And what do the wealthy have to sacrifice? Oh yeah. Nothing

Now we know who's going to have to pay for hurricane cleanup and recovery: It's the same people who always pay -- the poor, the elderly, and the grunts in the threatre of war.

The Republicans would freeze funding for the Peace Corps, the Global AIDS Initiative, U.N. peacekeeping operations and a wide variety of third-world development programs; eliminate the EnergyStar program, eliminate grants to states and local communities for energy conservation, reduce federal subsidies for Amtrak, eliminate funding for new light-rail programs and cancel the president's hydrogen fuel initiative; eliminate state grants for safe and drug-free schools because "studies show that schools are among the safest places in the country and relatively drug free"; and eliminate the teen funding portion of Title X, which provides "free and reduced-price contraceptives, including the IUD, the injection drug Depo-Provera, and the morning-after pill" to poor teenagers.

Along the way, they'd find a way to punish -- or simply eliminate -- some of their enemies, real and imagined. They'd cut funding for the District of Columbia, eliminate funding for the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, eliminate subsidized student loans for graduate students, terminate the Legal Services Corporation, eliminate funding for the National Endowment for the Arts and kill the National Endowment for the Humanities.

Of course, you can't balance the budget on the backs of PBS viewers, grad students and other outside-the-mainstream liberals alone. So the Republican plan also calls for "rational reforms to Defense and Homeland Security." Does this mean cutting weapons systems at the expense of big defense corporations? Well, no. But it does mean closing schools for the children of soldiers, cutting grants for local responders and offering National Guard members the "option" to purchase a less comprehensive healthcare plan.

So while the top 1% (a.k.a. "Bush's base") emerges unscathed, the 99% that constitutes the rest of us get clobbered. I especially like the idea of cutting energy conservation funds from states and "rational reforms" to defense and homeland security. This means even MORE energy use (which benefits oil company executives and NO ONE else), reductions in those security programs which these same Republicans touted after 9/11, and things that make the lives of our soldiers just a bit easier.

So can someone give me one good reason why the top 1% should be able to get off scot-free? Can someone give me one good reason why the top 1% should be exempt from ANY civic responsibility, but should instead be allowed to JUST feed from the trough? How about we cut corporate subsidies? How about we raise taxes on that one percent just one percent?

Of course we can't do that. This country is the private fiefdom of the Bush family and their friends. The rest of us just live here on their sufferance.