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With the 2006 midterm elections a few months away, big business and special interests are placing their bets on the DNC. Congressional Dems now have nearly twice as large a war chest and it appears the GOP's assault on middle to lower class Americans is in its "last throes" as they scramble to extract every last dollar they can for the wealthy before America tells them "you're fired!"

Issues like banning Gay marriage and flag burning are just for show to keep the religious right on board. As usual, what they are really after is the money issues, like making the Bush tax cuts permanent, blocking a minimum wage increase, and repealing the inheritance tax.

In the past 2 days their final acts of economic terrorism have been launched...

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The Senate vote marked the ninth time since 1997 that Democrats there have proposed — and Republicans have blocked — a stand-alone increase in the minimum wage.

In the past decade lawmakers' annual pay has risen by roughly $30,000 per year while people making minimum wage, $5.15 per hour, have been stuck at a total of $10,700 per year.

So much for the conservative's "trickle down" theory. Despite massive tax cut's for the rich and CEO's salaries skyrocketing not one dime has trickled down to the bottom feeders.

"For every increase you make in the minimum wage, you will cost some of them their jobs," said Sen. Johnny Isakson, R-Ga.

Using that logic why not, instead, cut minimum wage to $3 per hour so more people can work? They can't live on what they make but they can work. Or maybe the GOP might consider eliminating minumum wage all together and just go back to having in-house slaves. Then at least all people will have shelter, food, and clothing.

Hell, let's just undo the civil war, and let the South roll out the Confederate flag!

Reuders reports that:
In 1965, U.S. CEOs at major companies earned 24 times a worker's pay.
In 2005, U.S. CEOs earned 262 Times Pay of Average Worker (which is $42,000 per year).

"In fact, a CEO earned more in one workday than an average worker earned in 52 weeks", said the Economic Policy Institutein Washington, D.C..

Sure, I know the right-wing reply -- "CEO's are the stars of the company. Power to them." But those stars are given multimillion dollar bonus and pay packages even when company shares decline.

the chief executives of 11 of the largest companies were awarded a total of $865 million in pay in the last two years, even as they presided over a total loss of $640 billion in shareholder value

Why not just let the South form their own country. Texas can serve as corporate headquarters and they can build motes with alligators and a drawbridge to keep the serfs and peons out.

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The House voted Thursday to cut taxes on inherited estates and relieve thousands of heirs from paying tax collectors beginning next decade.
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Democrats argued that it is more unfair to give millionaires a tax cut while denying thousands of poor workers a higher minimum wage.
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"Americans are being taxed almost every moment of their lives. My goodness, when they are dead, do we have to tax them again?" said House Majority Leader John Boehner, R-Ohio.


My answer to the pigman from Ohio is that the "dead" are not being taxed again, the living are being taxed for the first time on their new income just like every American is taxed on all new income that passes hands.

When your boss pays you you are taxed on that money that is changing hands. To assume that there be a uniquely special exclusion for money that changes hands between the relatives of the rich is an antiquated concept reserved for the royalty of ancient Rome and England.

Again, the Regressives would prefer that money never leaves the perimeter of the castle walls and that the lines are clearly drawn between the princes & princesses and the paupers.