The Republican Party plan

The Republican Party has decided the president’s budget spends too much money!  They are opposed!  So on April Fool’s Day they offered their alternative plan.  The subtext here being: The trillion dollar Bush tax cuts weren’t irresponsible enough. Let’s go crazy! WOOO!

The Republican Party plan would freeze discretionary spending for five years in the midst of a recession which, by most accounts and proved by history, will countermand any sort of economic recovery, but it also cuts taxes by 10 percent for the same Wall Street executives whose actions largely got us into this economic mess in the first place.

The marquee item, however, in the Republican plan is their inexplicably regressive tax cut for the super rich. Wealthy Americans in the top three tax brackets would see their tax burden cut to a flat 25 percent from previous rates of 35, 33 and 28.  Now you might be asking, given that the Republicans are all about fiscal responsibility, how much does this Republican tax cut for the wealthiest three brackets actually cost? Some estimates, according to Steve Benen, project upwards of a $4 trillion price tag.

Again, the Republican grasp of fiscal responsibility is about as firm as their grasp of reality and sanity. It’s a world on the other side of the looking glass where nonsense is the norm.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/bob-cesca/insane-republicans-reveal_b_182045.html

Food for thought, or thoughts about food!

I see in the news that there is a new warning about baby formula being contaminated with a chemical found in rocket fuel? And it is especially dangerous if the baby formula is mixed with water that is also contaminated with the same chemical?

Perchlorate is found in the water supply of many communities, and earlier this year, the EPA considered setting new limits for it but, ahem, they were busy with the economy to do it.  Perchlorate is most often found in communities with defense industries and military bases. And it is most often found in formula made of cows milk.

Couple that news with the pistachio nut salmonella contamination, the peanut contaminations, and every other bad thing in our food…Does anyone wonder why I’m so excited by the arrival today of my baby chickens? And the planting of the ‘taters and onions next week? The other veggies next month?

Additionally, my friend who has goats is helping them birth the little ones this week and has requests already, without advertising, from parents wanting goat milk for their children allergic to cows milk.  With this news, she may have more demand for her product than she can produce.  I find it significant that folks out here are looking for goat’s milk and finding it by word of mouth.

And yet, the goat feed for pregnant mothers has things in it we cant pronounce, and I get drift from the chemicals my farmer neighbors spray, enough that I cant grow grapes.  The chick starter feed has antibiotics in it, and my own, supposedly pure, Downer Creek well water has lots of nitrates from years of fertilizer leaching into the water supply.

I guess we do the best we can with what we have. But it’s damn scary to think about how insecure our food supply really is. I dont think its “terrorists” who will kill us. It’s the karma of our own environmental misdeeds that will do us in.

04/03/09 Public Square

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