New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie (R) today formally announced his intention to implement a 10 percent cut in New Jersey’s income tax. “Lower tax rates will relieve over-burdened middle class families,” Christie said in his annual budget address.

However, the middle class is likely to hardly notice Christie’s cut, as it would give just $80 annually to a households making $50,000. In fact, according to New Jersey Policy Perspective, President Deborah Howlett, 40 percent of the benefit of Christie’s tax cut will go to the state’s richest 1 percent:

The recession blew a $2.5 billion hole in the state budget that has never been filled. Now, the governor wants to dig that hole even deeper with an irresponsible gimmick that only benefits the wealthiest 1 percent.

Proposing an income tax cut might be good politics, but it’s bad policy for most New Jerseyans.

For most of us, the governor’s proposed income tax cut will amount to $2 a week, which will be quickly eaten up by rising property taxes. Meanwhile, the top 1 percent will reap nearly 40 percent of the savings.

The state’s tab for this tax cut will ultimately be $1.1 billion, and that money has to come from somewhere. While the governor seems to think it will come from his pie-in-the-sky revenue projections, it’s hard to imagine the state’s stagnant economy will turn around quite so quickly.

Already, according to the Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy (ITEP), New Jerseyans in the bottom 20 percent of earners pay 10.7 percent of their overall income in taxes, whole, those in the top 1 percent — with an average income of $2,258,300 — pay 7.2 percent. Christie’s income tax plan certainly won’t add any progressiveness to the code, though it will help those at the very bottom of the income scale via an increased Earned Income Tax Credit.

As Blue Jersey’s Bill Orr noted, tax collections in the Garden State are already off $325 million through the first six months of the current year, so “the governor is in no position to arbitrarily call for a self-inflicted wound through deliberately reducing the State’s income stream.” Christie’s tax cut will cost about $1.3 billion when it is fully phased in in four years.

Former Sen. George Allen (R-VA) is trying to regain the seat he lost in 2006 after his infamous bullying of an Indian-American campaign tracker who he called “macaca.” In this campaign, he is playing up is his support for a constitutional balanced budget amendment, in order to clean up the massive budget deficit that he helped run up last time he was in congress. And his allies at the U.S. Chamber of Commerce are also playing up the issue in their “independent” ads supporting him.

But video on Allen’s campaign site highlights his selective memory on this subject. As part of his “Ask George Allen” video series, Allen tells a questioner, “you do have my word to fight for a balanced budget amendment to the constitution as well as line-item veto authority.” He then explains his reasoning, saying:

In fact, while I was a member of the House of Representatives for one year in the early 1990s, I introduced the line item veto [and the] balanced budget amendment. We got it to a vote on the floor. And when I was in the Senate, a few years ago, I introduced it as well.

Watch the video:

But here’s what actually happened. In 2000, he ran against then-Sen. Chuck Robb (D), promoting his support for a balanced budget amendment. After getting elected, Allen waited more than five years to act. He neither authored nor co-sponsored a balanced budget amendment proposal in the Senate in the 107th or 108th Congress, while the Republican Congress and President George W. Bush took a $236 billion surplus and turned it into a $412 billion deficit. Instead, he focused his efforts on legislation like his Liberty Dollar Bill Act, a proposal to require that all U.S. one-dollar bills include the preamble to the constitution, a list of articles, and the first ten amendments.

Only in February 2006, when he was up for re-election, did Allen submit a balanced budget amendment proposal in the senate. In his speech announcing the bill, he said “I hope my colleagues recognize the seriousness, the importance, and the urgency” of his proposal. Allen was unable to get a single colleague to sign on as a co-sponsor.

But sure enough, his 2006 re-election site boasted that Allen “introduced a Constitutional amendment to require a balanced budget.”

A constitutional amendment to require a balanced budget is, in the end, a gimmick that would either require massive tax increases or massive spending cuts — cuts which could have put 15 million Americans out of work if they were enacted this year. But still, Allen is throwing his weight behind the idea as a crowd-pleaser, when there’s no chance of him actually getting it enacted.

During an event in Michigan today, GOP presidential hopeful Mitt Romney — in response to a question about the Simpson-Bowles fiscal commission — admitted that budget cuts slow down economic growth. “If you just cut, if all you’re thinking about doing is cutting spending, why as you cut spending you’ll slow down the economy,” he said. Watch it:

This, of course, flies in the face of the conservative belief that budget cuts will boost economic growth. And already, conservative activists have attacked his statement. “It’s hogwash. It confirms yet again that Romney is not a limited government conservative,” said Andy Roth of the ultra-conservative Club for Growth. Of course, as we noted last week, data from the real world debunks the GOP’s austerity ideology — and evidently Romney agrees.

Already, two states — Missouri and Wisconsin — have set out plans to use funds from the $26 billion foreclosure fraud settlement to balance their budgets, rather than their intended purpose of helping troubled homeowners avoid foreclosure or get out from beneath underwater mortgages. Now, Ohio is set to become the third state to divert the funds from foreclosure prevention, instead using the money to tear down old, vacant homes:

Ohio, which is receiving $97 million in its direct payment from last week’s settlement, plans to allocate $75 million to demolish vacant and dilapidated homes dragging down the values of neighboring properties, Attorney General Mike DeWine said Feb. 9.

At least 100,000 homes need to be demolished, DeWine said, and he is establishing a program to match funds that cities and land banks allocate for tearing down houses.

This is a slightly more justifiable use of the foreclosure fraud settlement money than that decided upon by Wisconsin or Missouri, as vacant homes drag down home values for entire neighborhoods, pushing homeowners further underwater, But the settlement money is supposed to aid homeowners directly, not in a roundabout way.

Plus, there is already a party responsible for the vacant homes blighting Ohio’s cities: the banks that own them. The city of Cleveland has been trying, without much success, to force banks to pay for the upkeep of foreclosed-upon homes, in order to prevent them from becoming a drag on local economies. “We would have much rather spent that money helping families and creating homes rather than knocking houses down that we believe are owned by some very well-resourced banks,” said Chris Warren, Cleveland’s chief of Regional Development, on his city’s demolition of empty homes. And now even more money that is meant to help homeowners will instead go towards literally clearing away the banks’ mess.

Mitt Romney’s renewed opposition to the rescue that saved the American auto industry, which came in the form of yet another editorial announcing his desire to “Let Detroit Go Bankrupt,” was immediately slammed by auto industry insiders, reporters who covered the rescue, and even publications that had once taken his same position.

Michigan Rep. Fred Upton (R), who endorsed Romney, has now joined that chorus, telling Western Michigan University’s WMUK radio that turning to the private sector to rescue Detroit as Romney advocated was never an option:

HOST: He wrote an op-ed for the Detroit News in which he said it is good news that U.S. auto companies are back but he questioned the manner in which it was done, the so-called auto bailout. This was a fight that you were knee deep in at the time it was happening. Do you agree with his characterization?

UPTON: I did not see the article that he wrote. I do know that all of the Michigan delegation worked very hard as related to the revival of the auto industry. There was really a choice between bankruptcy and liquidation. There was no one that was willing to come up not only with the cash to keep them afloat but also to serve the warranties of everyone, you and I that drive all these cars. There was no one that could have picked up those pieces other than the federal government.

Later in the interview, Upton disputed Romney’s assertion that the rescue was a President Obama-led bailout of unions, noting that President George W. Bush began the program and that it was “bipartisan from the get-go.” Upton then noted that without the rescue, Michigan “would have hit 40 percent unemployment rates.”

Upton isn’t the only Michigan politician to criticize Romney’s position. Gov. Rick Snyder (R), who also endorsed Romney, told the New York Times last November that the GOP should stop criticizing the auto rescue, saying he wouldn’t “second-guess” it because “the auto industry is doing very well today.” Oddly, both Upton and Snyder have chosen to tout Romney’s economic credentials to Michigan voters while ignoring his factually-challenged opposition to a rescue that saved the state’s largest industry.

“If General Motors, Ford and Chrysler get the bailout that their chief executives asked for yesterday, you can kiss the American automotive industry goodbye,” said Mitt Romney in his 2008 op-ed for the New York Times that was entitled “Let Detroit Go Bankrupt.” Of course, General Motors and Chrysler were rescued by the federal government, and as a result, the US auto industry is surging just a few years later.

General Motors recorded its highest ever profit in 2011 and regained the title of world’s largest automaker from Toyota, while Chrysler returned to profitability for the first time in more than a decade.

Amazingly, just last week Romney defended his demonstrably false statements about the auto rescue, and claimed that it was “crony capitalism on a grand scale.” “The president tells us that without his intervention things in Detroit would be worse. I believe that without his intervention things there would be better,” Romney said.

But take a look at how the government’s intervention in the auto industry has saved Detroit from the brink of collapse:

(Click the image below for full-screen version.)

Due to its ongoing financial woes, the United States Postal Service (USPS) has contemplated suspending Saturday mail service, as well as closing offices across the country. But a Reuters analysis shows that those office closing could increase economic inequality, hitting area that are already on the wrong end of economic disparity:

Some of America’s poorest communities – many of them with spotty broadband Internet coverage – stand to suffer most if the struggling agency moves ahead with plans to shutter thousands of post offices later this year, a Reuters analysis found. Nearly 80 percent of the 3,830 post offices under consideration are in sparsely populated rural areas where poverty rates are higher than the national average, demographic data analyzed by Reuters shows.

The Postal Service is not even exploring the economic effect that its office closings will have. And the closing under review would hardly save the USPS any money. In fact, “closing all of the post offices under consideration would save about $295 million a year — about four-tenths of 1 percent of the Postal Service’s annual expenses of $70 billion.” “That’s not even a drop in the bucket. The bucket won’t ripple,” said former Postmaster General William Henderson.

Adding insult to injury is the fact that the Post Office’s financial crisis is largely fictional, a relic of Congress’ decisions rather than any actual problems at USPS. As we’ve laid out before, “almost all of the postal service’s losses over the last four years can be traced back to a single, artificial restriction forced onto the Post Office by the Republican-led Congress in 2006,” which requires USPS to pre-fund pensions for employees that it hasn’t even hired yet. This is a requirement with which no other company has to grapple.

At the moment, “nearly 90 percent of the 24 million Americans without wired broadband access live in rural areas,” making them most susceptible to economic pain should USPS offices close. “The postmaster general doesn’t have a clue about what’s going on in rural America, and it shows,” said Sen. Jon Tester (D-MT).

Just a few months ago, Illinois gave retail giant Sears $275 million to keep its corporate headquarters in the state, after Sears threatened to move elsewhere (including, potentially, Ohio). To show its appreciation for receiving millions in taxpayer funds, as Greg Leroy pointed out at the Clawback blog, Sears announced last week that it will layoff 100 workers at those headquarters:

Despite a huge subsidy package enacted by the state of Illinois in December, Sears Holdings Corp. has already announced layoffs at its headquarters in the Chicago suburb of Hoffman Estates. Last week, the retailer announced that 100 HQ staff will be laid off…That December deal, valued at up to $275 million, came after Sears threatened to relocate in headquarters to another state. Its predecessor company, Sears, Roebuck & Co., played the same “job blackmail” game in 1989. The $168 million, 23-year deal it won then was soon to expire when Sears Holdings announced it might again be footloose.

The deal that Illinois signed with Sears actually gives the company the option to lay off another 1,750 workers in the state without penalty, meaning that Illinois paid millions of dollars to potentially see close to 2,000 jobs disappear. “The only surprise is that people are surprised by this,” said state Rep. Jack Franks (D). “The governor knew that this was going to happen, and he pretended he didn’t.”

Shortly after inking its deal with Illinois, Sears also announced plans to close 120 stores nationwide. As Prof. Kenneth Thomas noted, “the jobs crisis apparently has made some states afraid to assert themselves in investment incentive negotiations.”

And Sears is far from the only company to engage in such practices. As ThinkProgress reported in January, mega-manufacturer Boeing closed a plant in Wichita, Kansas after receiving a slew of tax breaks and significant help from Kansas lawmakers which enabled it to land a $35 billion Defense Department contract. “This company has benefited from property tax incentives, sales tax exemptions, infrastructure investments and other tax breaks at every level of government. These incentives were provided in an effort to retain and create thousands of Kansas jobs,” said Wichita Rep. Jim Ward (D), responding to Boeing’s move. “We will be less trusting in the future of corporate promises.” Perhaps Illinois should also be more hesitant to throw money at companies in the hopes of preserving jobs.