The proposed budget cuts

I got an email today the bulk of which I want to share with you. Here it is:

WHO WOULD JESUS STARVE?

With a national budget hemorrhaging red ink, even the profligate pork barrel princes in Congress had to do something. And what is their solution? Will they trim back even modestly any of the gratuitous tax cuts gifted to the most wealthy and the most fortunate? No, they propose to cut the last ropes of what remains of the social safety net for those hurt most by their "soak the masses and give it all to the corporate kingpins" policies, apparently to pave the way for even MORE reckless tax injustice.

When a right wing think tanker said he wanted to shrink the government down to where it could be drown in a bathtub, he was talking about the social services that are the only thing that keep the burgeoning class of the abjectly poor going. Perhaps the former residents of New Orleans experienced exactly what he meant by drowning, as FEMA had been degenerated into a dispenser of Christmas plums for administration cronies only. The only thing he wanted to shrink was that part of government that does NOT serve the most powerful corporate interests. For the rest it's still unlimited, no-bid, cost plus party time.

Yes, for those whose agenda is war profiteering, or bankrupting families with blockbuster medical bills, or gouging the public with usurious interest charges and fees, or pocketing unneeded subsidies while they collect windfall profits for environmentally hostile sources of energy, or absolving corporations of any social responsibility whatsoever . . . for them it's supply side as far as the eye can see. And the primarily Republican members of Congress they own lock stock and beholden barrel have no shame in continuing to push though special interest legislation written word for word by the corporate lobbyists themselves, to the detriment of every other pressing national policy need.

This groaning chuck wagon of cruel greed will be ringing the bell once again in the House of Representative this coming week. And if the failure of the Senate last week to stand up and protect the most weak and needy wasn't bad enough, the House version of the budget bill proposes even MORE cuts for essential and indispensable lifeline services. They want to cut to the bone Medicare, Medical, food stamps, student loans, pension protection, Supplemental Social Security . . . the massacre list goes on and on.

It has been called "immoral" by voices representing a wide ranging spectrum of the religious community. For example, all 65 synod bishops of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America have signed a letter to members of Congress in strong protest opposing the proposed budget cuts. But what of you conscientious reader? What are you doing to speak out about this uncompassionate cruelty, so cold of heart that it would chill any but the most unrepentant Scrooges among this administration's cronies?

For those who profess to be Christians, is it not written in your bible? "I was a stranger, and ye took me not in: naked, and ye clothed me not: sick, and in prison, and ye visited me not. Then shall they also answer him, saying, Lord, when saw we thee an hungered, or athirst, or a stranger, or naked, or sick, or in prison, and did not minister unto thee? Then shall he answer them, saying, Verily I say unto you, Inasmuch as ye did it not to one of the least of these, ye did it not to me." (Matthew 25:43-45)

And yet here we have a bill which will take AWAY food from the hungry, rob medicine from the sick, and steal clothing intended for those who are already naked. What would your Lord say should be the judgement for those who do such things? Perhaps you already know the next verse. What do you have to say about all this? Words of true compassion can be found in all faiths. Send a message to Congress and tell them to get their priorities straight.

http://www.millionphonemarch.com/no_cruelty.htm
(Save our social services)

For those who profess to be liberals, or progressives, or whatever the latest trendy label for people who care about their fellow human being, who will speak out if not you? The action pages linked from this article will send your personal message in real time to your own members of Congress with just once click, and you can make it also a letter to the editor of your nearest daily newspaper as well all at the same time.

And those who profess to be conservatives, even if you care only for yourselves, do you not understand that those who are fortunate in society prosper MOST when there are more who can afford to buy the goods and services from which you profit. The more you cheat the workers in your businesses the less they can buy the necessities which in truth drive the very economy itself. The more you force people into the ditch of debt, the less there will be for all but a handful of unaccountable owners of monopoly corporations, which so few of even you will ever be.

That's what puzzles me the most. Why would corporations want to destroy the consumer class thus making it impossible for people to buy the goods they produce? It seems that greed makes people stupid.