Thursday, February 24, 2011

goin' to hell in a handbasket, that's what we're doing.

This makes me boiling mad. If you don't want to click on the link, here's a sample:

The top choices [in the federal budget] among evangelicals for the chopping block are economic assistance to needy people around the world (56 percent), government assistance for the unemployed (40 percent), and environmental protection (38 percent). In each of these categories, evangelicals were more supportive of decreasing spending than are other Americans. In fact, evangelicals were more supportive of funding cuts in every area except military defense, terrorism defense, aid to veterans, and energy.

I have a rant somewhere in me, but at this point, all I can say is "What part of 'for the least of these' don't you understand?"

Also, this is a sorta WTF on an otherwise okay morning: Georgia could potentially criminalize women who've had miscarriages.  Here's a snippet of this article from Mother Jones:

Under Rep. Franklin's bill, HB 1, women who miscarry could become felons if they cannot prove that there was "no human involvement whatsoever in the causation" of their miscarriage. There is no clarification of what "human involvement" means, and this is hugely problematic as medical doctors do not know exactly what causes miscarriages. Miscarriages are estimated to terminate up to a quarter of all pregnancies and the Mayo Clinic says that "the actual number is probably much higher because many miscarriages occur so early in pregnancy that a woman doesn't even know she's pregnant. Most miscarriages occur because the fetus isn't developing normally."


If that's an accurate picture of the bill...I just kinda want to splutter.

AND, also, Americorps and other programs could potentially be cut. I've participated in Americorps, and so have many people I know, so here you go: Save Service.



3 comments:

  1. Meanwhile, polls show that most Americans want nearly everything that's in the budget to be funded, they just don't want to actually pay for it, via taxes. In Texas, they're laying off 1,000s of people rather than raise the taxes to pay for public schools. Don't conservatives understand that their entire ideology--let businesses prosper and the economy thrive to that everyone benefits, including the government through taxes on generally higher incomes--falls apart if more people lose jobs, and if our children don't receive the education they need to compete in the future job market or run the Fortune 500 companies? The horrifying thing for me isn't so much their aversion to the "dole," but that their policies toward all kinds of spending seems destined to make the dole even more necessary.

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  2. I should also add that in Texas, there is no state income tax. The sales tax is higher, but it still doesn't compare to states like, say, Pennsylvania, which have a state sales tax and a state income tax.

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  3. The whole thing's short-sighted and unfortunate, and it makes my head hurt.

    That's all I've got right now. Blech.

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