87531422


Pandagon asks you to explain why:

We should cut income taxes to spur growth by giving those who already have money and don’t see fit
to invest it in jobs or business more money, while simultaneously working to drop the minimum wage
so that those who have the least money can earn less. We should pretend that the poor don’t pay taxes
because they don’t pay income taxes, yet work steadfastly to cut taxes on money that isn’t income in
the first place, or alternately fight to pretend that income isn’t income and rebel against the
invasive taxation of that not-income as income (all the while supporting taxation systems that penalize
people for making less money). We should stimulate business growth by allowing existing, poorly run
businesses to pay at a lower marginal rate than their janitors, allowing them to escape taxation and
incorporate tax free offshore, and then giving them additional money back after they haven’t paid taxes
in the first place. When all this is said and done, we should then raise taxes on the poor to make them
see things our way, and proceed to decry the big spending ways of government as our party simultaneously
supports multiple wars, a useless missile defense shield, a huge new government bureacracy, and deficits
for the next decade. Incidentally, after all this is said and done, declare at once that government
spending has to decrease, offer no solutions on how to decrease it, and keep offering new spending
budgets that are larger than the previous year’s, all the while running this selfsame deficit.

87531410

New to the left


Each day I list the blogs new to the linklist. Want to be added? Use the
form, Luke. Entry does not guarantee
winning. No purchase necessary. Offer void where prohibited. You must either be a fiery liberal spirit
or be in the vanguard of the workers revolution to participate. At a pinch we’ll take dedicated left
anarchists and the like as well. No wishy washy centrists need apply. The decision of the judges is
final.

Scoobie Davis Online

Surfer, TV Host, Pundit, and Party Crasher.

87477544

Top Stories, Wednesday 15 Jan


Seeing the
Forest
asks:

Are you in a union? Not in your line of work, you think? You’re a programmer? Working in sales?
A middle manager? Marketing? (Weblogger?) Two years ago programmers, system administrators, web
designers, product managers, marketing managers, all thought they owned the world. Now many can’t
find a job and have been looking for 6 months or a year or more. Wages are dropping, working
conditions are deteriorating, jobs are being exported and the people they are exported to aren’t
paid squat so they aren’t going to be buying whatever we do still make here.

87477518


An
Unenviable Situation
is cynical about America:

Liberals who get upset over the the possibilities of internment camps and other restrictions do not
understand their own history, or the history of their country. It makes no practical sense for an
empire in crisis to respect the civil liberties of its citizens as much as this one has. We have a
way of life based upon the denial of such liberties for others. Democracy did not make us rich,
capitalism did. Or rather what made us rich was an internal system of capitalist and multi-ethnic
democracy which resulted, lo and behold, in a skill at domination and the greed that required it.
But there is no reason to assume that after years of abuse, those who have suffered under us- or
more specifically under our proxies- will follow the same rules we do.

87477494


Mr Happy wants all you Brits
to take action against the proposed national ID card scheme:

The Government’s public consultation on a national ID card scheme ends this month. Until recently,
this has been about as well-publicised as the plans to build a bypass through Arthur Dent’s house,
which were put on display in the bottom of a locked filing cabinet stuck in a disused lavatory with a
sign on the door saying “Beware of the Leopard”. So far, this has had the desired effect: a tiny number
of responses with a majority in favour of the Government’s proposals. It’s not too late to change
all that.

There’s a handy little interface at Stand.org.uk, allowing you
to write your own message which will be sent to the Home Office and will form part of the public
consultation. They also have a brief run-down on why the scheme is stupid, wasteful, stupid, oppressive,
stupid, ineffectual, and stupid.

Go to the Stand website now, and register your opposition.
Don’t assume that other people will take care of things on your behalf. The only thing that will
stop this authoritarian and technologically illiterate scheme is if we all let the Government know
— right now, while they can still back down easily — that they will face a grim reckoning at
the polls if they carry on like this. And the only way to do that is for each one of us to add one
more voice to the opposition.