bleeding the poor, veto power, and china fights back...

cutting taxes means cutting funding to programs that need it...especially when we are spending hundreds of billions on "defense"...and in new york, it is hitting home in a big way. the housing authority cannot bridge the gap between it's costs and revenue with it's reserves. with rising costs and shrinking funds from the feds (if you'll remember an earlier rant about the "most vulnerable and helpless"...yet another example of failure) the housing authority is forced to bump the cost to the tenants, many of whom can't afford what they have now. simple maintenance will now cost them, there will be fees to use a refridgerator, dishwasher, and parking fees will increase over ten-fold. this could all easily be cured by a tiny increase on capital gains and a fair tax on the insanely wealthy...noone in this country should end up on the street because there aren't enough tax dollars to assist them in putting a roof over their head. these people have children, and regardless of how you may feel about the parents, the kids did nothing to deserve living in poverty...how can we allow this?

the line item veto is back in fashion apparently...now gw is making a push to get himself a toned-down-hopefully-constitutional version of the one given to clinton in the 90's. bad. idea. genius. granted all it would give the president the power to do is force congress to reconsider specific spending measures without actually just striking them from the bill, it still has "ABUSE" stamped in big red letters all over it. this will add just one more bit of leverage for a president, an office that already has far surpassed it's power as dreamed up over two centuries ago...and sure, it worked out alright when we had good folks in office expanding that power, like lincoln and roosevelt...but after seeing the caliber of leaders being sent to occupy the west wing over the last 40 years, do we really trust that we will ever again get a leader that can use all that power without fucking everything up? not only this, but it will just open the door for yet another corruption tool for the lobby industry...get the ear of the president, and he can force congress to vote for any spending he wants by threatening to boot out specific spending to their constituents...maybe even uber-liberals can agree that if this somehow passes, thank god for a strict constructionist supreme court.

china is growing up, and as dee snyder once said "they ain't gonna take it anymore." as the united states toughens it's language on human rights abuses committed by china the next superpower went michael jackson on our collective ass, telling us "if you wanna make the world a better place, take a look at yourself and make that change." that's right...the rest of the world doesn't feel like being bullied and lectured to anymore...losing the moral high ground, or at least others finally seeing they can talk back, isn't going to be pretty. but then, really, is there a nation on the planet than can talk about human rights without being hypocritical? either way...the tide has turned...enjoy the last few years of our world hegemony...our moral, economic and military "superiority" is fading fast.

we are kings among runaways...