AFSCME 3357-HOF'S BLOG

Putting things in Perspective 1000 Dead
This time - not in Iraq, but in one town in Haiti

Hurricane Jeanne hit Haiti hard. One town, Gonaïves, has over 1000 dead. Combine that with the other hurricane deaths all over the hemisphere, and you actually have a toll of death & destruction that exceeds that from the Iraqi unpleasentness. That being said, the United States is constrained from doing too much about it. Why, because Iraq has taken the resources that we'd otherwise have to work on a whole panoply of other problems. We can do precious little in Sudan. We don't have the troops. Africa continues to be devastated by Aids. Gee, we'd like to help, but we have this national deficit.

Of Course, none of this keeps GWB from spending a million or two to fly Air Force One to Florida to hand out ice. I wonder how many aid workers could be sent to Haiti for the cost of One junket trip to Pennsacola. I fogot, in the Bush universe, if people don't speak English, and/or if they have brown skin, and/or if they live in an area that's not a swing state and/or they don't have oil, they just don't matter. That's compasionate conservatism.

www.nytimes.com/2004/09/24/international/americas/24haiti.html


Tax Cuts - Renewed


Speaking of Deficits . .. I just read that Congress approved an extension of the Bush middle-class tax cuts. The cuts extended are the reduced tax rates for Americans under the mainstream bell curve. Yesterday I was in a continuing legal education seminar put on by ICLEF, the Indiana Law Update. It was a great seminar, by the way. If you need Indiana CLE, try to make this one. Anyway, the tax presentation was put on by my law school tax professor (from 19 years ago) Lawrence Jegen. Professor Jegen hasn't lost a beat in almost 20 years. In is trademark rapid-fire style, he outlined how the Bush II era budget has created a ticking time bomb deficit. Prior to today's extension, this year's deficit was predicted to be at $450 Billion. Add another $150 billion to this due to the tax cut extension.

Here's the interesting part . . . Bush's tax cuts have a variety of different termination dates. The ones with the earliest automatic phase out dates are the extensions that apply to the middle class voters. Mostly, we're talking about the ones that Congress just extended. The ones that didn't need extending because they already stretch way out are the ones that benefit mainly the rich, such as the capital gains tax, increased unified tax credits.