Republican Solution to Everything: Cut Taxes

While it has been repeatedly reported that the Republicans are being obfuscatory in their total lack of support to help this sinking recessive economy, the most interesting aspect of their ideological quandary is their lack of any alternative suggestions. Other than cut taxes.

Which is patently unhelpful. Unemployed, homeless people who lost both job and home do not need tax cuts. They need housing. And most importantly, they require jobs. Jobs that will secure a home, any kind of home, rented or bought, for the foreseeable future. That is what is required.

It's unconscionable that the fat cats called Republican congressmen and women, who have no worry about their own livelihoods, are pushing only federal tax cuts as their solution to a problem that is complex and deep. Conservatism is not working. It hasn't since Bush's infamous tax cuts. Numerous tax cuts. That, coupled with intense deregulation, lack of governmental oversight, and the evidently uncontrollable urge towards cronyism, has led to a worldwide recession.

It was unthinkable that anyone could see that reality and not understand that tax cuts would not help. People don't need a one-time five hundred dollar check from their government. What people need when they don't have employment is, guess what? Employment. People need more services until they can afford to buy them through their future employment. People need housing.

And what is even more unconscionable is that Republicans forget those millions of working poor, who make minimum wage and can't feed and house themselves properly, let alone any children or spouses they might have. Don't believe it? Read Nickel and Dimed, written by Barbara Ehrenreich. She has a Ph.D. and she could not make a living earning minimum wage.

One really wonders exactly how privilege has blinded Republicans into thinking that, as long as they stick with their outmoded, privilege only wealthy-white-people policies, they will eventually convince the poor masses Republicans have their best interests at heart. On the other hand, it worked for eight years with Bush.

Big Three Auto and Congress

it may be old news, but there are still some issues regarding the Republican Senate's refusal to help these three automakers.

1) The hypocrisy of being willing to help the financial world with $700 billion, which demanded absolutely no oversight in comparison with a paltry $14 billion is truly shameless and shocking

2) The demand by Republican Senators for concession from unions is somewhat justified because, after all, some of their workers get $80/hr. Most people with Ph.D.'s don't even get that. But here is the problem: the issue at stake was not that unions should "bend" and be more transparent for these Republicans. It was that these senators came from southern states who didn't have those automakers in their states, so they didn't care if tens of thousands of newly unemployed men and women might join the unemployed rolls. It wasn't happening in their backyard. It was the worst kind of Nimbyism combined with a not-so-subtle attempt to gut unions.

3) What happened to all the other news out ther? Like what's happening to other economies around the world as a result of Bush running our country into the ground? What is happening to state economies?

4) As for the automakers themselves, here is what I would like: stop being arrogant. Design cars that people want. If Honda and Toyota are more successful, don't you think there is a reason for it? Stop designing stupid cars with giant engines that get 14 miles to the gallon because in America, "bigger is badder and better." Stop being arrogant and offering what you want. Design what the people want: cars that are fuel efficient and sleekly designed. What is wrong with American designers designing bulky gas-guzzlers with dipping noses that supposedly connotes "sleek" in all American cars. Why does it appear as if American car makers always pick their industrial designers from the dregs of classes from ArtCenter while Honda and Toyota get their best and brightest?

5) In terms of layoffs, the automakers might consider beginning with laying off its management, since they are the incompetent people who have made these decisions that have led to your current crisis?

6) As for Senate Republicans, the hypocrisy of their decision to save the financial industry but not to save the auto industry at a mere fraction of the cost, is glaring and unconscionable. And the protest that what they want is "oversight" rather than that they merely wanted to gut the unions is equally repugnant.