It's tax cuts all the way down

Here's a point that is rarely mentioned: Republicans keep talking about cutting federal spending and moving costs and control to the states. However, they are also campaigning in the states to cut state spending. For example, here in Massachusetts they were saying for years -- at least before the current economic disaster -- that the state had a surplus and that we therefore had to cut the income tax. They even managed to do it. When Romney was governor, state aid to cities and towns (for education, hospitals, snow removal etc.) was cut very drastically (25% - 30% as I recall), while fees and surcharges for education and class sizes soared. Of course, there was no surplus, simply a lack of interest in fixing  bridges, tunnels, and school systems in disrepair -- the very parts of a decaying infrastructure that now haunt us.

So this "leave it to the states" is HUMBUG -- a word I'd like to see a straight-talking Obama use more often. The Party for The Rich (PTR, formerly GOP) wants to cut government at all levels, and leave the grindstones of Social Darwinism to eliminate the poorer or weaker of our brothers and sisters. Is that the kind of country we want?

Oh, one other thing. Telling current retirees that the evisceration of Medicare should not worry them, since it will only be applied to their children and grandchildren is, when you think about it, not a very nice appeal to the "better angels of our nature". Let's hope our seniors have more generosity in their hearts than to buy that.