And we thought we were so smart

An intrepid reader sent us a dispatch from TomPaine.com with the following line:

Yesterday the House Republicans decided to prioritize Paris Hilton's economic concerns over those of her maid's.

And here we thought we were being original in our last post. The e-mail link here goes to this story, posted yesterday morning, which does not contain the reference to Ms. Hilton:

At the same time, conservatives began crafting a compromise measure to revive the estate tax repeal, which died in the Senate last week. As the New York Times reports this morning, “Though billed as a compromise, the measure would cost about three-quarters as much as full repeal of the estate tax.” Estimated cost over 10 years: $280 billion.

It’s hard to find words to express the outrage of these actions. It’s not simply that the policy process has gotten off track. It’s that a key purpose of government has been turned upside down, and done so with apparent impunity.

Instead of seeking ways to address and ameliorate the unbalanced growth which characterizes this economy, they’re exacerbating the problem. Instead of a small, overdue boost to low-wage workers that would help them reconnect, just a bit, to the growing economy, they want to shovel even more of the benefits of our prodigious productivity growth to the top of the wealth scale.

There’s a word for this: shameless. And shame on all of us if we sit back and watch it happen.