Some Facts for a Change

By Arthur In Marin County

There has been a lot of hand-wringing over taxes and "takings" and the terrible profligate spending of the current administration. Helpfully, someone took the trouble to sit down and make a useful chart that shows where our deficit is coming from. And where it isn't. It turns out (surprise, surprise) that Bush did it, again. And again.

The main culprit appears to be his unfunded tax cut to the very wealthy, those he referred to as "his base". Things have gone well for them, less well for the economy. It will be difficult, perhaps impossible, to just roll back the key tax and spending policies of the Bush era. Powerful forces like things just as they are, thanks anyhow. Deficits? Pesky things. The demise of the middle class. Tsk, tsk, they were nice, those "small people", weren't they?

Ah well, time marches on, doesn't it? Nations rise, nations fall, but the truly wealthy tend to muddle through somehow.

I like that the current administration is talking about cutting back on the Defense budget. There are a lot of vested interests who are in the habit of feeding regularly at the trough of the Defense budget, often for cutting edge projects that spiral into huge cost-overruns and delays, all of which are bad for the budget and great for corporate income. This is not to say that there are not very real challenges out there in the big bad world, but that blowing things up is not always the most economical solution.

Arthur