Barack Obama, Tax Cutting Champion Of The Modern Era

by D Gregory Smith

Here’s a fistful of facts to throw out when the myth of Obama The Taxer rears its ugly head.
From The Daily Kos:

The Center for American Progress crunched the numbers and discovered:With the huge Recovery Act tax cuts and the enormous December 2010 tax cuts combined, President Obama has already signed into law tax cuts amounting to more than $900 billion from 2009 through 2012. Even after accounting for legislation that the president signed that increased revenue during that period, President Obama has cut taxes by more than $850 billion in his first term, or approximately 1.5 percent of GDP.That is compared to the $474 billion in tax cuts enacted by George W. Bush in his first term. If the latest tax cuts included in President Obama’s American Jobs Act are passed, he will be the biggest tax cutter of the modern era. Bigger than Reagan. Bigger than Bush. That’s saying something!

Yet, despite this fact, we’ve seen poll after poll indicate that people still believe President Obama has raised their taxes.

Two things:

1. The idea that tax cuts bring economic growth should be thoroughly debunked by now. But it isn’t.

2. It has to be political injustice of the worst order to be the biggest tax cutter ever and not get any credit. (emphasis mine)

And there’s even a fun graphic for the spatially minded:

“Fair Is Fair Tour”: Exploring The Connections Of Race, Sexuality And Faith

by D Gregory Smith

Can the struggle for gay equality be compared to the black civil rights movement? What are the similarities and differences? And how can people of faith participate in both movements? These are the questions panelists and audience participants will explore during the cross-Montana Fair is Fair Tour in September.

The tour, sponsored by the American Civil Liberties Union of Montana and Truth in Progress, will visit six Montana cities over nine days, including Billings, Bozeman, Missoula, Kalispell, Great Falls and Helena, and feature Rev. Gil Caldwell, an esteemed civil rights activist who started working for equality in the South of the 1960s and has never looked back.

“Most of us have been wounded by others for a variety of reasons. Some persons and some systems have hurt us because of our race, gender, sexual orientation, economic and educational poverty, religion, politics, same sex partnered relationship, physical characteristics, etc,” says Caldwell. “I look forward to talking about the ‘solidarity of our woundedness’ and how we who have been hurt for a multiplicity of reasons, can discover healing for ourselves as we seek to enable the healing of others.”

Caldwell, documentarian Marilyn Bennett and ACLU of Montana LGBT Advocacy Coordinator Ninia Baehr, plus special guests in some cities will discuss how communities can support gay and lesbian couples’ work for relationship recognition, and how that struggle parallels and differs from the racial justice movement.

“These are different histories. These are very different experiences,” says Bennett. “But the fight for civil rights, and acknowledging equal rights have important similarities.”

Rev. Caldwell is a retired United Methodist Minister who participated in the “Mississippi Freedom Summer” of 1964, the Selma to Montgomery March in 1965, and the March on Washington. He is a founding member of the United Methodists of Color for a Fully Inclusive Church and the Black Methodists for Church Renewal. Today Rev. Caldwell is exploring how faith communities and all people can support work for lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender equality with Bennett through the Truth in Progress project.

Baehr is the ACLU of Montana’s LGBT Advocacy Coordinator and spearheads the Fair is Fair project. Through her work she has been reaching out to clergy members who support domestic partnerships for same-sex couples.

“We’re happy to be working with churches on this tour,” Baehr said. “Nearly 100 clergy members across the state have already stood up for fairness and signed onto a statement supporting justice, compassion and defense of basic human rights for same-sex couples.”

All events are free and open to the public.

Billings — Saturday, Sept. 17
5 p.m.
Grace United Methodist Church, 1935 Avenue B

Bozeman — Monday, Sept. 19
7 p.m.
Montana State University, SUB 233-235
With special guest, Dr. Walter Fleming, MSU Native American Studies Department Director

Missoula — Tuesday, Sept. 20
8 p.m.
University Congregational UCC, 405 University Ave.
With special guests, David Herrera and Steven Barrios, board members of the Montana Two-Spirit Society

Kalispell — Wednesday, Sept. 21
7 p.m.
Christ Church Episcopal, 213 Third Ave. East

Great Falls — Saturday, Sept. 24
10:30 a.m.
Great Falls Public Library, 301 2nd Ave. N
With special guest Steven Barrios, board member of the Montana Two-Spirit Society

Helena — Monday, Sept. 26
7 p.m.
St. Paul’s United Methodist Church, Corner of Logan and Lawrence
With special guest Jamee Greer of the Montana Human Rights Network, who will discuss work for an LGBT-inclusive non-discrimination ordinance in Helena

“Right Wing Lunacy” To Enter State Race

by D Gregory Smith

Cowgirl:

Confirming a story that was first reported here at the Cowgirl blog,  TEA Party Republican Derek Skees, confederate sympathizer who has tried to set up his own Little South amid the ultra-right-wing colony in the Flathead, has announced his candidacy for State Auditor.

Skees will run against incumbent Monica Lindeen – D, and his candidacy will likely be based on a single issue: Say No To Federal Healthcare Reform.

...So Lindeen will have a fight on her hands.  But fortunately she, too, is now positioned against something unpopular: right-wing lunacy.  Skees is a national leader of a fringe of the GOP so far right that it barely considers itself Republican. 

Know your ballots, people. Full story here.

Trans-Stonewall: Chaz Opens the Door

by D Gregory Smith

A great take on Chaz’s turn on Dancing With The Stars:

by 

Forty years ago, the gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender communities tumbled out of the closet at Stonewall, never to go back in again.  Stonewall conveniently produced a replacement for the now-gone communists; after all, nothing unites people like a good ol’ fashioned enemy! Gay people became the new devil to be protected against. “Hide your kids, your church doors, your family values—here come the gays.” And, it worked. For a time.

Politicians, preachers and conservative groups all found that by building a storyline of the “radical gay agenda”, more people huddled together in fear and supportive wallets popped open. Small enough in number (only about 5% of the population), the gay, lesbian and bisexual communities became an easy target with benefits. But, dang it, they are no longer co-operating as child recruiters, family destroyers and Bible burners. We are starting to realize they  are born gay, they love their partners and families and  they can be Jesus followers.

Who, oh who shall be the next “enemy” in historical parade of foes:  slaves, Nazis, Communists, gays . . . oh, there, looming on the horizon, there they are:  the transgender community.  Mark my word on this, it is happening. The reactions to Chaz Bono dancing across a stage on Dancing With the Stars with a beautiful woman in his arms will clearly reveal the next wave of brewing hatred from politicians, preachers and conservative groups. A familiar repeat of an old pattern about gays and lesbians but now targeting the transcommunity is  already emerging:

ADAP Watch, 9.12.11

by D Gregory Smith

From NAPWA’s Positive Voice Newsletter:

We’re beginning to think we’re trapped in the movie Groundhog Day.

 

Week after week, the waiting list numbers hover just over 9,000. Week after week, Congress doesn’t – and can’t – act. Week after week, Florida alone accounts for nearly half the waiting list numbers, and Florida doesn’t act.

 

Assuming an annual medications cost of $15,000 per ADAP recipient per year, $135 million a year in new ADAP funds would be enough to make this national disgrace go away. That’s less than four one-thousandths of a percent of the federal budget. If the will were there, the money could be found.

 

$60 million would do the job in Florida – not very much, even in Florida’s $70 billion state budget. But Florida doesn’t even seem to be spending the money already available effectively. Just before Labor Day, the Orlando Sentinel reported health officials for Orlando County and three neighboring central Florida counties had underspent their Ryan White funds by a half-million dollars – about six percent of the total $9 million, which suggests a certain lack of commitment to serving the people Ryan White funds are meant to help. And it’s a pity the unused funds couldn’t have been put to other uses, instead of just being help for possible use next year. They could have paid for drugs for more than thirty central Floridians currently on the ADAP waiting list.

 

Here are the latest waiting list numbers from our friends at NASTAD:

Sign the petition to end the waiting list here.

 

What’s Wrong With Montana’s DUI Laws

by D Gregory Smith

 …this.

 

National stats here.

Excellent info here.


Live Sun vs Dead Animals

by D Gregory Smith

From One Block Off The Grid comes this interesting informational graphic:

Taxing The (Willing) Rich

by D Gregory Smith

I was brought up with a sense of social justice that still shapes my life. It’s a complicated sense, shaped by Catholicism, rural sensibility and an awareness of the world from the perspective of a kid who was bullied. My social justice sense says, in part, “depriving one for the excesses of another is unjust.”

It seems some “Enlightened Rich” agree. The New York Times:

Some of the world’s wealthiest people are calling for higher taxes on the rich. They seem to recognize that the burden of the economic downturn cannot be borne entirely by the poor and middle class.

After the American billionaire investor Warren Buffett urged Congress last month to raise taxes on millionaires, the call echoed across Europe. Sixteen of France’s wealthiest individualsurged the government to raise their taxes. The Italian Formula One magnate Luca di Montezemolo publicly backed Mr. Buffett’s idea “for reasons of fairness and solidarity.” About 50 of Germany’s richest people have been campaigning for a higher top tax rate since 2009.

The suggestion is motivated, no doubt, by a sense of justice — that the very rich, who have survived the financial crisis very well, should contribute more to shrinking public coffers to reduce the spending cuts that would hurt the most vulnerable.

And yet, there are those who are resisting, no doubt motivated by fear- and quite possibly prejudice. But the results could be disastrous:

Americans have been historically less inclined than Europeans to explosions of social rage, despite suffering more poverty than most other wealthy democracies. But with unemployment above 9 percent, rising poverty rates and declining family incomes, the no-taxes, all-cuts agenda that has gripped Congressional Republicans will fray our social fabric and squander human capital here as well.

My sense of social justice also says, “If I make more money than others, I have a greater responsibility to maintain the fabric of my society”. But it’s obviously not what everyone believes.

Full story here.

ADAP Crisis Makes Local News

by D Gregory Smith

 

An excellent story by Jessica Mayrer of the Missoula Independent highlights the National HIV Drug Crisis- and Montana’s link:

Montanans who can’t afford HIV drugs have recourse. The federally funded AIDS Drug Assistance Program provides medicine at no cost. What worries Smith and his clients is the fact that the program isn’t meeting demand. In January, 4,200 people nationally were waiting for entry into ADAP. At the end of August, that number grew to 9,200. ADAP now provides drugs to 107 of Montana’s 532 known HIV-positive patients, according to the state Department of Public Health and Human Services. In Montana, 28 people now await ADAP assistance. That’s up from 21 last year.

Full story here.

And if you haven’t signed the petition to Denny Rehberg, go here.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The Irony Of Rehberg’s Labor Day Column

by D Gregory Smith

…is not lost on Mr Pogreba:

Contrary to what subdivision ranchers in Congress might think, Labor Day is not the culmination of a month-long taxpayer funded vacation, but a celebration of the importance of the union movement and workers in this country. As the Department of Labor notes, the day is “dedicated to the social and economic achievements of American workers. It constitutes a yearly national tribute to the contributions workers have made to the strength, prosperity, and well-being of our country.”

And that’s what makes printing Rehberg’s pablum today so absurd and so offensive. Throughout his career in government, Rehberg has been hostile to the unions and workers today is meant to celebrate.

And, oh, so much more…. For some fun facts, statistics and scathing analysis, read the rest here.