House approves tax hikes for poor

Tax hike for poor, tax cut for rich, passes House 277-144. It now goes to Obama's office for final signing. Which will happen. Of course.

The average worker in the bottom quintile will see his taxes raised by around $300 thanks to the elimination of the "Making Work Pay" tax credit. The average person in the top 1% will see his taxes cut by over $130,000.

So in essence Congress, crying crocodile tears all the way about how they "had" to pass this thing because that mean, mean Obama "gave them no choice", just voted to transfer yet *more* wealth from workers to grifters. Because that's what our elites are -- grifters. They don't create wealth, they simply profit from the wealth created by their workers, the people who actually create the "stuff" they sell or provide the services they sell. All they do is sit there at the top of the money pyramid rubbing their hands together and gloating about how much better they are than those folks who actually get their hands dirty assembling cars, flying planes (which is a minimum wage job for the regional airlines now), and so forth... the people without whom they'd have *nothing*, because they make nothing, create nothing, do nothing except take the wealth that other people create and accumulate it for themselves.

-- Badtux the Worker Penguin

Oh yeah, that investigation of BP

A right wingnut asked why I didn't have a post about the "independent" inquiry that "cleared" BP of misconduct in the Gulf Coast oil spill. Was I embarrassed, he asked?

Err, no. More like just smiling and nodding knowingly, because it was clear from the beginning that the government was going to do their best to cover up BP’s liability, starting from the fact that they actively hindered researchers from gathering information that could have independently established the extent of the oil flow, to their statements in the media that basically gave BP atta-boys for their response to the oil spill. So this “independent enquiry” (which had no subpoena power and no ability to, like, actually question the crewmembers on the drillrig or examine the real physical evidence) is just more of the same, just another sop to throw the rubes so that the American public won’t try to make mean old BP pay for destroying the ecology of the U.S. Gulf Coast for the next 20 years. You’ll note that I don’t post every morning about the Sun rising above the horizon either… I mean, why post about the obvious and predictable, duh?

So anyhow, there ya have it. Sun rose in the East this morning. Government released another whitewash report trying to hide corporate misconduct today. Yawwnnnnn... bore-ing!

-- Badtux the Snarky Penguin

Obama regime aids and abets Bush-era coverup

Obama Department of Justice continues use of "State Secrets" privilege to prevent justice from happening. This despite the fact that Obama explicitly promised to end the Bush administration's abuse of "state secrets" to justify dismissing lawsuits.

Which just goes to prove that the Obama regime isn't any less evil than the Bush regime -- just smarter. They're not going to give up this power to hide evil shit that they do because they intend to use it too.

Gotta go, there's a couple of dudes in suits knocking at the door. (Just kidding, our rulers are smarter than that, they understand that idiots like us ranting on the Internets are no threat to their power and that the ranting serves a valuable social purpose by giving us an outlet for our anger against our rulers other than marching on Washington D.C. and slitting throats).

-- Badtux the Governed Penguin