How Does Funding Affect Justice? Casey Anthony: Is Verdict a Case of Over-charging Defendant, or Under-Funding Prosecutor's Office?

by Monica Davis

For the folk out there who are howling that the “government is too big”, consider that police, prosecutors, teachers and firefighters are part of that “government” that you want so badly to shrink.  

Casey Anthony Walked Thanks to Grover Norquist & His Anti-Tax Congressional Minions

By Rob Kall

In the movie King Kong, there was that famous line, “It was beauty killed the beast.”

Well, it was Grover Norquist and his minions of Republican members of congress who signed his no taxes commitment who let Casey Anthony walk. 

It’s become very clear that the reason she was found not guilty was because of a bad call by the prosecution, asking for the death penalty when they couldn’t even show cause of death. CNN reported on attorney Jeffrey Toobin’s commentary, 

“…the prosecution’s decision to make this a death penalty case. “(This) always seemed like a wrong decision to me, given the … absence of a cause of death (and) a time of death,” Toobin said.

This was a case of bad judgment by the prosecutors. 

How is that related to Grover Norquist and the republican anti-tax policy? Norquist has been quoted as saying that his goal is to, by cutting taxes, shrink the size of government so much that “it’s small enough to drown in a bathtub.”

Fact is, prosecutors are part of government. if the prosecutors made the wrong decision we have to consider whether the government in Florida had the best people on the job. Could the district attorney’s office afford to pay to attract the best attorneys? Are the best employees no longer at all available to be hired by the government because Norquist and his enemies of government have already decimated funds so much that the drowning in the bathtub has already begun? 

Is Casey Anthony’s acquittal an indication of justice? Most Americans, certainly most Fox News viewers don’t think so. But I propose that her acquittal was directly due to the success of Groven Norquist. That he may not have shrunken government enough to entirely drown it in a bathtub, but he and his anti-tax signatories have had enough success, especially in backward, neanderthal state like Florida, which elected a criminal for governor, to damage the government institution that metes out justice– the court system. MORE

The Fighting Democrats put it another way: given the devastating cuts to government services in the last few years, particularly the lohg-lasting negative effects of the on-going Bush Tax Cuts: anybody who votes Republican in 2012 is nuts. And, they say, these folk are also suicidal, because the far right wing of the Republican party is hell-bent on turning government into an anemic skeleton. 

The Republicans are not stopping in their attacks on the nation’s common good. and are bent on destroying a government for everyone, not just the rich.  

They are proposing even MORE monstrous tax cuts, even while we have a massive deficit already caused, in large part, by the Republican supported Bush tax cuts (and the Republican iniitiated endless wars).

It is financial suicide for the United States government and the American economy.  Trickle down economics has not worked.  We have only pissed on the leg of a once great nation while making the rich richer and the poor poorer.  Anyone who votes Republican in 2012 should be placed in a padded room, becuase they are obviously suicidal, too. MORE

Well, folks, the Bush Tax Cut has been extended, financial suicide is upon us, and this is what we have to look forward to: massive federal and state budget deficits and catastrophic unemployment.  It’s here, it’s now, and we are in the middle of a catastrophic government meltdown from the smallest village to the most vital federal office.

1. Extending the Bush tax cuts would almost double the projected budget deficit. See Congressional Budget Office,

“The Budget and Economic Outlook: Fiscal Years 2011 to 2021,” January 27, 2011, Table 1-7. The figures show

that the combined cost of extending the Bush tax cuts (income tax cuts and estate tax cuts) and AMT relief would

grow each year in proportion to the deficit projected under current law. (The current law projection assumes the

Bush tax cuts expire at the end of 2012.) 

By 2018, the cost of the Bush tax cuts and AMT relief (including additional debt service costs that would result)

would be $566 billion in that year alone. This would increase the current law deficit projection of $610 billion in

2018 by 93 percent. By 2021, the cost of the tax cuts would be $749 billion in that year alone, which would increase

the current law deficit projection of $763 in 2021 by 98 percent.

2. The tax cuts included in these estimates are the Bush tax cuts that were extended through 2012 in the

“compromise” signed into law by President Obama in December of 2010. 

These include the full extension of the income tax cuts first enacted under President Bush in 2001 and 2003, as well

as the partial extension of the estate tax cut that was first enacted in 2001.

3. The income tax cuts include:

- reduction of the 28%, 31%, 36% and 39.6% rates to 25%, 28%, 33% and 35%.

- introduction of the ten percent tax bracket (lowest bracket was previously 15 percent)

- rate reduction for capital gains and dividends

- expansion of Child Tax Credit

- elimination of “marriage penalty” in the standard deduction

- elimination of “marriage penalty” in the 15 percent rate bracket

- reduction in “marriage penalty” in the Earned Income Tax Credit.

- expansion of the Dependent Care Credit

- repeal of the personal exemption phase-out

- repeal of the itemized deduction disallowance

- increase in the exemptions in the Alternative Minimum Tax (AMT)

4. The estate tax cut enacted in 2001 gradually repealed the estate tax until causing it to completely disappear in

2010. The “compromise” signed into law at the end of 2010 did not fully extend the repeal of the estate tax but

instead reduced the estate tax by increasing the estate tax exemption to $10 million for a married couple and

reducing the estate tax rate to 35 percent. 

Our figures assume that these estate tax rules (the rules enacted as part of the compromise at the end of 2010) would

be extended if the Bush tax cuts are extended again. 

5. President Obama expanded the few parts of the Bush tax cuts that helped low-income families, including the

provisions affecting the Child Tax Credit (CTC) and the Earned Income Tax Credit EITC). President Obama’s CTC

and EITC provisions were first enacted in early 2009 as part of the economic recovery act, and then extended

through 2012 as part of the compromise he signed into law in December 2010. 

President Obama’s EITC and CTC expansions are not included in these figures, which focus on tax cuts that were

originally enacted under President Bush.

6. Unemployment figures refer to April 2001 and April 2009, and come from the Bureau of Labor Statistics.   More