The 28th Amendment--Make Congress Live by their Own Laws

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Rich Republicans Love Clean Environments and Government Regulations---Where They Live,That Is

An interesting editorial from the Provincetown Journal's fine writer, Froma Harrop, on why the Republican rich really, deep down, do like lots of government regulations---where they live and vacation that is.  (right, Mitt and Ann Romney at their vacation retreat in New Hampshire.)   

There are places in the United States, especially back east, where it is so difficult to access the local open areas--those localized control areas--that even so much as drinking an open  can of soda pop along a beach trail is considered a violation of some small-town, big dollar municipal code and worthy of a fine. 

 

Thank goodness for some states, like Oregon, which has a Land Use Commission and many state parks and beaches to be open to the public, with less onerous regulations. How long this lasts in an era of falling revenue for government-held public lands and recreation sites in the West is a good question.  

Most Americans likely have ,as I have, run up accidentally into a "gated communities" where even stopping and asking directions is considered an act of willful disobedience.  And one dares not tread a foot inside such a place unless invited.  

 

 Yet where did the money come from for these people to wall themselves off from the rest of us?       

 

 From the article:  "New Englanders fanned across the country extracting riches from other regions. They did mining, oil drilling, railroad building. How their activities harmed these other environments was, in most cases, the last thing on their minds. They made sure that their kids attended prized schools back East and that they themselves would not spend their summers near an open pit mine in southern Arizona. They came home to the fresher breezes and charming villages of the Northeast. And the rich from other regions joined them for the summer party.

"It's one thing to pollute other areas. It's another to despoil where one goes for recreation. It's animal nature not to dirty one's own nest."

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This is one more indicator about one of the advantages of big business: if you own a empire as the Koch Brothers and others do, you can make your money in a place where your company fights against environmental regulations. And then you live far away in another part of the state or nation or globe,   far enough away in fact for the results of your extraction-and-pollution schemes to have no effect on you or your family. More here:  http://www.rasmussenreports.com/public_content/political_commentary/commentary_by_froma_harrop/where_they_play_rich_conservatives_like_zoning

History Made! Obama Individual Health Care Mandate Upheld by Supreme Court!

A major Constitutional victory on the long path to Health Care Reform, the Affordable Health Care law, passed by both House of Congress and signed by the President, is now the law of the land.

(below) Here's a brief video of Democratic Party leaders, Harry Reid and Nancy Pelosi, celebrating at the Capitol in Washington, DC.

Colin Powell trashes Romney's foreign policy advisers

Former Secretary of State Powell should know a thing or two by now about bad or "cooked" foreign intelligence after his United Nations speech in the run-up to the Iraq War.

(A speech he has now admitted was a mistake, based on being fed rotten intelligence by the CIA ,who were being pressured as you now know by the NeoCon wing of the George W. Bush Administration, specifically the office of VP and Torture Enthusiast Dick Cheney. )

For more on Powell 's reflection on his 2003 UN speech: http://video.msnbc.msn.com/mitchell-reports/47538206/#47538206

In a recent interview on MSNBC, the former member of the Joint Chiefs of Staff and cabinet Secretary doesn't appear too impressed with Mitt Romney or his foreign policy team.

Render Unto Mitt Romney...

Romney’s Tax Returns Shed Light On Benefits Only Available To Some

Like venture capitalistas for instance... Tax law expert David Cay Johnston fills us in on how Willard "Mittens" Romney and the family are doing really, really, good paying little or no taxes as a percentage of his income, while other of us ordinary types make up the difference. 

“A successful manager like Romney gets a share of the profits he produces and Congress allows the manager to be taxed the same way people who had capital at risk is– at this very low 15 percent rate,” Johnston said.

“It’s called a profits interest. Romney doesn’t have an ownership interest, he doesn’t have any stock, but he has a right to receive income and that produces big benefits for him especially in terms of passing income down to his sons.”

://hereandnow.wbur.org/2012/01/24/romney-releases-taxes

"The Canada Party"---America's Answer for 2012?

http://timelord1962.multiply.com/video/item/283/The_Canada_Party_-_Meet_The_Canada_Party?replies_read=4
With thanks to my friend Timelord I also offer these two important and cogent political advertisements.

Warning: commercials contains adult language, and a brief scene of an angry American woman wearing our country's flag like a shirt.

And she looks really angry. It's distressing. I told you, so there.

Global mass protests 15th October 2011

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Gee, the "tea party" reactionaries aren't  the only bunch that can draw a crowd.   Check local listings in your paper this Saturday for a demonstration near you.  

 

Barack Obama and Ronald Reagan: Today's "Class Warfare" Was Yesterday's Pragmatic Conservatism

Funny how the Republican and Libertarian Party stalwarts only remember selective portion of Ronald Reagan's policy pronouncements.

Reagan's push to close tax loopholes for the rich and get budgets balanced with cuts and tax revenue in his second term has totally slipped their minds. He also actually came out for stronger public trade unions---in Eastern Europe at least.

In a Labor Day address in 1980, Ronald Reagan said:

"These are the values inspiring those brave workers in Poland … They remind us that where free unions and collective bargaining are forbidden, freedom is lost."

Funny that today collective bargaining is under attack for American citizens in Ohio and Wisconsin from the likes of GOP Governors Scott Walker of the Badger State and John Kasich or Ohio.

The modern Reaganauts chastise President Obama and the Democratic leadership in Congress for doing exactly what their own Hollywood-minted shining hero did twenty-five years earlier.

In one way its sad to see how extreme the right end of the political spectrum has gone. No GOP candidate in a recent primary debate would even agree to raise one dollar in tax revenue for every ten dollars in austerity-maniacal tax cuts to everything the government does from deliver the mail to supporting public schools to helping the unemployed get retraining or basic benefits.

One local legislator in southern Oregon, a dandy named Sal Esquivel recently said of the Wall Street protests, "If you want to work you can work, and, if you don't want to work you don't work." Spoken like a man who never had a layoff notice from the boss.

In another light, it's hard for these folks to to argue with The Gipper himself.

Though I'll bet the spinmeisters are hard at work now that this video is out on the Internet.

Here's a reminder from Ed Schultz at MSNBC. Thanks Think Progress.

The Truth About Social Security and Election Engineering

This is where the US Social Security ACT came in, August 14, 1935. Today, over seventy-six years later it still enjoys such popularity that between 65-70 percent of citizens polled on the subject say they would rather see Social Security taxes raised than see benefits cut. This includes both independent and Republican voters. (see link below)
http://tpmdc.talkingpointsmemo.com/2011/05/new-polling-confirms-overwheming-majority-wants-social-security-left-alone.php
Social Security is  the one program that has had the most effect in changing the lives of elderly people, and those who have lost parents to premature death while they were still in their teens through the SSI support.  2/3rds of the elderly lived in poverty before the Act. Today that number is less than a quarter.
  It is the Jewel in the Crown of Franklin Roosevelt's "New Deal", as important to his legacy as the Reagan tax cuts of 1981-2 were his supporters. Reagan himself, a former Democrat until 1962,  bowed to FDR's wisdom  when he called for a commission and later signed legislation strengthening Social Security.
So why do Republicans like Rick Perry want to kill the program?  So they can out-Reagan Reagan? 

“It is a monstrous lie. It is a Ponzi scheme to tell our kids that are 25 or 30 years old today, you’re paying into a program that’s going to be there.”

— Gov. Perry  (R-Texas, Governor and currently leading Republican Candidate for Presidential Nomination in 2012)
According to journalist Glenn Kessler of "The Washington Post" in his political analysis of last night's GOP debate, Perry are "a bubble off plumb", as my Uncle Ragnar, a union carpenter for thirty-five years, often said.

 Take it away, Glenn:      
"Perhaps the governor does not know the dictionary definition of a Ponzi scheme. Here’s what Merriam-Webster says: “An investment swindle in which some early investors are paid off with money put up by later ones in order to encourage more and bigger risks.”

"This is a frequent mistake politicians make when talking about Social Security. It is not an investment vehicle; it is intended to provide income security as well disability and life insurance. Just more than 60 percent of the 54 million beneficiaries are retired workers; the rest are disabled workers, dependents or survivors.

"Social Security is a pay-as-you-go system, which means that payments collected today are immediately used to pay benefits. Until recently, more payments were collected than were needed for benefits. So Social Security loaned the money to the U.S. government, which used it for other things. In exchange, Social Security received interest-bearing Treasury securities. The value of those bonds is now about $2.6 trillion. (We have written about this at length.)

"In any case, Perry is wrong to label Social Security a Ponzi scheme. Ponzi schemes ultimately go bust and everyone (except possibly early investors) generally loses their money. Social Security faces a long-term funding issue, but one that most experts say is manageable. After all, the Social Security actuary says that Social Security’s shortfall is 0.7 percent of the gross domestic product over the next 75 years."
So why this misleading synthetic panic that reactionary politicians like Perry and the "tea party" extremists seem to want to spread.  It goes back to an idea that Ronald Reagan threw out in his first Inaugural Address as President.  "Government is not the solution. Government is the problem." 
Such sweeping generalizations always play well with the  swath of voters out there who are either looking for simple solutions to complex problems or who are "low information voters" or polling data subjects.  The former group wants to believe the worst about an institution that they see as intrusive to their lives.  By "poisoning the wells" of all government efforts that hope the programs they abhor will be undermined as well.  I believe there is really not as many voters like this as it appears, but they are usually the most active and the most likely to vote in straw polls and caucus events that require people to eschew the secret ballot. Further, they are generally loud and simplistic in their rhetoric, and so play well in the visual mediums like television news where a picture or a pithy phrase  is worth a hundred reasonable essays that measure carefully the pros and cons of a given issue.

And if you undermine people's belief in the interests of their self-government, then it is more likely that "low-information voters" will just sit out an election, felling that "they all all crooks" or "every politician is the same".  This plays into the hands of corporate-funded lobbying groups like Freedomworks, Crossroads, and the billionaire Koch Brothers various ways ot promote plutocracy over democracy and privatize everything, including the Social Security system, a process favored by George W Bush which would have been a disaster after the 2008 mortgage-backed securities meltdown on Wall Street in 2008.

Special interest groups  exert pressure on Congress and chief executives in all states by withholding cash donations and/or promising that their single-issue voters (NRA members for example, or anti-tax fanatics) will come out on primary day and remove them from office.
In other words, discourage the distracted voter out there  who is working too much or looking for  work and have too many other domestic problems (child care, bills, family budget, elder care, etc., ) to pay attention to the differences in political candidates. If they stay home on election days, single-issue groups have more power.  Further, if they only can rely on television ads to tell them about candidates, a constant stream of anti-government invective will cause many to just shrug and say "a pox on both their houses."  That's' why the Republican activists are always trying to make it harder for people to vote by forcing more and more onerous identification laws in swing states like Wisconsin--to keep the harried and the disenfranchised who cant afford  the equivalent of a passport just to vote in the country they and their parents were born, worked, lived and paid taxes in.
There are signs that  people are waking up to the draconian dreams  of Rick Perry, even with his chief challenger, Mitt Romney, distancing himself from the remarks of the Texan. But we also live in an era where the "economic royalists" are back in power as they haven't been since the 1920's.  All progressive legislation in the past 100 years is up for grabs.

This is nothing less than a fight to stay in 2011 and beyond and not to go back to the Age of Robber Baron uncertainties for average workers.  Beware those who offer radical solutions and easy fixes. 

First Lady Attacked for Advocating Breast Feeding!

I was hoping I might not ever come to this but it did. First Lady Michelle Obama has been attacked, seriously attacked mind you,  for supporting  breast-feeding for mothers with young children! 

 

From an ABC News blog 2/15/11

Rep. Michele Bachmann spoke out Tuesday against First Lady Michelle Obama’s reported support of tax breaks for breast pumps.

On Laura Ingraham’s radio show Tuesday, the Tea Party favorite criticized Mrs. Obama for reportedly endorsing steps she warned could lead to a “nanny state.”

"I've given birth to five babies and I breast fed every single one of these babies," Bachmann, R-Minn., said. "To think that government has to go out and buy my breast pump for my babies. I mean, you want to talk about the nanny state? I think you just got a new definition -- a new definition of the nanny."

The IRS announced last week that breast pumps and supplies that assist lactation are medical care under Internal Revenue Code “because, like obstetric care, they are for the purpose of affecting a structure or function of the body of the lactating woman.”

Bachmann, who is in her third term and considering a challenge to President Obama in 2012, declined to elaborate on her comments through a spokesperson Tuesday evening. The Office of the First Lady also declined to comment.

This is not mind you a program to out and out buy breast-milk storage systems, no, just a tax break.  Yet this modest change in the tax laws has brought condemnation in the American far Right perennial campaign to condemn everything not controlled by their leadership as bad for the nation. 

 

It seems the First Lady has made speeches in the past suggesting it would be good for mothers to breast-feed children at least in the first six months after birth. Scientific studies have shown it reduces the likelihood that said babies will grow up to be obese.   

(above) From a April 10, 2010 CBS Evening News report with Harry Smith

Nobody could be against mothers breast-feeding their kids, right?  Surely there are some points in the health care spectrum which politicians and professional special- pleaders in America can agree on, right?        

 But this is not so. To some, like Minnesota Congresswoman Michelle Bachman, Sarah Palin--who snarled that Mrs. Obama was only advocating more mother's milk use because the price of store bought milk was getting higher-- and the usual cast of knee-jerk reactionaries, this is actually a step toward.....I don't know what...you tell me...I'm guessing they fear the spectre of centralized economic planning, all   centered around a nation of families who let breast pump tax breaks blind them to the loss of freedom as we know it...yeah, that sounds like the group I'm thinking about.  

Is there no end to this hysterical anti-government hyperbole?   Well no, as this selection from an article on the asinine imbroglio todays' Washington Post shows.   

"Her worldview on child rearing is totally oriented to institutionalizing children!" said Cathy Ruse, a senior legal fellow at the Family Research Council. "Giving tax breaks for breast pumps helps only those moms who are working outside the home and does nothing for us stay-at-home moms. This is consistent with President Obama's pledge to increase the childcare tax credit as opposed to the child tax credit, incentivizing putting your kids in daycare over any other childrearing arrangement."

  The far Right in the United States is so zeroed in on the track of disagreeing with anything government does to help working families that they attack even a small incentive to reduce childhood and adult illness.  

Color me gobsmacked.

 

It's come to this.  Good thing Mrs. Obama didn't come out for a heliocentric solar system or helmets for  high school  football players; then she'd really have kicked up a tempest!