The marble queen

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America's Job Loss - Beri Fox
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Colbert Report Full Episodes 2010 Election March to Keep Fear Alive

I don't mean to make fun of Beri Fox with my title, "the marble queen," since I thought she was an impressive guest. She made some good points. We don't have a level playing field, and it's not just that China manipulates its currency, not at all. It goes far beyond that.

But I embedded this video clip for a completely different reason. Here's Stephen Colbert:  "Yes, extending the existing tax cuts will create jobs. Because the only way out of this mess is to keep things exactly as they are."

It's a great point, isn't it?  The American people are unhappy because job growth hasn't been strong enough as we've started to climb out of this deep recession, and so we've thrown out the Democrats and replaced them with Republicans. But what is the Republican plan to increase job growth? It's to keep tax rates exactly the way they are - and, in fact, exactly the way they were even before this economic collapse.

That's why we've switched parties, to keep tax rates on the rich exactly the way they are now? They've been this way throughout Barack Obama's term! (The only thing he did was decrease taxes even further on the middle class.) That's the Republicans' bold new plan to turn things around, keeping things exactly the way they've been?

It's just astonishing, don't you think? Republicans claim that the Democrats have been wrong, so their prescription is to keep things exactly the same! Obviously, there is a difference, since the Democrats want to let Bush's tax cuts on the wealthy expire as scheduled. The Republicans argue against that, claiming that it will harm job growth. But if that's the case, why hasn't it helped during the past two years. In fact, why did we see joblessness explode after these tax cuts were implemented?

This makes no sense, even by Republican standards. It's just insane, don't you think? How can the American people possibly be dumb enough to buy this? It beggars the imagination.

At the same time, Republicans complain about the deficit (the deficit that they created), and extending these tax cuts will greatly increase the deficit, just as it did when they were initially adopted. In fact, that's why the cuts were made temporary, scheduled to expire after ten years.

IMHO, all of the tax cuts should be allowed to expire as scheduled. But, of course, increasing taxes - or even doing nothing and letting them increase as originally planned - is political suicide. So even the Democrats advocate keeping the lower tax rates on all income up to $250,000 per year. (Note that this also includes millionaires and billionaires, up to the first quarter of a million in income, so it's not as though they'll be back to 1990s tax rates entirely. And they'll certainly make out better than those of us with less than a quarter of a million in annual earnings.)

The Democratic plan will also increase the deficit, but cutting the top rates - which affect only the wealthiest 2% of Americans - will add nearly a trillion dollars to the deficit on top of that. So how can you possibly propose doing just that, while still claiming that you care about the deficit? How can you sell that kind of nonsense to the American people? And yet the Republicans did. Apparently, we are that dumb and that gullible.

And the Democrats are so timid that they refused to separate these tax cut questions into two parts and vote on the middle class tax cuts - wildly popular with voters - before the election. That's even more astonishing, don't you think? They could have left the question of tax cuts for the rich until after the election, but why not make the Republicans vote on that specific question? Why not make them choose to vote against middle class tax cuts or vote only on part of what they wanted, the part that both parties agree on?

It was win-win for Democrats,... which is why they passed on it, no doubt. How can you be so spineless that you refuse to do something that has absolutely no downside for your party? I swear, Democrats seem to want to be defeated. Well, if so, they got what they wished, didn't they?

Or maybe they realize that American voters are so dumb that the Democrats will be successfully blamed for doing anything, and so all they want to do is hide under the bed. Well, that's not exactly a successful strategy under any circumstances. Maybe hiding is comforting to cowards, but it's not going to save them. It didn't save them. And it's not going to save our country, either.