Tuesday, April 9, 2013

What Happened to The Congressional Progressive Caucus's 'Back to Work' Budget?

First, I’d like to plug a few people, places and things.

Are you into spiritual readings? Check out Lena’s Facebook page @ https://www.facebook.com/CandleLightCustomReadingsWithLena?fref=ts
I promise you, she does a mean reading - you won't be disappointed - and it will be for a worthwhile cause.

Here’s an event worth checking out called: “I’m Tawkin’ Here: Storytelling with a New Yawk Accent”
Actually, it’s five events on five Wednesdays in the five boroughs of New York, and it’s free. Each event will feature a musical ode to the borough, plus true stories from three borough-natives and one “token” non-native storyteller. The evening will conclude with a sneak peek of “If These Knishes Could Talk,” the definitive documentary on the New York accent, which will premiere at the Art of Brooklyn Film Festival in May, and has been featured in the WSJ, NPR, NBC, CBS and NY1

The first one kicks off in Queens, this Wednesday, April 10 at 7:30 pm from the New York Irish Center at 10-40 Jackson Ave in Long Island City. Check out the websites below. The Facebook page has some very interesting facts about Queens. Here’s one from me; I can count at least eight Nobel Prize winners who are from Queens or were educated in Queens’s public high schools, including theoretical physicist, and one of the greatest geniuses who ever lived, Richard Feynman (Far Rockaway.)

http://www.fiveborostoryproject.org/

https://www.facebook.com/thefiveborostoryproject

https://twitter.com/FiveBoroStories

My next plug is for Alan L. Maki, Director of Organizing, Midwest Casino Workers Organizing Council. His blog is @ http://thepodunkblog.blogspot.com/

Alan and I had been having an email correspondence about an alternative to “sequestration.” He outlined some budget priorities in an email to the Occupy Wall Street mailing list. Anyway, I brought up the Congressional Progressive Caucus’s ‘Back to Work’ Budget and we discussed the merits of that proposal. Have you ever heard of it? Here’s how the Economic Policy Institute described it:

The Congressional Progressive Caucus (CPC) has unveiled its fiscal year 2014 (FY2014) budget, titled Back to Work. It builds on recent CPC budget alternatives in prioritizing near-term job creation, financing public investments, strengthening the middle class, raising adequate revenue to meet budgetary needs while restoring fairness to the tax code, protecting social insurance programs, and ensuring fiscal sustainability.

You might have heard a little bit about it in the media two or three weeks ago. More likely, you must have gotten some emails asking to sign a petition to support it and urge your Congressperson to do the same. Whatever happened to that, anyway? I guess it was a little too little and a little too late, huh? I wonder what would have happened if the left had made half as much noise about that budget as the right did about the 47% of Americans who only take and do nothing to contribute to the economy or society. Oh, that’s right, there’s no such thing as ‘society.’ There’s only the economy and individuals. Just ask Margaret Thatcher’s ghost.

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