faerie bytes Musings on books, politics and life.

No, not the “war on terror” – who the heck knows how that’s going? I mean Bullshit‘s War on Labor. According to an article in the Washington Post, the Civil Service System is on the way out at the Department of Homland Security. Of course, we knew that was the plan, ever since Bullshit stopped opposing the creation of the department when he realized that he could insert union busting provisions in the legislation, and then use “Democratic resistance” for political assassination during the 2002 midterm elections.

Not much more to say on this. As Chris Bowers posted last week, we abandon labor at our peril:

[...] the massive decline in union membership is directly tied to the massive decline in the Democratic Party, especially at the grassroots level. For the love of God, unions were our Left Wing Noise Machine, and we destroyed them to protect our middle class causes at every turn. Who provided our precinct captains that we now so desperately desire? [Who] provided the grassroots before the netroots were around? Who provided the anti-conservative economic policy? Whose void are we now claiming to fill?

Continue reading The “War” is Going Well

(With apologies to Paul Williams, Roger Nichols, and The Carpenters)

Bloggin’ to myself and feelin’ old
Sometimes I’d like to quit
Nothing ever seems to fit
Hangin’ around
Nothing to do but frown
Bush Inaugurations always get me down.

Continue reading Bloggin’ to Myself

So, tomorrow is Bullshit‘s big party. Let’s see what’s on his agenda for the next four years:

Either Destroy Social Security

Economist Paul Krugman explains Bush’s latest con – social security.

To save Social Security, Bush wants to destroy it – replacing government-guaranteed retirement benefits with private accounts that will be subject to the whims of the stock market. It’s an expensive plan. Allowing workers to divert even a small portion of their payroll taxes into private investments, as Bush is proposing, would require the government to borrow at least $2 trillion to make up the immediate shortfall.[...] “The people who hustled America into a tax cut to eliminate an imaginary budget surplus and a war to eliminate imaginary weapons,” Krugman wrote recently, “are now trying another bum’s rush.”

or

Force Democrats into a position where they do nothing but defend an old and boring program for most of the year

… the goal is to create a political dynamic over the next one to two years in which the Republicans appear the party of opportunity, ownership, dynamism, and forward thinking, while the Democrats appear to be the defenders of old, boring, inadequate safety net programs. As Gingrich said, going for the biggest privatization of Social Security has the biggest political payoff, but only if it doesn’t actually become law.

Continue reading Eve of Destruction