Sequestration Gets Personal 

It’s a given that capitalism could not exist without unemployed people.  Where else could businesses get employees?  Thus, sad but true, capitalism rests squarely on the shoulders of unemployed people.

That may be a necessary evil of capitalism on the big stage, but inside the homes of many poor young mothers and their babies nowadays, sequestration is making it personal.  Here’s why:

One of the first non-military groups to feel the sequestration cuts has been young mothers who live in poverty.  Until sequestration started, they were getting help from the government under a program that provided formula for their babies.

But tea partiers insist that the richest among us must be protected from paying more taxes, regardless of consequences.  And since the Tea Party has become the tail that wags the dog in the Republican-controlled House, we have sequestration.  

And so, in a very real sense, the very poorest among us are forced to give up food for their babies so that the very richest among us won’t have to pay more taxes.  

All this comes at a time when, ever since we went over the cliff in 2008, the richest have been getting richer while the poor and the middle class have been getting poorer -- or, at best, stagnating.  

I don’t understand how tea partiers can live with themselves.

-Skip

That $*#@&>! Tea Party!

Unless that Tea Party crowd comes to its senses this week, hundreds of thousands of people -- including firefighters, police officers and school teachers -- will lose their jobs.  Our armed forces will take a heavy hit. Many social programs will be slammed.  State governments will suffer.  Much more.

And there will be a domino effect.  People without work spend less at the grocery, drug store, theater or shopping mall, so businesses lay off workers.  If people don’t buy, manufacturers don’t manufacture, resulting in more layoffs, resulting in less buying, et cetera ad infinitum.

All so that the very rich among us will get to keep their money in stocks and bonds and offshore banks and wherever else they stash it, while the rest of us, the middle class and poor, will absorb the entire hit.  

Somehow this all makes sense to Tea Partiers, even though virtually every economist in the nation says the only way we are going to get our fiscal house in order is to cut spending and raise taxes -- for now on the rich, but later on the middle class as well. 

In one sense it does make sense.  Most Tea Party congressmen are themselves quite wealthy, and they represent skillfully gerrymandered districts where they are safe from political competition.

But in every other sense, it is nonsense. 

To recap: America is on the verge of facing sharp declines in education, police protection, fire protection, military readiness and job security, all to keep the very rich from paying more taxes, even though there is no other way to fiscal sanity.

If there is a Tea Partier out there who wants to defend this madness, I would love to hear it.

-Skip