Let me get this straight. The bold Republican plan to fix gas prices is to give some 100 million taxpayers a crisp Franklin? Seriously, why are the Democrats called the party of no ideas when these Republican clowns can't even get the support of their conservative buds:
Awesome. Not only would this plan cost $10 Billion, it also wouldn't help me since I didn't pay any federal income tax this year. Way to go, Republicans.
Here's a much better idea. Pass a law revoking the special tax breaks for energy companies and then institute a special tax on corporate profits of more than $20 billion per year (or some such astronomical number). Only the oil companies in 2005-2006 will have profits which fall into that category. Use the extra tax revenue from these obscene profits to pay for all federal gasoline taxes (about 18.4 cents per gallon) for at least 90 days. We'll see the price of gas dip by about 20 cents nearly overnight. That's how you write a federal gas price relief law.
"It [the plan to give some taxpayers a $100 bonus] could be one of the dumbest ideas of the year," said Jerry Taylor, a senior fellow at the conservative Cato Institute. "I haven't looked at all of the ideas yet, but it's got to be right up there."
Awesome. Not only would this plan cost $10 Billion, it also wouldn't help me since I didn't pay any federal income tax this year. Way to go, Republicans.
Here's a much better idea. Pass a law revoking the special tax breaks for energy companies and then institute a special tax on corporate profits of more than $20 billion per year (or some such astronomical number). Only the oil companies in 2005-2006 will have profits which fall into that category. Use the extra tax revenue from these obscene profits to pay for all federal gasoline taxes (about 18.4 cents per gallon) for at least 90 days. We'll see the price of gas dip by about 20 cents nearly overnight. That's how you write a federal gas price relief law.
May 1 has traditionally been a day of worker's action, and this year will be a strong reaffirmation of that here in the United States.
With actions and a mass boycott of all products planned for this coming Monday, the nation will once again be reminded of the importance of workers -- both citizen and non-citizen -- in our everyday lives.
Here in Santa Barbara, a blog has been set up at immigrantjustice.blogspot.com. Here you can find information about the May 1 demonstration.
Wear white and come to Ortega Park (at Cota and Salsipuedes Streets) at 1:00PM. Bring a lunch (remember we aren't buying anything on May 1). We'll march to the Sunken Gardens outside the courthouse and have a rally.
For the first time in quite a while, both the Detroit Red Wings and Detroit Pistons finished their regular seasons with the best records in their leagues. The Pistons won 64 games this season -- setting the best record not only in the NBA this year but also in the history of the storied Pistons franchise. And the Red Wings won 58 with 124 points, easily racking up the best performance in the NHL.
Now, the real fun begins as the playoffs commence. The Pistons throttled the Milwaukee Bucks over the weekend, and look for them to dispatch the first round quickly. With a balanced offense that rivals the best teams in the history of the sport, and a stifiling defensive intensity to boot, the Pistons will easily make it to their third straight NBA Finals. And, here's your Important Guaranteed Prediction -- Pistons over the Dallas Mavericks in the Finals, in 6 games. That's right, I said it -- the Mavs will beat the San Antonio Spurs. I like how the Mavs match up against the Spurs. Although I would love to see Robert "One Shot" Horry get throttled this year, I'm thinking we'll have a Battle of the D's (Detroit vs. Dallas) in the NBA Finals. You heard it here first.
The Red Wings have had a rougher road so far. They're tied in the early goings of the Stanley Cup Playoffs, splitting their first two games with the Edmonton Oilers. The Oilers match up well against the Wings, and that's why this first round will take seven games. Eventually, the Wings will get to the semifinals, and are you ready for this? We'll be looking at yet another Battle of the D's as the Dallas Stars also look poised to have a deep run. AFter dispatching the clearly inferor Stars, get ready for the Stanley Cup Finals between the Wings and the Carolina Hurricanes. Your Important Guaranteed Prediction: no one wants to see the Hurricanes win. Detroit in 5.
We will rock you.
All right, the curtain just came up on a brand-new season of the Most Important Podcast... Ever!
www.eriklove.com/podcast
Go check it out and keep the fan mail coming to podcast@eriklove.com!
The US is so much better than China on freedom of speech. It's great that President Hu (Mike Jones) was able to see the openness of American democracy.
Sorry, it's been a while.
I bet that this will be the next point of pride to appear on Ohio's pathetic license plates. They don't have much else to go with.
I bet that this will be the next point of pride to appear on Ohio's pathetic license plates. They don't have much else to go with.
Let me get this straight -- someone at FOX News is in the running for the job of White House Press Secretary? What are the odds? Does this mean:
A) FOX really is fair and balanced.
B) FOX is really good at floating fake stories about itself, or
C) Bush loves guys he can call "Snowy."
UPDATE: April 26 11:12AM
Sure enough, Bush loves guys he can call "Snowy."
We broke the story about Tony Snow getting the job last week, and here we are. Today the White House made it official.
Tony Snow is the first pundit to get the position of Press Secretary. This isn't just some position in the White House, Snow has been given one of the most important positions in the government. After saying that Bush looks "impotent" and falsely stating that Jimmy Carter ordered warantless wiretaps on American citizens, now Bush rewards him with the top job at the Bush administration's most prized department -- PR.
The fact that Snow comes from FOX "Fair and Balanced" News just puts a layer of hilarious frosting onto the ironic cake. The Bush Administration has once again redefined ineptitude and political tone-deafness. Good luck on doing a heck of a job, Snowy.
There was an unspeakable tragedy in Tel Aviv today, where a suicide bomber killed himself and nine other people this morning. This act is deplorable and unacceptable, and I know the Important Readers join me in condemning this mass murder in the strongest possible terms.
Today's suicide bombing is just one deplorable act that we should condemn in the strongest possible terms. In the last month, the Israeli army has dropped some 2,000 powerful artillery shells into Gaza -- including directly at heavily populated areas like Gaza City. Recently, one of these shells killed a young girl after it hit her house. The Israeli army acknowledges that its near-continuous shelling of Gaza threatens innocent Palestinian lives, but they continue it anyway. Earlier today, Israeli troops in the West Bank shot a stone-throwing thirteen year old boy. He was hit in the neck.
More than 17 Palestinians have been killed in the last two weeks alone, according to the Associated Press. The Palestinians have appealed to the UN Security Council to restrict the Israeli government's increasingly violent actions.
At the same time as Israeli forces shell Gaza and carry out military operations in the West Bank, the Israeli government has also maintained a blockade on Gaza, spurring a crisis in which Palestinians living in the fenced-in strip literally are running out of food and water.
While the brutal Israeli occupation continues to stifle everyday Palestinian life, the international community has united to starve the Palestinian Authority of funds. The PA has been unable to pay its police force for more than two weeks, but the US still calls on the PA to use its police force to prevent suicide bombing attacks in Israel.
On the political front, the new Israeli cabinet was sworn in today, and the work to solidify Israel's annexation of most of the West Bank (including Jerusalem) conintued unabated.
And finally, most any attempt to discuss changing the position of the US government toward Israel immediately falls victim to charges of anti-Semitism.
The Hamas movement called today's tragedy in Tel Aviv "self defense." The predictable further increase in Israeli military activity, which will kill untold numbers of Palestinians in the coming days, will also be called "self defense." The only way forward is to stop using "defense" as an excuse to kill.
And hilarious even if it's not true. (Which it isn't. Right?)
Dick Cheney has chronic gum problems and his breath smells like shit as a result. He is also a CLOSE TALKER. He keeps a small bottle of diluted hydrogen peroxide which he rinses with every hour on the hour, and he swallows it instead of spitting.
What do these French folks:
have to say to these American folks?
How do you say "Si, se puede!" in French? In English, we say "Yes we can, dammit!"
The new civil rights movement continues to effectively pressure the US Congress to provide basic human dignity and a path to citizenship for the millions of people who drive our economy. There are some similarities and some differences between this wave of activism in the US and the stunningly successful student and labor movement in France.
The French protestors just won a cancellation of laws that would have made firing young people as easy as firing off an email. These protests, which attracted media attention even here in the US, were born of the relatively vibrant labor and student movement in France. They didn't appear from nowhere, and they aren't going anywhere. Since French President Jacques Chirac announced the cancellation of part of the new law that punishes workers, activists in France have vowed to push for more worker's rights.
Similarly, the wave of activism across the US did not come from nowhere. A network of migrant's rights groups has been building for several years here in the US. The latest protests have sprung out of this largely (until now) ignored network of people who have worked to provide the huge immigrant population with basic services. After the US Congress announced plans to make all 11 million undocumented people and the people who come into contact with them a fugitive class, a focused movement erupted, demanding an end to this draconian idea. It's working. The Congress has begun to back away from criminalizing these hard working people who drive our economy, and they've begun negotiations for crafting a sensible and realistic immigration policy.
The next step is integrating the ideas behind these two successful movements. Migrant rights and worker's rights are one and the same, in most respects. The way forward for immigration policy is an effective enforcement of worker's protections against poverty wages, against summary dismissals, against inadequate health and child care, and against discrimination. The right for workers to work in safe conditions, to unionize, to bargain collectively, and to have job security as well as a pension must be maintained if we are to protect citizen and non-citizen workers alike.
As Louis Uchitelle argues in his new book, Disposable Americans, the new economy has been particularly devastating for workers in the United States. The middle class is dissolving as work disappears. This system is not sustainable.
The way forward is a movement which combines migrant and worker's rights. Let's get to work.
It's awesome that the fair and balanced people at Fox feel that they can put whatever they want on the screen as long as it's phrased as a question.
Next time they should try some of these:
Rupert Murdoch a Pedophile?
Geraldo Rivera: Automotive Expert?
Sean Hannity: Private Jet Conservative?
Bill O'Reilly: Peabody Award Winner?
White Men: Too Few On Fox News?
UPDATE: 4/12 11:30am
Here they go again.
With rallies planned today in more than 60 cities across the US, the new civil rights movement appears to be ramping up. Yesterday in Santa Maria, just up the road from the Important Blog Headquarters here in Santa Barbara, a giant rally of more than 10,000 people demanded a voice in the debate over the human rights of immigrants.
While talk of making a fugitive class out of all eleven million undocumented people in the US has largely died down, the US Congress remains divided on this issue. The complexities of immigration are hard to boil down into a ten second blog post, but there's a great discussion over on Daraka's Hoverbike.
To me, the greatest concern as I join those standing up in support of the basic human rights that even undocumented migrants deserve is that this issue is a powerful wedge that Republicans will use to cut into the Democrats' 2006 Congressional campaign. The Democratic base is very split on the issue of immigration.
It's not coincidence that this issue has suddenly appeared on the national agenda. It's a fantastic way for Republicans to distract American voters from the spectacular failure of the Repbulican agenda -- their control of the House, Senate, White House, and Supreme Court has produced nothing for the average American. Rather than talk about the past 5 years of Republican failure and corruption, they'd love to talk about immigration. And seeing the millions of people rising up to talk about it, that's what we'll do.
The Democrats must remain on the correct side here. They need to make a bold, unified stand against draconian immigration restrictions while working to enforce existing labor laws for all workers, not just citizens and documented migrants. Let's make sure the Democratic party gets up and fights for civil rights this time.
While talk of making a fugitive class out of all eleven million undocumented people in the US has largely died down, the US Congress remains divided on this issue. The complexities of immigration are hard to boil down into a ten second blog post, but there's a great discussion over on Daraka's Hoverbike.
To me, the greatest concern as I join those standing up in support of the basic human rights that even undocumented migrants deserve is that this issue is a powerful wedge that Republicans will use to cut into the Democrats' 2006 Congressional campaign. The Democratic base is very split on the issue of immigration.
It's not coincidence that this issue has suddenly appeared on the national agenda. It's a fantastic way for Republicans to distract American voters from the spectacular failure of the Repbulican agenda -- their control of the House, Senate, White House, and Supreme Court has produced nothing for the average American. Rather than talk about the past 5 years of Republican failure and corruption, they'd love to talk about immigration. And seeing the millions of people rising up to talk about it, that's what we'll do.
The Democrats must remain on the correct side here. They need to make a bold, unified stand against draconian immigration restrictions while working to enforce existing labor laws for all workers, not just citizens and documented migrants. Let's make sure the Democratic party gets up and fights for civil rights this time.
At a rally in North Carolina this morning, a gentleman named Harry Taylor earned himself a Jon Stewart Hero Award for standing up and questioning President Bush (video here):
TAYLOR: You never stop talking about freedom, and I appreciate that. But while I listen to you talk about freedom, I see you assert your right to tap my telephone, to arrest me and hold me without charges, to try to preclude me from breathing clean air and drinking clean water and eating safe food. If I were a woman, you’d like to restrict my opportunity to make a choice and decision about whether I can abort a pregnancy on my own behalf. You are –
BUSH: I’m not your favorite guy. Go ahead. (Laughter and applause.) Go on, what’s your question?
Nice work, Harry, and thank you.
What's most amazing about this story, and why it's making the rounds all over the news, is because the audiences at every Bush "rally" are carefully screened to ensure that they are friendly to the President. How Harry got through is unclear.
But what is clear, and as you can see even in the photo above (look at the expressions on the faces of the two women near Harry), is how the audience immediately works to defend Bush. They applaud at Bush's self depracation. They boo Harry, prompting Bush to say, "Let him speak." What a bunch of blowhards.
Now I'm sure that one of the millions of Bush-supporting Important Readers will say, "Well, at least in America, Harry Taylor can stand up to his President. If this were Zimbabwe, he'd be shot!" True, but what good is that right to speak to the President when you have to sign a "loyalty oath" before getting into his public appearances?
It's interesting to see Bush acting a little nervous, actually facing a real American from the vast majority of Americans who disapprove of his policies. Read the full transcript here.
All right. Already, of course, everyone is talking about 2008. Especially now that President Bush has cemeted his legacy as perhaps the most ineffective and bumbling president in living memory, we can't wait to see who will vie to replace him.
And all this talk about 2008 definitely works to the favor of Republicans. The US Congress is in the midst of one of its greatest scandals... ever. DeLay, the majority leader, has been forced out by corruption revelations. Abramoff has become emblematic of the wide culture of corruption which engulfs the entire Republican party. In the last five years of near total Republican domination, what have the Congress and President accomplished? A bill making it harder to declare bankruptcy, and a bill cutting taxes for the wealthiest of the wealthy. Great work.
Talking about 2008 right now brushes all these Congressional failures back to the back burner. I think we need to stay very focused on 2006. The issues in this election are competence, corruption, Katrina, defending America, health care, education, and protecting Social Security. On each of these issues, Democrats have a much better, more practical, and more well-defined plan.
But don't take it from me. Go check out what my Personal Hero had to say about the Democrats in 2006. And while you're at it, enjoy some excellent critiques of one of the worst reactionary right-wingers of all time -- Coulter.
Right now, it's time to get involved and sign up to volunteer for a Democrat in your area. Or contribute to the Democratic nominee in a district where there's a good chance of taking away a congressional Republican's seat. We just might win back the Congress and usher in a much more productive 2007 and 2008.
Motown continues to churn out musical talent. We've made significant contributions in just about every popular music genre. The latest proof of Detroit's musical gravitas came when the inaugural New Pantheon Music Award went to Detroit-born indie rocker Sufjan Stephens for his second album-length ode to an American state, Illinois.
Personally, I've only heard "Chicago," the biggest cut off this album, and I am very underwhelmed. It's a mix of sardonic choral hooks and nasal Radiohead-esque verses over a lilting guitar line with some light strings. Not partiuclarly creative, from what I've heard. But, I won't be one of those people who reviews an album without listening to it. I can see why all the cool hipster kids love this stuff, and based on Sufjan's Detroit heritage, I'm sure this album is more than deserving of the award. So congrats to you, Sufjan. Way to represent the D.
Here's the thing, though. M.I.A.'s stunning debut, Arular, was also up for this award. My suspicion is that the judges for this New Pantheon award shied away from M.I.A. because her amazing, independently produced music has become quite popular and almost mainstream. Oh, and it's hip hop, which is the dominant genre right now. This popularity will make most too-cool-for-school hipsters shy away from M.I.A, even though she put out the best album of 2005.
But, who am I to judge. These are the guardians of New Pantheon Music Award. I'm only the host of the Most Important Radio Show... Ever.
So it might be springtime in the rest of the country, but it's still winter in Detroit.
The soft grumblings of discontent at bankrupt Delphi has all the makings of a major corporate disaster. We might be in the calm before the storm.
Delphi, the major parts maker for General Motors, just filed a legal brief with the bankruptcy court last week, asking for permission to violate their contract with the United Auto Workers. If the court approves, Delphi will impose major pay cuts, will lay off hundreds of workers, and will slash benefits like health care and pensions.
The UAW president has recently said that a strike will happen if the court allows Delphi to impose its terms. Alternatively, the UAW and Delphi could come to a new compromise in an attempt to avoid a strike. There are rumors that, even if UAW leadership reaches an agreement, the workers will almost certainly go out on strike if they have to give up their hard earned pensions and health care coverage. I personally know two people who work for Delphi, and they've both seen this day coming for a long time. They're ready to fight if they need to.
A strike at Delphi would shut down GM within a few days. The broad effects that a shutdown of one of the world's largest companies would make a noticeable dent on the US and the global economy. While it's hard to predict the future, such a strike would likely be met with harsh resistence from GM and Delphi in an attempt to finally and decisively break the UAW.
Here's hoping that the UAW and Delphi succeed in negotiations and avoid this mutually assured destruction. And we'll have another spring in Detroit.
