Seniors Tighten Belts While Wall St. Rakes In Record Pay

I think perhaps we have things backwards in this country:

Senior citizens brace for Social Security freeze

Wall St on tap to pay $144 Billion in pay

Yet somehow those rich fat cats on Wall St have convinced policymakers to look at cutting Social Security benefits while giving them even more tax breaks.  That makes more elderly people slide into poverty while the country’s deficits race out of control.  All of the above, by the way, has been brought to you by Republican/Conservative economics.   Their policies have worked exactly as they’ve wanted them to for the past 40 years.  The sad part is too few Democrats are visibly standing up for the elderly and impoverished.  Given all that, I’m still confused why the elderly continue to vote for Republicans who in turn work to screw them over time and time and time again.

The 2nd article goes so far as to mention the “financial industry reform” legislation that passed this year.  Like a small number of other progressives, I’ll say this again: the reform was an absolute joke.  It won’t reform the financial industry.  It won’t prevent a repeat of the 2007-2009 economic crash that nearly destroyed the U.S. economy.  It was enough to allow the justified anger over that crash to wane to a point where politicians and Wall Streeters could point to the signed legislation and say, “See, something was done.  Nothing bad will happen ever again. Now go away and trust us to manage our businesses.”

The combination of these news stories might even have something to do with the “enthusiasm gap” that most of the corporate media and silly pundits can’t fathom.  Nah – it’s definitely the fault of the DFHs who didn’t get everything they wanted in 18 months.

Stimulus Bill Created Up To 2.1 Million Jobs

So says the non-partisan Congressional Budget Office.

The package boosted the economy by up to 3.5 percent and lowered the unemployment rate by up to 2.1 percent during that period, CBO said.

The stimulus has worked so far.  The Great Recession was worse than any economist that it was or would be prior to its passage.  There is more stimulus money (much more, actually) that has yet to be spent.  About the only problems with it?  It was too small and it included too many b.s. tax breaks that don’t stimulate the economy.  Tax breaks don’t stimulate the economy.  They never have and they never will.  The largest expansion of the U.S. economy didn’t occur after the largest tax breaks in American history – during the Bush regime; they happened when taxes on the rich were higher – during the Clinton years.