Keep in mind that taxes were highest when unemployment was lowest, and taxes lowest when the unemployment has been higher. And the lowest tax rates are when the unemployment is the highest.

But this is old news, isn’t it. When Reagan cut taxes, the growth in employment ended and employment fell sharply, and employment didn’t increase until he finally agreed to sign the first of his eight tax hikes.

And the increase in employment during the Clinton years started when read-my-lips-Bush signed his several tax hikes and then Clinton hiked taxes even more. It was the high taxes that increased employment and increased tax revenue nearly eliminating the deficit, because government spending increased rapidly while Clinton was president. Just not quite as fast as the economy grew, but government spending increased almost as fast as it did while Reagan was president.

The Republicans lost the House and Senate and then the Whitehouse because the Bush tax cuts have just kept cutting employment so that by the time Bush left office, the number of people employed was the same as when he took office, even tho millions of people had been added to the labor force, and many older workers wanted or needed to work longer adding a few million people to the labor force.

And the Bush tax cuts more than any others produced a frenzy of ponzi scheme stock and real estate bubble creation because if you can get money for nothing – selling the same thing for a higher price without doing anything to earn it – then you get taxed at lower rates than actually working for a living. The Bush tax cuts punish working for a living and reward speculative gambling because you taxed far more if you earn money though labor.

As they say, if you want to get less of something, tax it more than things you want more of, so we have had less labor and more gambling over the past eight years. Let’s at least tax gambling, capital gains, at least as much as working for a living and actually doing something useful.

For most of the post-war economic experience, state and local governments kept “shovel-ready” projects on the shelf, knowing that the federal government would use countercyclical spending to moderate recessions. For the past 25 years, however, fiscal policy has been suppressed in favor of loose money policies that arguably have led to a series of bubbles and bursts. For a variety of reasons, fiscal policy — though proven and effective — is today politically controversial, even during a time when the cost of capital for the federal government is absurdly cheap.

As a result, the debates in Washington consist of short-term political maneuvering that privilege posturing (“This is a spending bill, not a stimulus bill!”) and pork (“Clean coal” subsidies that, thankfully, appear to have been pulled out during reconciliation) over effective policies.

Of particular concern in the current stimulus bill is that Sens. Snowe, Collins, Specter and Nelson cut (amongst many other things) tens of billions of dollars of state-directed aid. The losses to the proposed State Fiscal Stabilization Fund will mean less state spending, cuts in vital services and programs, and a continuing drag on the economy as contracts are cut, projects are placed on hold, workers are laid off, and households are pushed out of public assistance programs like LIHEAP.

These four Senators, knowing that they had go/no-go power over the entire stimulus bill, cut an estimated 400,000-530,000 jobs from the package (using CBO & Moody estimates) simply to curry short-term electoral favor. At this point, that’s like worrying about your checked baggage while your airplane is sinking into the Hudson.

What I am seeing, and i am just a dumb ol construction worker, is that people are starting to pay more attention. That is a step in the right direction, but its not enough to just stay up on the issues. Sites like this one give us the tools and information we need. At that point its up to us to make our voices heard. Through letters, emails, what ever (legal) means necessary.

Where the guys like Ross have a advantage over guys like me. Is it is easier for them to get media attention. I schedule a press confrence and I would be talking to a empty room,lol

I urge everyone to stay up to date with everything going on and let your Representatives know how you feel. Then if they continue to not listen, we need to vote them out. The way i look at it is, if I were a company owner, and the people working for me made as many bad decisions as our Representatives do. I would fire them, I couldn’t afford not too. We have that power, if we choose to use it. Doesn’t matter what party they are in make them all accountable.

Sorry for the rant.