Okay, this is just sad. My sister in arms, Uppityliberal pointed this out to me, and just reading it – although I can’t expect much else from Mississippi, makes me ill. Money that the federal government had allocated to rebuilding homes and neighborhoods destroyed or damaged by hurricane Katrina is now being shifted around to support who else but the patron saints of conservative government, businesses.

I understand the point that the developers here are trying to hammer home – they somehow think that the best stimulus for the economy is to dump taxpayer dollars into the casino and tourism industries in the area with the belief that the tourism dollars that will come and the jobs that will come with the rebuilding of the casinos and hotels will provide long term benefits to the economy in that area. But like Uppityliberal points out here, people need homes before they need jobs. Otherwise you’ll just hire people who can’t afford to find a place to live.

Because she’s absolutely unparaphrasable:

They claim that diverting this money is important to rebuild the business community to create jobs (the same claim they use to excuse cutting taxes for the rich.) But when the people don’t even have HOUSES, having a shittastic job sweeping floors in a casino isn’t exactly important.

How anyone can in good conscience vote for Republicans when they pull this shit as a matter of their core platform is beyond me.

I see all these arguments about how “handouts” are creating people who are dependent on the government (which is bullshit, but…) So if that’s true, why are we giving handouts to businesses?

If the bootstrapping individualists in the GOP think that a man ought to sink or swim based on his own effort and ability, why do they not think the same of businesses? Why is a business owner more entitled to government handouts (in the form of direct money or tax cuts or cutting the minimum wage or regulations, etc.) than an individual worker?

What makes business owners so much more special that they deserve to have their failing businesses propped up with government money?

Why does social Darwinism apply only to individuals and not to businesses?

If a business owner has to pay slave wages and cut benefits, cut workplace and product safety measures and buy from third-world child labor manufacturers to make a profit, he or she is a crappy entrepreneur. We shouldn’t be rewarding people who are too stupid to make a profit without fucking over workers and consumers.

Trickle-down economics doesn’t work. It NEVER has. Ever. Because the rich bastards to whom you give more money don’t immediately put it back into circulation the way the working and middle class does. They hoard it instead, or send it out of the country to build factories where they can pay little kids a quarter a day to make toxic plastic toys. Ultimately, this supply-side top loading benefits no one except the rich bastards who get the money.

Now that’s the damned truth. The Libertarians and the free-marketeers claim that the best way to benefit society is to dump money into businesses, and anything short of that essentially equates socialism and should be shunned. But they never explain why it’s completely okay for the federal government to essentially subsidize businesses and industries as a whole instead of provide basic services to the populace. The best part beyond that is that they think those federal tax dollars – money out of the pockets of Americans – shouldn’t come with any strings to those businesses to make sure the American people see any return on their own investment in the corporate infrastructure. They don’t think that those dollars should come with the assurances that regulation provides, or with the social safeguards that anti discrimination laws ensure.

For some reason, the Libertarians have allowed themselves to be fooled into this notion that the corporate entity is far more important than both the government by and for the common good and the individual. I can hear them now: “but corporations and businesses put more back into the society than individuals do!” Smoke and mirors: certainly businesses provide for the society in which they reside, mostly in the form of training, job opportunities, and sometimes in the form of community outreach and improvement.

But more often than not, those businesses – especially as they grow larger and more distant from their relationship with the society in which they reside – lose touch with the symbiotic relationship with their communities and the people around and who work for them. Instead they try to get by on giving as little back as possible, whether it’s by paying their employees as little as possible, trying to influence government to reduce regulation, pollute the environment or try to influence government against environmental protection, they essentially spend more money in making sure the public sees nothing for its investment and they can’t be held accountable to anyone but their shareholders, even when they get money from outside sources.

If that’s going to be the case, they shouldn’t get federal funds at all – no tax breaks, no benefits, nothing. Like Uppityliberal says; we should reward companies that truly benefit the society as a whole and the communities in which they live, not send tons of money propping up businesses who grovel for public funds one moment and then campaign against the public good the next.

When the right and the Libertarians whine about tax breaks or refunds for the middle and lower classes and how that money should instead go to businesses, which-according to them-would really help the economy, they would do well to remember how selective their application of individual rights are. They seem to have no issues allowing corporations and business entities to be treated like individuals as long as it benefits them (and by extension, the business owners and the wealthy support the right and the Libertarians), but when they’re challenged with the notion of letting businesses fare for themselves the same way they’re willing to let individuals fare, suddenly it’s an unacceptable proposition.

Sorry Libs, you can’t have it both ways.

[ Feds OK Mississippi's Katrina Grant Diversion ]
Source: MSNBC