Day 51 – God, Science, Politics, Republicanism

Thursday March 11, 2021

I saw a picture yesterday showing a smug looking Paul Ryan when he and his fellow Republicans passed their $1.9 trillion dollar tax cut for the wealthy. 

I also saw a reminder that not one Republican voted for the current $1.9 trillion dollar package.

Let’s not talk about other things. Let us concentrate on one thing and one thing only.

I the words of Maya Angelou, “When someone tells you who they are, believe them the first time.”

Or I have heard that Satan’s favorite story was the one about the snake that asked someone to take him off the mountain where he had been sunning himself. It was getting cold and he would freeze up there. The person relented, picked up the snake and carried it down to a warmer climate. As the snake left the person he bite him. When the person dying from the bite asked why the snake replied, “You knew who I was and what I was before you picked me up.”

When Donald Trump passed that huge tax cut he told his rich friends he had saved them a lot of money, and he had! 

Believe them the first time.

FDR took his foot off spending in 1935 and he believed the banks would lend money he gave them. They didn’t and it led to the Great Depression* via the credit squeeze of ’35, because the banks didn’t lend out money (ie no credit for people.)

*Some think it was Black Friday in 1929 when the stock market crashed. That was bad, but it was actually the failure to lend money later that really hurt.

Obama bailed out the banks, gave them a ton of money, under the belief that the banks would in turn lend it out. They didn’t. They threw themselves big parties, moved the money overseas and then said they couldn’t find it.

Economics is pretty simple at the conceptual level. Figuring out what is actually going on, implementing it is the hard part.

We’ve seen forty years of Republican economics. Believe what you see. The rich get richer and everyone else suffers. 

Aside from being a hypocritical unpatriotic bunch of bought and paid for individuals … Did you see that the Senator from Mississippi (Wicker -R) is telling his constituents all the great stuff they are going to get because of the Biden Covid Relief bill passing? He failed to remind them that he voted against it!

This leads me to god and science. Any god, I don’t care which one, not one of them have shown that belief in them does any good. Yes, you may feel better, but did your god actually intercede and do something? The answer is, and always has been, “NO.” 

As science has moved forward to explain more and more stuff, god has retreated. We no longer throw babies into water and let them drown to make rain. Nor do we burn witches, or bleed people to make them well, etc. Etc. Etc. 

Look, if you want to believe in god, whatever god that’s fine. I just don’t want to pay for it. I want your holy places to be taxed. If it’s physical plant then it should be taxed. I don’t want to grant exceptions because of your beliefs. Be it that you believe you shouldn’t work on the sabbath, or you should wear a hat or a hijab, or that no one should get an abortion. If it’s your belief, it’s your belief and not mine. 

You want to talk rugged individualism? Don’t tell me what I should be doing based on your belief.

The Republicans have shown you over and over again who they are and what they will do. They will enrich their rich friends, they will take away your money and your rights. Believe them. 

They have shown you over and over again.

You don’t have to believe them, look at the evidence. Despite what they say the facts are clear. Trickle down economics doesn’t help you. It helps the rich. Hey, I have an idea. Let’s give money to the poor and let it trickle up!

Because well this is a really hard economic concept or two but here goes:

1. – The quickest way out of poverty is money.

2. – Giving more money to rich people doesn’t make the poor better off.

As to 1. above, how could the poor get more money so they wouldn’t be poor?

A. – We could let the rich “trickle down” some money. But any report I have ever read from waiters is that the rich are terrible tippers. Therefore I doubt it will work. That and every economic report I’ve seen since during and after Reagan points this out.

B. – We could pay the poor not to be poor. What would we call that? Hum, lemme think. Why not call it “I have to give you more money because the government won’t let me pay you less.” Too long. How about, “Increase the minimum wage”? Yeah, that’ll work. Now the question is by how much. That’s easy. All the economic advisers on those right wing talk shows tell you that your housing should be no more than 25% of your pay. So take the average rent in your area, figure out what 25% of that is and that’s the minimum wage for that  area. (I can hear those talk show host howling now!) ps Works out to about $35/hour most places.

C. – We could give the poor more money. What? Well, we’d do it with food stamps and cutting health care costs and added money for people with kids and like that there. What? It’s in Joe Biden’s plan that just passed? Who knew?

PS Virgin Bloody Mary with Shrimp