Do we need another reminder that after presiding over a sixfold increase in our federal budget deficit (from around half a billion annually to over $3 trillion this year), that Republicans will never STFU about the deficit if Democrats sweep back into power? Why, yes, we do! After all, everyone watched Tha Bush Mobb hand $700 billion over to the banksters but we still had a Tea Party movement all about TEH DEFICITZ!!!! Their real objection to federal spending has to do with spending it on people -- Republicans were OK with the CARES Act squandering half a trillion-plus on corporate welfare and with another three-quarters of a trillion on defense spending, but not with the HEROES Act.
Do we need yet another reminder that "Panic Over 'Cancel Culture' Is Another Example of Right-Wing Projection"? Why, yes, we do! It's not just that our First Amendment protects you from your government and not your job, or even that the right can't win arguments on the merits -- it's also that right-wingers have been doing "cancel culture" themselves for-freaking-ever, if you recall, for example, the numerous battles right-wingers have fought over history textbooks in Texas the last few decades. I do wonder how many folks see some whiny brat on YouTube complaining that they're always getting censored and then say "wait, how am I even seeing you?"
Do we need another reminder that paying our farmworkers better would not result in significantly higher food prices? Why, yes, we do! The EPI analysis says a 40% pay hike would mean 4% in higher prices for fruits and vegetables, which would mean an extra $25 per year in the average household (and, not insignificantly, would mean that farmworkers could afford a better life and contribute more to our economy). This maps on to similar findings about fast food workers and their pay, of course. (As an aside, it shouldn't be that hard, in these times, to ensure farmers and farmworkers get a bigger slice of revenues -- seems to me the biggest obstacle would be all the lobbies of the big ag middlemen.)
From Marco Guzman at ITEP we learn that Arizona, Illinois, and California all have important tax matters on the ballot this year. When I hear that Arizona voters might raise taxes on the rich, Illinois voters might scrap their flat income tax in favor of a progressive one, and California voters might actually tax commercial property based on its (surely absurdly-inflated) value rather than its purchase price, I wonder why more candidates for the U.S. House and Senate aren't supporting these proposals, since they surely affect those who'd vote for them. Hell, Arkansas passed a statewide minimum wage hike the same year Sen. Pryor lost re-election by almost 20 points; think there might have been a lesson in there, somewhere?
Nearly a year after the military forced out Bolivian President Evo Morales right after winning another election, Bolivian voters went back to the polls and promptly put his party back in power. Turns out that when you stage a coup against a popular (and popularly-elected President) and then kill a few dozen of his supporters, people fight back -- by taking to the streets, in a nation where doing that might well get you killed. How about we emulate their example in a week and a half and deliver a similar message to Republicans across the land? You know, before they fulfill their wish to be as bad as the folks who put good Bolivians under their boot for a year.
Finally, a Colorado trailer park landlord sends a letter to his tenants telling them that a Joe Biden victory would ensure that the price of everything will go up -- including their rent, which he says would "most likely" double. "(W)e are not telling you how to vote," he swears, which I hope inspires mirth to anyone who reads it. It'd be nice if people could remember how "taxes, utilities, gasoline, groceries, new permits, fees, and regulations" most emphatically did not shoot up under the Obama Administration. It'd also be nice if people knew "a lot" was two words, not one.
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