"Tax Cuts" Mean Tax Cuts For the Wealthy

Here's what blogger David Sirota over at Huffingtonpost.com had to say about the recent tax cuts. He's a much better writer than me minus my tendency to rage and rant in my posts:

... When you hear a politician these days talk about "tax cuts," they are really only talking about tax cuts for the wealthy - not tax cuts for regular folks. The new "tax cut" bill moving through Congress shows exactly what I'm talking about. Here we have leading Republican politicians waxing poetic about supposedly providing new tax cuts to ordinary folks, when what's really going on is the elimination of tax cuts for ordinary folks as a way to pay for new tax cuts for the super-rich.
Here's the key excerpt from the Associated Press story:

"Top Finance Committee Democrat Max Baucus of Montana said it was wrongheaded to pass capital gains and dividend tax cuts -- 'a provision that doesn't take effect until 2009 for the most wealthy' -- while letting languish tax breaks on college tuition and state and local sales taxes, as well as a research and development tax credit for businesses, all of which expired in December...A joint study by the Urban Institute and the Brookings Institution shows taxpayers with incomes greater than $1 million per year winning tax cuts of $42,000 under the bill, while families with incomes of $50,000 a year would average a $46 tax cut."

There you have it folks - a Republican "tax cut" bill that extends new tax cuts for the wealthy while letting tax cuts for ordinary citizens expire. That is your Congress at work. That is the hostile takeover of America's government by Big Money interests in all its glory, for all to see.

-- here's one of the comments attached that was just entered by some guy named Pete:

The GOP is simply the political wing of corporate America. How can we stop it? We have a corporate lawyer heading the Supreme Court for God's sake. Elections are a sham in this country now, so we can't vote these people out. We're fucked. So much for the American middle class. Welcome to corporate fuedalism, where the poor do the work and the rich get richer.
- pete, 05.17.2006

I become more and more intrigued by the ideas of Karl Marx everyday. No I'm not a communist. Neither was he... at least not the capital letter kind. Communism hasn't ever worked effectively under any government, but the modern ideology is based on Marx's writings:
"The oppressed are allowed once every few years to decide which particular representatives of the oppressing class are to represent and repress them.”

"For the bureaucrat, the world is a mere object to be manipulated by him."

"The rich will do anything for the poor but get off their backs."

"Workers of the world unite; you have nothing to lose but your chains."

Dangerous ideas... for all the people who have something to lose from sharing wealth and resources. Remember that kid in pre-school who would always hog all the toys and never let you play? That's the immature nature of the ideals of the Republican Party basically summed up in my opinion (every man for himself). Just because you're skilled at making money and feel that you have earned it doesn't make your necessities any greater than those of the working class, or the poor, or the sick, or the starving for that matter. Why don't we put the needs of these people who make up the majority of the population first?

The answer is simple: Because we let our government exploit us, and we don't care enough to do anything about it. All you have to do is cast your vote. This is unacceptable, especially in a time of record international deficits and consumer debt. It just doesn't make sense.