 percent across-the-board would be the military, domestic security, and veterans.

What would this mean for us? Cuts in Medicare and Social Security, reduced revenue-sharing with the states, more lay-offs, fewer teachers, less healthcare, crumbling infrastructure, etc. How can anyone believe that this is a good idea? (And, don’t forget, the returning Republicans– like House-Speaker-elect John Boehner– were the ones lobbying hard for continued tax cuts for the rich just a few weeks ago.) From the Times…

The budget-cutting exercise is perhaps the biggest test facing the House Republicans as they seek to remain united and to keep faith with Tea Partymembers, many of whom remain suspicious of the party’s willingness to vote for deep spending cuts.

But if Republicans vote for the size and range of required cuts in education, law enforcement, medical and scientific research, transportation and much more, it would give Democrats political ammunition to use against them in swing districts.

Such reductions are sure to draw protests from governors and local officials, including Republicans, who are counting on federal money to help balance their budgets. Many business and farm groups likewise would oppose cuts in their subsidies. And many economists would argue that immediate federal spending cuts of this size, especially on top of cuts and layoffs in the cities and states, would threaten the economy’s recovery and offset any stimulus from the tax cut deal Republicans and Mr. Obama reached just weeks ago.

Yet conservative analysts say even more spending cuts are desirable. Brian Riedl of the Heritage Foundation, a conservative research organization, has outlined a plan for $343 billion in reductions, including cuts from corporate tax breaks and entitlement programs that are not in the portion of the federal budget that House Republicans are focusing on, the so-called nonsecurity discretionary spending.

“The difficulty for Republicans is that they’re concentrating their cuts in a small sliver of the budget,” Mr. Riedl said. “They should also be addressing large entitlement programs, such as Medicare and Social Security, which are the main source of our budget problems. Cutting $100 billion from these other programs isn’t just a matter of eliminating waste, fraud and abuse. It will involve real cuts in real programs.”…

The promise to cut $100 billion this fiscal year — in effect, taking government operations to 2008 levels — would mean cuts of more than 20 percent across the board from the $477 billion that Congress allocated for such programs in the 2010 fiscal year, which ended Sept. 30.

Such across-the-board cuts “would have very damaging implications for the long-term growth of the economy and the long-term future of our work force,” said Jacob J. Lew, Mr. Obama’s budget director. He is preparing the administration’s budget for the 2012 fiscal year, which would continue a three-year freeze of the same domestic spending at 2010 levels.

“If you look in areas like education, if it was applied across the board it would mean eight million students would have their Pell grants reduced by an average of $700,” Mr. Lew said. “You obviously could make policy not to do that, but then you’d have to save a lot of money somewhere else.”

A 20-percent cut also would mean 40,000 fewer teachers and school aides, he said, and big reductions in basic research, law enforcement and small business programs, among many others.

If the Republicans apply their promise literally, some programs would have to be scaled back even more because the government is already well into its fiscal year, so the cuts would have to be concentrated in a shorter period. The reductions would be about 30.6 percent, said James R. Horney, a former Congressional budget analyst who is now at the liberal-leaning Center on Budget and Policy Priorities.

“That would require very large layoffs or furloughs of federal employees,” Mr. Horney said, “as well as big reductions in grants to state and local governments and government purchases of goods and services — all of which would offset a good portion of the stimulus achieved in the tax compromise and threaten the recovery.”

In new rules that the House is expected to adopt when it convenes on Wednesday, Republicans will empower the incoming chairman of the House Budget Committee, Representative Paul D. Ryan of Wisconsin, to set limits for the various categories of domestic spending that are decided in the Appropriations Committee. That is more power than ever invested in a Budget Committee chief and a significant diminution in the appropriation panel’s traditional sway.

Initially, that would allow House Republicans to suggest what general areas the $100 billion would come from without identifying specific cuts.

“The reality of governing is different than the reality of campaigning, and it’s easier to throw out a number than it is to support it,” said David Axelrod, Mr. Obama’s senior strategist.

Maybe the impending budget battles will open the eyes of complacent Americans.

Greeks protest austerity measures. (Photo Credit: New York Times)

In case you’ve been too busy watching Faux News to notice, we live in a global economy, and the current economic crisis is NOT a Tucson crisis, NOT an Arizona crisis, and NOT a US crisis. It is a worldwide financial crisis with roots in multiple housing bubbles, Wall Street gambling, and capitalist greed.

In the US and in the European Union, politicians are trying to balance budgets on the backs of workers. Europeans are taking to the streets and protesting austerity measures proposed by their governments to balance budgets, while Americans– duped by corporate media– nestle into their couches.

Nationwide in the US, there is a movement to cut corporate taxes at the state level while increasing individual income taxes, property taxes, and sales taxes (all of which hurt “us”– not the rich and not the corporations). But we do nothing about it.

In December, President Obama, Congressional Republicans, and reluctantly Congressional Democrats struck a deal to extend the Bush II tax cuts and other questionable giveaways (such as, reducing the estate tax and reducing the “payroll tax”– AKA contributions to the  Social Security System). Republicans who campaigned on fiscal responsibility and fought hard against Obama’s “wasteful spending” stonewalled several pieces of important legislation until Obama and the Democrats kowtowed to their demands for tax cuts for the rich (not just the middle class).

Depending upon how you look at the tax cut extensions they are either: 1) a HUGE gamble– betting that the general public will stimulate the economy significantly by spending their increased take-home pay or 2) the riskiest and most fiscally irresponsible act ever undertaken by our elected officials, since the tax cut package costs more than the wars and more than healthcare reform (which was painted by campaigning Republicans as fiscally irresponsible and something we can’t afford); and/or 3) a guarantee that our children and grandchildren will live in poverty with minimal social services because of our greed and unwillingness to pay our own way.

Contrary to what Congressional Republicans like Arizona Senator Jon Kyl say, the giant hole in the budget created by the tax cuts will have to be filled somehow– eventually. If the cuts don’t stimulate the economy– as Obama’s advisors are betting– that hole will be filled by cutting other parts of the budget or raising taxes elsewhere. In recent days, there have been murmurs about revisiting the recommendations of the Cat Food Commission. (This is dangerous stuff. They slip us a few bucks and then try to take away tax credits that benefit the middle class– like the mortgage interest deductions– while we’re busy looking at our slightly larger paychecks.) Again, where is the outrage?

Another budget-balancing move proposed in the US and in France is raising the age of retirement. Although the French took to the streets a few months ago to protest raising the age of retirement from 60 to 62, there has been no outrage (except from me) regarding raising the retirement age to 70 in the US.

Unemployment is high worldwide. Recent college graduates and other young people are having a tough time finding jobs and fulfilling their dreams. In Europe, recent grads are taking action and moving to countries where there are jobs– see Europe’s young grow agitated over future prospects in the New York Times. Eventually, this will lead to a brain drain if countries ignore their young educated professionals and allow them to be unemployed or underemployed. In the US, unemployed grads are… well… nestling into their parents’ couches (if their parents are lucky enough to have couches). We have not seen economic exodus yet but maybe that’s because no one knows a foreign language or has a passport. Again, where is the outrage over continued high unemployment? Banks and businesses have money; they’re just not creating jobs with it.

In the coming weeks, the newly elected Republican-controlled US House of Representatives and Republican-controlled state legislatures will take office. Cut, cut, cut– while handing out tax breaks for corporations– will be their modus operandi– in other words, more trickle-down economics. Will the US populace continue to sit idly by, as our benefits are being auctioned off in exchange for corporate welfare? Only time will tell.