A Monday visit to "Some Assembly Required"

It has been a while since we visited "Some Assembly Required"  --  perhaps it's time.  As always, please follow link to original  --  there's more.
----------------------------------------------------------------------
http://ckm3.blogspot.com/


Benefits: In the last 30 years, tax rates for the poor dropped 5%, for the 1% they dropped 14.2%. The poor haven't had a raise in those 30 years because all of the productivity profits went to the top. Only in Lebanon, Russia and Ukraine is wealth more unequally distributed than in the USA.

Take A Memo: Ohio's Education Department finds that charter schools generally get worse results than public schools, at twice the per-pupil cost. Oh, Look. See John Run. See John Run Off With The Money.

Difference/Distinction: A broker sent oil prices to an 8 month high while drunk. How this varies from every other day on Wall Street was not immediately clear.

Privatizing Medicare, 2 Years At A Time: Raising the Medicare eligibility age - the current favorite Republican camel's nose - would lower the deficit 5.7 billion (out of trillions) and cost taxpaying citizens who paid Medicare premiums for years and years $11.4 billion in insurance costs - mostly profit for the insurers. This is not a new idea, just a bad one.

Frills: Multimillionaire Tom Coburn (R-OK) says Social Security and Medicare should be cut becuse "we don't absolutely need" them. Who's we, rich guy? Meanwhile Bob Corker (R-TN) says the R's can let taxes on the rich rise now because next year they can take the government hostage over the debt ceiling and force the Dem's into cutting Medicare and Social Security, "like we did last time." The country has a lot of real problems without the make-believe 'the debt ceiling is falling' malicious Tomfoolery.

Thought Experiment: What happens to the cornucopian forecasts for Middle Eastern oil production when the intercine warfare between Shia and Sunni begins dissolving the pretend countries the West drew on their maps a century ago or so.?