Planned Parenthood Defunded in New Hampshire

Another state has joined the long string of states who have decided to defund Planned Parenthood. It's New Hampshire this time. But that is not the news. This is:

Councilor Raymond Wieczorek of Manchester added that he opposed funding for birth control and condoms altogether. "If they want to have a good time, why not let them pay for it?" he told the Concord Monitor last week. [via Huffington Post]

The councilman's comments are insensitive, sexist, and plainly dumb.

"If THEY want to have a good time..."? Let's remind the Councilman that no abortion can follow lesbian intercourse. Once we have established that, let's then remind the councilman that in the type of intercourse he presumably prefers a man (at least) has to be involved. Sure, the councilman could possibly have meant that both the man and the woman who have unprotected sex are equally to blame. Call it a hunch, though: I will venture that when the councilman said "they" he was only thinking of the female half of the couple.

If you are a woman, or if you are a man who has a mother, sister or daughter, know this: defunding Planned Parenthood hits the poor the most, and does not only defund abortion; it also defunds access to cheap contraception, pap smears, STD testing, psychological assistance to women. That's why saying "If they want to have fun..." is not only sexist, it's also dumb. Councilman Wieczorek and the others on the New Hampshire Executive Council who voted to cancel the state's contract with Planned Parenthood did not simply defund "fun", they also defunded health care. Which is par for the course for socially conservative men and women in this country and for the Republicans who choose to put corporate health ahead of human health on a daily basis.

Note to Republican voters: the percentage of Planned Parenthood's work devoted to abortion services is 3%. The other 97% is not. If you agree with the New Hampshire Executive Concil's decision not on fiscal grounds, but on moral grounds, then could you please consider the greater good of the other people you are hurting? Oh, I forgot, you are Republicans. Never mind.

What Do You Call 288 People Who Work Tirelessly Against 98% Of Americans?

Congressional Republicans AND the President of the United States, that's what you call them. Funny how during the 2008 Presidential campaign, Republicans liked to call then Senator Obama the most liberal guy in the U.S. Senate. You know, a socialist.

But now, as the Huffington Post's Sam Stein reports, it turns out that Obama offered to raise Medicare eligibility age as part of grand debt deal. No, your eyes are not failing you.

Two years ago, this guy had the opportunity to lower the Medicare eligibility age when health care reform was on the table. Economist after economist after health care expert indicated that lowering the Medicare eligibility age from 65 to 55 would have done more to lower health care costs in the country than the bill that actually made it into law. Many went so far as saying that Medicare For All would have been the best way to address the health care crisis that this country faced and is still facing. But the President, or Traitor-in-Chief, as I will from now on refer to him, gave the negotiating platform away to prove how liberal he was, presumably.

Two years later, and he still has not stopped betraying the people who put all their faith in him after eight years of nation-wrecking at the ends of George W. Doofus and Dick(head) Chain-him (and waterboard him, too, while you're at it). Not only did Obama blow the best chance this country has ever had for aligning itself with the likes of Germany and Japan, the countries that the best generation had reduced to rubble but 66 years ago or so, in providing decent, sure, and affordable health care to everyone; he apparently decided that seniors have it too good, and that delaying their life-saving benefits for two years would be a step in the right direction. Balancing the budget on the back of seniors? Good move, genius.

We do not need a Republican president in 2012. We need a Democrat with balls, a spine, and a heart for the little guy. Primary challenge, anyone?

What Do You Call 287 People Who Work Tirelessly Against 98% Of Americans?

Congressional Republicans, that's what you call them.

They will stop at nothing in order to preserve privileges for the wealthiest 2% of Americans, particularly for the top 1%, and even more so for the top 0.01%.

They will slash aid to the poor, to students, to most wage earners, and they will seek to destroy what's left of the unions, Medicare, Medicaid, Social Security, government oversight, public safety, health care, public transportation, environmental protections, education, you name it. They will protect at all costs the "right" of PhRMA, Big Oil, hedge fund managers, CEOs, big agribusiness, defense contractors, and transnational corporations to get away with paying less taxes than anyone in the world except for Iceland and Norway, to own tax-sheltered private jets and to conceal their income in tropical tax havens.

They will use anything they can in pursuit of their goals, aided and abetted by the criminally spineless or stupid president du jour, by the stupidity of almost half the electorate, which includes a stupefyingly high number hypocritical rubes, ignorant dupes, and ready-to-be-raptured imbeciles, and by too many incompetent, uninquisitive, or sympathetic media figures. Not to mention the many idiots on the other side of the political spectrum who believe that in order to get elected they have to move further to the right, instead of to the left.

It's a pretty vicious cycle, which is made possible to a large degree by timid Democrats like our current president, who fail to see that they are playing into the Republican devils' hands every time they refuse to act boldly. Tinkering at the edges of a failing system, they are doomed to fail and sink us deeper. As they do, the public is made more pliable to the Republican sirens who say that the only way out of the mess is to further cut taxes for the richest 1% of the population, the so called job-creators. When no jobs are created, and things get worse after a new cycle of Republican rule, Democrats get another stab at fixing things, except that they are apparently incapable of learning from their previous failures and they end up repeating the same mistakes and fail again. When they get clobbered in the next election cycle, the lesson they learn is not that they did not act boldly enough, but that they did not become move enough to the right. With every iteration of this vicious cycle, the political balance swings further to the right, the conquests of the New Deal and the Great Society are further eroded, and things get inevitably worse.

Meanwhile, other nations are not waiting for Americans to catch on to the Republican scheme and leave them gasping for air in the dust(bin) of history.

It is amazing that most people on the right believe that the New World Order is a liberal scheme conceived by the Buffets and the Soroses of the world, when in fact it is thriving thanks to the efforts of people like Grover Norquist, the Bushes, the Boehners, the Cantors, the Thomases, the Roberts and the Scalias of the world, with the help of traitors to the Democratic cause like Blanche Lincoln and Max Baucus, to name just two shameful examples. Their goal is to transform as much of the laboring world into an endless reservoir of modern slaves who toil their lives away for the benefit of the new slaveholders (corporations), only to be replaced by new blood when the old has been spilled.

287 (give or take a few) is the number of actors it takes to keep a nation in yoke for the benefit of "the chosen ones". You may call them Republicans, saint patrons of the oligarchs, or The Commission, as you like. They redistribute wealth to the top, the robber baron way, all the while decrying the dangers of socialism and statism. And a complicit electorate, at least a good half of the electorate, blesses their efforts year in, year out.

Republican Voters Are Enablers Of Their Own (And Everybody Else's) Misery

I think the title of this post encapsulates the jist of yesterday's final New Rule on Bill Maher's Real Time in the title of the post.

Obama Is A Timid Right-Leaning Centrist Fool

The jobs report for June is out, and it's not good. Meanwhile the President continues to be a timid fool about how to boost employment. What we need is a national jobs program to rebuild infrastructure and help consumer spending. Many authoritative economists had warned him that he should have focused on boosting employment by initiating a recovery program centered around rebuilding and renewing America's crumbling infrastructure, But no, the timid fool has let Republican hijack the spotlight away from job creation and move it to the budget, the debt ceiling, and mounting deficits. So government jobs have actually declined in the 2 1/2 years Obama has been president.

I am not even sure he means well any more. He is just another centrist fool in a long string of foolish presidents. Makes Nixon and Carter look like progressive giants.

Surprise, Surprise? Nah!

President Obama and Congressional Democrats tried to pass (minor) health insurance reform for health care reform. Anyone who followed things closely could have told you that it was, for the most part, a sham, a scheme aimed at giving the impression of taking action when in fact the goal was to leave things as they were and, if possible, to expand the revenues of a powerful industry. Mission accomplished, for the industry at least. For Americans? Who are we kidding?

The Lone Tree Declaration Dissected

The Constructive Curmudgeon re-posted The Lone Tree Declaration, which is a conservative manifesto "released in conjunction with the upcoming Western Conservative Summit, sponsored by Colorado Christian University."

1. In our adherence to the self-evident truths of the American Founding, we are conservatives.

2. In our debt to the civilizational heritage of Jerusalem, Athens, Rome, London, and Philadelphia, we are Westerners.

3. In our concern for the mounting threat to liberty, seeing freedom in the balance, we convene with solemn purpose at this Summit.

4. We seek a conservative renewal for our country through civic action that puts principle above party, resists the corruption of power, bridges intramural disagreements or rivalries, and protects an open public square centered on the nation’s Judeo-Christian core.

5. We commit ourselves unswervingly to a political and social order that upholds individual freedom and personal responsibility, limited government and the rule of law, free enterprise and private property, traditional family values and sanctity of life, compassion for the poor and voluntarism in service to others, natural law and morality, strong defense and secure borders, all in keeping with the original intent of the Constitution.

6. We reject, and will resist, the socialist temptation, transnational progressivism, secular utopian illusions, appeasement, disarmament, or capitulation to jihad and sharia.

Since I live just a few miles from Lone Tree, I feel I have a stake in this. Though the Declaration, which has a thinly-veiled undercurrent of xenophobia, is obviously not representative of the views of all Coloradans (or Lone-Tree-ers), it nonetheless will get the endorsement of many, particularly many who are easily swayed by declarations which appeal to the limbic system more than to the cerebral cortex. I thought of sending the following response to the blog where I found the Declaration, but then I thought I'd rather post here instead. So here's the point-by-point response.

1) It will be news to the liberals in this country that adhering to the allegedly (and hazily-defined or undefined) "self-evident truths of the American Founding" leads to conservatism.

2) It will be news, and unflattering news at that, to the Native-Americans, the Asians, Africans, the millions of immigrants from Eastern Europe, and many more, that "we" are Westerners.

3) You probably have to be a signatory of the Declaration to see freedom in the balance and liberty under a mounting threat. (And then again it might be, but not at the hands of foreigners and "Islamofascists"; rather at the end of the Supreme Court Justices who found for the plaintiff in Citizens United v. FEC, or who ruled that a class action suit brought against Walmart by 1.6 million women had no standing because the class lacked the element of sufficient commonality)

4) That's commendable, but what exactly does putting "principle above party" mean? Is it the same principle that allows transnational corporations to ship jobs out of the United States at the expense of Americans, for the glory of corporate profits? Methinks "principle" needs defining.

5) The unswerving commitment to "a political and social order that upholds individual freedom and personal responsibility" is also commendable, but it should not be at the top of the list (in order of appearance), otherwise it looks like a sneaky act of bait and switch: Traditional family values and the sanctity of life should be mentioned at the top, as they obviously trump the individual freedom and personal responsibility of individuals in the LGBT community, or those of incestuously raped or life-endangered girls and women who would presumably be forced to carry their pregnancies to term if the Lone Tree Declaration happened to be the founding manifesto for law of the land. The unswerving commitment to free enterprise and private property, for example, is mentioned ahead of compassion for the poor, which is obviously the right ranking for conservatives, seeing how supposedly compassionate conservatives prioritize budgets: Tax breaks for everybody who doesn't need any more money and crackers and catsup for the poor; you know, "vegetables" in the diet. Or no subsidies for heating oil. It took America to popularize the concept of free-enterprise, and American conservatives to give the concept a bad name.

6. 4 out of 6 items in this list appear desirable to me. The non-desirable ones are appeasement and capitulation to jihad and sharia. In fact, one should never appease those who seek to establish a religiously inspired form of government, no matter which religion.

Corporate Tax Whiners

You know the meme that corporations are overtaxed, that the tax rates on corporations in the United States is one of the highest in the world, and that cutting all kind of taxes (corporate, capital gains, and individual taxes on millionaires and billionaires) would create jobs? Well, it's a meme, as I said. But don't believe me: Check out Marie Diamond's article at Think Progress.

Happy Fourth of July!

Grand Lake, CO - 4 Jul 2011

Well Done, Tom Petty!

Sue Michele Bachmann for damages or change the title to Un-American girl.
Good for you, Tom!

Rewarding Hard Work, The Republican Way

Here's another great idea from starlet crackpot presidential candidate Michele Bachmann: Let's do away with the federally-mandated minimum wage. And why not? Anyone should be able to "live" on $2 a day, as they do in much of the world anyway.

What is wrong with a country in which a large number of people promote/are swayed by this kind of supposedly pro-employment drivel? What is wrong with a country where we cannot agree that dignity and work should go hand-in-hand, and where the minimum wage is less than half of what is needed just to make ends meet (i.e. to live with dignity, not in the lap of luxury)?

When a presidential candidate's solution for the dire straits in which the middle-class navigates life in the USA these days is to remove even the paltry protection from complete exploitation that the minimum wage offers, instead of rising against corporations that pay no U.S. taxes in spite of reaping epochal profits; when you live in a country where a presidential candidate can answer, without a shade of shame, "that's uniquely American" to a woman who had just told him that she had to pick up three jobs just to make ends meet, and people re-elect him for another four years of making fools of us all; when Republican leaders hold the middle-class hostage and the ransom is extended tax cuts for corporation and Uncle Scrooges and cuts for social programs: that is the sign you live in a country that has fucked-up priorities. In that, at least, we still seem to be number one.

America's Last Stand

"No, we will not balance the budget on the backs of working families, the elderly, the sick, the children, and the poor, who have already sacrificed enough in terms of lost jobs, lost wages, lost homes, and lost pensions. Yes, we will demand that millionaires and billionaires and the largest corporations in America contribute to deficit reduction as a matter of shared sacrifice. Yes, we will reduce unnecessary and wasteful spending at the Pentagon. And, no we will not be blackmailed once again by the Republican leadership in Washington..."

So begin Sen. Bernie Sanders's remarks, given today on the floor of the Senate. Please read Sen. Sanders's entire floor speech, particularly if you are inclined to support the Republicans' view of budgetary issues. Perhaps you will be touched by the senator's words, perhaps you won't. If that's the case you are an ideologue and nothing will move you. I just hope that you will never find yourself in the situations that Sen. Sanders's correspondents described to him.

But if you do not emphatize with Sen. Sanders's plea and with the cry for help of those who sent their prayers to him, if you don't realize that these are not people who are looking for handouts but regular folks, who are tired of being financially raped by those who rule unopposed (not the politicians, but those that buy their services) while they themselves struggle to keep a roof on their heads, food on their table, life-saving medication in their pill-box, and gas in their tank in spite of doing everything they were told and taught to do, then maybe I should wish the same dire predicaments on you as well, for that might be the only way you can regain the humanity you lost somewhere along your ephemeral trek on this planet. No one is born without a shred of humanity.

We are, save rare exceptions, all born with the ability to feel our kin's suffering, to feel empathy for one another, to be compassionate. We are taughtby the masters of the ideology of selfishness, the children of Ayn Rand and of American biblical fundamentalism's incestuous relationship with corporate power, to look at others as if they were so different from ourselves, to think that if they need help it's because they have failed, because they made the wrong choices, because they are lazy, and because they expect the tyrannical state to help them instead of an imaginary god, be it the Christian god, or Mammon or who knows what other irrational distortion of reality.

If you are so lost in your own selfish idolatry that you fail to be moved by Sen. Sanders's words, I pity you because you are a failure to the god you worship, whatever it is, and a miserable fellow traveler in this life.

Michele Bachmann's Derangement Is A Threat To This Nation's Future

You MUST read Matt Taibbi's Rolling Stone scathing and frightening article about rising Republican star Michele Bachmann. Death Star is probably more appropriate*, since everything she stands for (hypocrisy, theocracy, indoctrination) is antithetical to the well-being of the United States.

Bachmann, who likes to rail against the evil of socialism (which in her complete ignorance, or deviousness, she equates with communism) and the infiltration of the U.S. government by socialist elements, works feverishly to bring about a much more dangerous form of government than the European style socialism that she inveighs against: A Christian fundamentalist theocracy that is posed to plunge the nation into a new intellectual dark age.

It is therefore no surprise that she is earning the endorsement of Christian fundamentalists all over the place. Christian fundamentalists are the ones who do not understand (or choose to not understand) the humongous gulf that separates socialism from communism, progressive taxation from confiscation of wealth, or big government from a form of government that seeks (or should seek, in principle) to eradicate discrimination, to lessen the societal blight of hereditary privilege, to protect the right of all citizens to believe (or not to believe) without institutionalizing favoritism for one creed over another, to promote access to education, healthcare, and good nutrition, for all children regardless of the societal standing of their parents, and so forth.

I do know to consider Bachmann a serious candidate for the President's Office in 2012 seems ludicrous, but we live in a nation that has begun a long time ago to make politics tragicomical matter, instead of the serious business that successful countries are supposed to value. Like Taibbi says in his article, there are millions of Americans who are determined to make laughter at Bachmann's expense the fuel to rocket her into the White House. Even if it will make America the laughingstock it would deserve to be should that happen.

*Just so you know, I used the term death star before I got the end of Taibbi's article only to find he had used the same term at the end of his article, although in a slight different manner.

A Pioneer Dies, R.I.P.

Dr. Jack Kevorkian died today at age 83. No introduction should be needed. This is a man who will hopefully be remembered as the man who charted a new path for human dignity.

There are millions of fundamentalist Christians out there who will no doubt not grieve his death, many will even rejoice (luckily not all believers will do so). Dr. Kevorkian was reviled by many because his convictions were viewed in stark contrast with the concept of the sanctity of life. That is quite ironic, since only a person who had high regard for human life and human dignity would concede that a human being should not have to endure prolonged and needless suffering for the sake of not offending a supposedly benevolent life-giver and creator and the feelings of the adherents to his religion, regardless of whether the terminally ill, suffering poor sonofabitch who seeks to end his torture is a believer himself or not. (This, by the way, is why people like me don't believe those fundamentalist Christians who maintain that their goal is not to establish a theocracy: it is, don't be fooled, and in many ways they have succeeded in furthering their goal.) Only a person who is serious about the value of the life, all life--not only his own but that of others as well, would choose to sacrifice a large chunk of his own by going to prison for upholding his convictions. So today all people with a good heart and sound rational powers, in the United States and around the world, should mourn the loss of Dr. Kevorkian, whether they agreed with everything he stood for or not.

What is particularly ironic is that religious advocates of the sanctity of human life are often on the same side of the ideological divide with those who show absolutely no regard for the life of anything which is not a zygote or a foetus or, at the other extreme, a corporation. Anything in between is fair game for predators, political, ideological, and financial.

As Jon Stewart deftly showed on last night's Daily Show, those who are adamant that they would not raise taxes on the wealthiest among us are also quite adamant that people affected by the recent swarm of deadly tornadoes should sweat for every penny of aid they seek from the government (it's their money, too, by the way).

Long live the memory and the legacy of Dr. Kevorkian, a true pioneer, a man who has done more to advance the cause of human dignity than the vast majority of those who reviled his convictions as murderous.

Religion, Atheism, and Altruism

When dealing with Christians, I am often confronted with the statement "Altruism in an atheist = mental disorder" or some similar offensive and silly remark. In fact, I have just encountered that silly accusation (passed incidentally not as a matter of religious conviction but as a scientifically sound fact) on a blog I follow. The foundational assumption that allows such a statement to be mad is as clear as it is flawed: Atheists all believe in evolution; scratch that: Atheists believe in Darwinism, which is all about selfishness, so any atheist who acts in an altruistic fashion is doing so in opposition to natural selfishness and is, to oversimplify, mentally ill. This is such a simplistic, incorrect, and demeaning view of atheists (and of the scientific theory of evolution) that I don't even know where to begin in rebutting it. In fact, it assumes so many wrong preconceived notions that I am not sure it is even worth trying to do it. So, on careful consideration, I have decided not to. Instead, I would like to ask the following questions:

Consider the following definitions:

1. "Altruism is acting out of concern for others with no concern for oneself. As opposed to Egoism, which is to act only in ones own, rational, self-interest." (From The Arrogant Atheist Forum)
   
2. Unselfish regard for or devotion to the welfare of others. (Merriam-Webster, definition 1)
   
3. Behavior by an animal that is not beneficial to or may be harmful to itself but that benefits others of its species. (Merriam-Webster, definition 2)

Which of the definitions above best approaches your view of altruism and its existence?

Also, when dealing with Christians I am often given examples of altruistic, why, completely selfless behavior that some Christians have been capable of, as if at that point my natural reaction should be "Really? Oh my! I am a believer now that I have been faced with such incontrovertible evidence of the existence of your god."

On a deeper level, though, I wonder if you can call an act that benefits others with no regard for the effects it may have on yourself an altruistic act, when such an act is performed under the conviction that it is what your god would want you to do to honor him, his desires, and his teachings. Not to mention that there could be horrific negative consequences for defying that god's wishes. I wonder if a Christian can be justified in acting as morally superior to an atheist, or in believing that he is acting in a healthy manner, as opposed to the "mentally defective" manner that he would attribute to an atheist performing the same act(s) of selflessness.

Notice that, in reality, both the Christian and the atheist can expect future benefits from the performance of an altruistic act: The Christian can combine his faith with good deeds to expect rewards in the afterlife that he takes as a given; the atheist in all likelihood will assume that, while selfless behavior may have dramatic consequences for him and his family, up to and including his own death, he will leave the world a better place, both by setting an example for others to follow, and by performing an act that, while detrimental to himself in the immediate, may yield a better future for the species.

It is my firm conviction that Christians who demand that altruism, moral order, and justice, among many positive societal values, should by necessity descend from divinity are guilty of denying those traits in human nature that have led to benefits for the human race as a whole throughout millenia. But why shouldn't Christians reason as they do? After all the believe in the fall of mankind from grace, and that alone requires that we should be saved in spite of ourselves.

Consider all the humans that lived before the Hebrew and Christian god decided, in his assumed infinite generosity and goodness, to reveal himself to a small subset of the human population, leaving all others at the mercy of missionaries and preachers for centuries. Were their lives doomed to selfishness, completely devoid of altruism? Of course not. Imagine this scenario: Members of different tribes come face to face with a deadly predator. The predator attacks a member of one tribe. While members of his own tribe stand frozen in fear, incapable of defending their fellow tribesman, members of the other tribe unite in attacking the predator, ultimately killing it. What motivated them to act in defense of the member of a competing tribe, an individual that on any other day they would have been glad to see die: Altruism? An overwhelming instinct for self-preservation? The expectation of a future potential benefit? Was the man who led the attack (an atheist, perhaps) affected by a mental defect? Most importantly, does any of it matter? Shouldn't the real question be: Was the performance of an act that would appear to be, to a large extent, selfless represent a step backward or a step forward for mankind?

The Christian will contend that my imaginary scenario has nothing to do with altruism in his sense of the word, because no moral judgment was necessary or present in the scenario I have given. Really? Whose morals? Christian morals? If we know anything about morals and moral judgement is that they are not written in stone. Why, we know that even from how Christians handle morality themselves. With the exception of a few biblical literalists and Christian fundamentalists, aren't Christians very flexible in their application and interpretation of morality and moral law? When was the last time you saw an adulteress stoned to death, for example? Oh, but my objection shows a fundamental misunderstanding of how the world changed with the first coming of Christ. And that's where I lose any interest in debating them or arguing with them. They can always have the last word, in any situation, in any conversation. It's a 3-letter word that ends all doubt, all debate, all honest attempt at advancing the understanding of human nature, behavior and interaction. And no, it's not ego.

I Second This Thought

I read on an Italian blog that the only way the condition of the lower class is going to improve is if you tie a congressman's salary to the salary of the poorest person in the nation. You would quickly see the salaries of the poor rise.
(The other possibility is that congressmen would accept that condition because they could make money "on the side", if you know what I mean. But don't many of them already do?)

On The Folly of Mainstream Religion

Greta Christina has written a lenghty, irate, appropriately righteous piece about the complete folly easily discernible in William Lane Craig's defense of genocide and infanticide. Read the whole article, it's worth it.

To whet your appetite, here's my favorite passage:

[A]theists are commonly accused of moral relativism: of thinking that there are no fundamental moral principles, and that all morality can be adapted to suit the needs of the moment.

But it isn't atheists who are saying, "Well, sure, genocide seems wrong... but under some circumstances, it actually makes a certain amount of sense." It isn't atheists who are saying, "Well, sure, infanticide seems wrong... but looked at in a certain light, it really isn't all that bad." It isn't atheists who are prioritizing an attachment to an ancient ideology over the clearest moral principles one can imagine: the principle that entire races ought not to be systematically exterminated, and the principle that children ought not to be slaughtered.

I have just one question for William Lane Craig: how do you muster such sophistry that allows you to defend the sanctity of life and, at the same time, defend the extermination of innocents?

On the DOJ Ban on Online Poker in the USA

Ed Brayton of Dispatches from the Culture Wars, and a poker player to boot, has a post about Rep. Barney Frank's (D-MA) position on the DOJ's strike against online poker sites operating within the U.S.A. Frank ridicules the DOJ's effort with typical wit. One highlight: he mocks the DOJ for wanting to protect the public "from the scourge of inside straights." You can read Ed's post here.

The Liberal Media Meme Debunked, Once Again

You don't dispute right-wing bullshit with more bullshit. You do it with facts. And that's what Rachel Maddow does every day, including last night.

Visit msnbc.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy

Poor People and Fair Shares

Think Progress reports that Sen. Hatch (R-UT) thinks that the tax system is unfair because it doesn’t tax poor people enough.

Of all the Stupid, Horrible, Idiotic Things That Excrementous Republicans Say (which you can find under the label SHITTERS on this blog) this has to be one of the most horrible and offensive.

Poor people do not pay income tax for a reason: they have no money to pay income tax. In fact, income tax is the one tax they do not pay, but they do pay withholdings on their paycheck for Social Security and Medicare, not to mention sales tax on everything they buy. They may be too poor to buy health insurance but not poor enough to fall under Medicaid. They are paying near $4 a gallon for gas, they pay car registration and other fees as the richest among us, and they eat crap that will kill them more quickly because it's all they can afford.

So, yes, the poor have it made. Let's tax them a bit more, so we can continue subsidies for the oil companies and pass tax breaks for yacht owners. Because, as every good Republican knows, a rising tide lifts all boats, including the yachts owned by minimum wage earners.

Fuck you, Sen. Hatch. I mean it.