Does the government work for us,
or do we work for the government?

Imagine you awake to the sound of a machine noisily buzzing over your house, and another machine nearby in the sky, and another. These machines and others like them have been around for months. They never leave. While you live in the United States, the machines belong to the government of Pakistan. The machines are unmanned drones armed with missiles. Every once in a while they blow up a house or a car or a couple of kids playing soccer or a grandmother walking to the store, sometimes a McDonald's or a shopping center.

Imagine that you've learned to live with this. The popularity of homeschooling has skyrocketed, as nobody wants to send their kids outside. Telecommuting is now the norm for those able to maintain employment. But there's no getting used to the change. Your kids wake up screaming and refuse to sleep. Your rage makes you physically ill. Antidepressants are on everybody's shopping lists, bu t shopping is a life-and-death proposition. Canada is facing an immigration crisis. So is Mexico.

Now, Pakistan claims to be targeting evil criminals with surgical precision. And some in the U.S. government go along with this. But others object. The U.S. Supreme Court declares the drone deaths to be murder or war -- murder being illegal under U.S. law, and war being illegal under the U.N. Charter via Article VI of the U.S. Constitution.

The U.S. Congress insists that criminals must be indicted and prosecuted, that negotiations with hostile groups cannot succeed while drones tear the negotiators limb from limb, and that Pakistan has no right to put its robots in our skies no matter what its good intentions. Statements agreeing with this opposition to the drones are signed by everybody who's anybody. Popular demonstrations against the drones, and -- bravely -- in the face of the drones, dwarf anything seen before. In fact, the world joins in, and people protest Pakistan's murder spree all over the globe. Human rights groups in various countries denounce it as criminal. The Pakistani prime minister reportedly checks off men, women, and children to kill on a list at regular Tuesday meetings. He's burned in effigy across the United States.

But Pakistani human rights groups take a different tack. In their view, some of the drone murders in the United States are illegal and some are not. It depends on the knowledge and intentions of the Pakistani officials -- did they know those kids were just playing soccer or did they believe their soccer ball was an imminent threat to the nation of Pakistan? Was blowing up those kids necessary, discrete, and proportionate? Were they militants or civilians? Was blowing them up part of an armed conflict or an act of law enforcement, and what type of armed conflict or what law was being enforced? Paki stan, these groups argue, must not blow people up without identifying them, without verifying that they cannot be captured, and without taking care not to kill too many civilians in the process. Further, Pakistan must reveal the details of its legal reasoning and decision making, so that the process has transparency. Indeed, Pakistan must begin running its proposed drone killings by a judge who must sign off on them -- a Pakistani judge, but a judge nonetheless.

The Pakistani human rights groups are not made up of evil people. They very much mean well. They want to reduce the number of Americans killed by drones. And they are not permitted to declare all drone killing illegal, because these killings might be part of a war, and these groups have adopted as a matter of strict principle the position that wars must never be opposed, only tactics within wars. They believe this makes them "objective" and "credible," and it certainly does do that with certain people. These Pakistani human rights groups are not pulling the trigger, they're trying to stop it being pulled as often. Lumping them together with the Pakistani military would be Bushian (with us or against us) thinking. But it's harder to see that from under the drones here in the United States with the kids wailing and Uncle Joe's brains still staining the side of the Pizza Hut, than it would be perhaps in Pakistan or at the United Nations Headquarters in Islamabad.

From here in the United States, the cries are for justice. Many want the prime minister of Pakistan prosecuted for murder. Many are beginning to view the absence of such legal justice as grounds for violence. I'm growing worried over what my neighbors and even myself might unleash on the rest of the world. I'm beginning to fall in love with the feeling of hatred....

http://warisacrime.org/content/drones-other-side

It never occurs to way too many in this country, that someone in a remote, dusty village 50 miles from nowhere, on the other side of the world, is no threat to this country. They only know what they are told. Someone is a terrorist. That is all they need to know. They seldom question even the highly questionable. How a "leader", that we designate and a few of his associates, being labelled as "terrorists", living in a remote, 3rd world village, is a threat to anyone or any place in this country.
The above is a good word picture of what it would be like to have the tables turned. To have us, just random people, living here, on the receiving end, as arbitrary targets, picked from a list, by the Leader of some other country, in the name of fighting terrorism. If we can do this to other countries, why can't some other country do the same to us, US?
Just who are the real terrorists anyway? A grandmother tending to her dead son's or daughter's kids? Or a corrupt government being run by For Profit war mongers?
RC

Social Security has absolutely nothing to do with any debt or deficit problem this country may have. Stop trying to scape goat the least among us and do what common sense would dictate. Raise taxes on those that can most afford it. Stop our wars of conquest. Stop our wasteful military spending on expensive ships, airplanes and high tech armament that the military does no want and can not use. Get our Living Wage Jobs back into this country, so people can both live sufficiently above the poverty level and so they can pay the taxes needed for this country to function for the benefit of the common citizen and not just the upper few percent.
That GENERAL WELFARE mentioned in the Constitution includes "WE the people...", the citizens living and working in this country.
Damaging and destroying the social safety nets, is NOT promoting the GENERAL WELFARE! Weakening the social safety nets not only impoverishes the masses, but it works to turn this country into another 3rd world country.
The Government needs to function to serve and strengthen the GENERAL WELFARE for all of us, not just the well off few.

What do our wars of conquest, bailing out crooked banks and Wall Street with our tax money, instead of Main Street, NO taxes on billions of dollars of profits by 30 some companies, etc., have to do with Social Security? Nothing! Absolutely nothing! Social Security is a separate program and is solvent for at least another 25 to 30 years, even if nothing, or I should say especially if nothing is done to "Fix" it.

We worked for our benefits. I worked for 48 years for mine. We deserve to be treated with respect. One way to do this is to have our benefits properly reflect the REAL inflation rate,and not some cooked number, arrived at in a locked room somewhere.

Stop treating Social Security recipients as moochers, working the system. We are not.

Stop with having the average citizen bailing out the banks and Wall Street when their crooked schemes collapses under their own weight. Throw the guilty in prison instead, and confiscate their wealth for reimbursement.

I have always thought that it was because what parent/widow/widower/child could ever "accept" the "waste" of that precious (to them) life?
As a society, it is beneficial to laud publicly the war dead of their own in the short term, and eventually to even (somewhat) "recognize" the dead of the vanquished.
It "sanitizes" war, and allows for the ready embrace of the "next war". It makes possible (in the lizard-brain" we all have) waiting to be reactivated at a future time in the next war., the desire to avenge, to re-enact, ....to memorialize the ones who fought before us.
Soldiers don't die in battle, on purpose. They are all trying to stay alive, so they can come home.
They die because wars are all about the killing, and the overwhelming of the enemy. When the people who run the wars , who plan the wars, who have no "skin-in-the-game", make mistakes in planning, people die. Many times they are fighting "the last war" with today's soldiers. Sometimes they cannot accept the fact that they have a stalemate on their hands and just need to declare victory and stop the killing.
Many wars are the physical manifestation of failed/short-sighted foreign policy, or politics on steroids.
For ordinary soldiers to die as a result of "paper-pushers" who cannot find a reasonable way out of political fights, is a wasteful end-result. If the ones killed are seen as "heroic", and "given" some parades, remembrance celebrations, and posthumous recognitions are handed out, it somehow salves the consciences of the "decision-makers".
I'm sure there are heroic actions in battle, because sometimes people DO heroic things to save a friend or even someone who is not yet a friend, but being a soldier is not inherently "heroic". Soldier A of the US, killing Soldier B of creates a "hero/martyr" for "the other side".
A life lost in wartime has to be about more than the fact that the young family of that soldier needed a breadwinner with a better income than fry cook at IHOP could provide.
The most awful thing for a loved one to accept, has to be the fact that their soldier died for no good reason...that their life was "wasted". If they are seen as heroic, it has to help if there is to be acceptance.

SoCalDem
Democratic Underground

Our foreign policy totally covered as a cartoon.

Click graphic to enlarge

In this country, we supposedly have citizen legislators, not royalty who answer only to God.
The same goes for our Congress critters in WDC, who answer to their owners, the corperations, who hire the lobbyists that bribe Congress. We hired these Congress critters and pay part of their salaries, so we should at least get some say in the laws they pass. Are we not persons too?

Since the year 2000 we have tried it the selfish conservatives way and what did we get? Wars, bankruptcies, upside-down housing and broken bubbles, high unemployment and a 'recession' without end because we are still trying to apply the same mindset to get us, US out of the recession as got us into it in the first place.
No Man is an Island. We are social animals. We depend on each other for survival. Nobody ever made it anywhere alone. We are always dependent on others for whatever we have or whatever do or wherever we go.
Self-made man? There is no such thing. Where did he learn how to be self made? What of his possessions. Did he make all his possessions himself? For example, did each one of us individually, without knowledge of others, invent the loom to weave the cloth to make the clothes we wear? Where did he get the tools to make these looms? The fiber? How did he make the tools needed to make the tools? Where did he get the materials to make the tools? Did he build his own roads to transport these materials? Dig his own well for water himself? Build his own refinery to power his vehicles? Build his own vehicle? What of electricity for lights and refrigerators? Where did he learn to wind the armatures for the generators? Did he mine and smelt the copper himself? Does he operate on himself to remove his own appendix, if need be? Don't think so.
No, all of us are dependent on others, for we all are, first and foremost social creatures. All of us. Social security is a benefit for us all. Universal Health care is a benefit for the citizens of most other countries. Roads, clean drinking water, safe food, a good education, law enforcement, fire fighters, and on and on and on... These do not cost, they pay.
We are our brothers (and Sisters) keepers. We have to be for our very survival.
As we have seen and are still seeing, the Conservative way is the way to 3rd world status and collapse of the United States economy.
The Conservative way sure is not working very well for us now, is it?
A better way is the Liberal way, the Progressive way.

"The Welfare of Each of Us is Dependent Fundamentally Upon the Welfare of All of Us," President Theodore Roosevelt

The purpose of the government is to provide services for "We the people...". From the Federal level down to the local level. Services such as clean water, law enforcement/protection, Fire protection, public education, Building and maintaining public roads and streets (including snow removal), and in most countries Universal Health Care. And a whole host of other services most people never even think of, that make our lives healthier, safer and easier.

Taxes pay for these services. When everyone pays for their fair share, we all benefit from the services government provides.
When government is starved of operating funds because of excessive tax cuts, especially tax cuts for those most able to pay, as we have now, those most in need are hit disproportionally harder.

I can imagined the Deb Kiel's (R-MN)^* of this country, one of those fortunate people that are not wanting for material things. Unlike the people she is hurting by her myopic reduction of the services she does not use or need. Cuts that leave her with more at the expense of the rest of us that depend on those government services.

Local government have very few options for operating funds. The property tax in most cases is the only source of operating funds allowed by statute.
Up until the year of 2000 or so, the States received funds back from the Federal level, which redistributed them down to the county and local level. Under the Bush Administration that source pretty well dried up. The states and local levels had no choice but to raise the taxes that they could. The real problem now is not that the government spends too much, the problem is that those most able to afford to, do not pay their fair share, so that the government can provide the statute mandated services in the first place!

Governments from the Federal level down to the local level are mandated by law to provide certain services. They have been starved for so long they cannot provide those services any longer. But cutting these services for the people is counter productive. It makes things worse. Those same Well-To-Do people that benefit the most from the tax cuts, are also acting to ship our Living-Wage-Jobs over seas, resulting in high unemployment, foreclosures, bankruptcies, lack of basic health care, etc., which in turn create more people that are in need of the services that government is mandated to provide for "We the people...", but now cannot because of the lack of proper operating funds.

The real answer it to RAISE taxes on those that can most afford it, not cut services even more for those that need those services the most. Get our Living-Wage-Jobs back into this country and reverse the last 12 years of the Republican orchestrated swan dive into 3rd world status for the United States.

Another large source of funds is going to funding our deadly aggression against other countries, under the guise of "Fighting Terrorism". We are the world worst terrorist country. Just ask the people in the Middle East.
That money Would be better spend rebuilding and expanding the neglected and crumbling infrastructure in this country. Providing hundreds of thousands to Living-Wage-Jobs, that will get this country out of the Bush Administration caused recession.

Our Constitution mandates providing for the general welfare of "We the people..." It is time our government gets back to adhering to the wording and meaning behind those words in our Constitution. If we continue as we are now, the alternative is the destruction of the United States as a country.

An alternative the countries in the Middle East would be grateful for, because we would then have to get out of their countries and leave them alone, as we could no longer afford to make new terrorist to justify prolonging our war on terrorism.

And that would be the best Christmas present we could give them.

^*Deb Kiel (R-MN), and other people like her, have nothing to worry about when it comes to money. Deb has a couple thousand acres of land, beef stock and what not.

The selfish freeloaders are the big multinational corporations that do not pay any or very little taxes. The selfish freeloaders are those Well-To-Do that GW Bush gave the gift of the tax cuts to, those that got us into this economic mess in the first place. Along with the unpaid for Bush wars of choice.

The only way we are to recover from the Conservative Republican caused economic recession is to raise taxes on those most able to pay them - The big multinational corporations and the Well To Do.
Stop our wars of aggression.
Get our Living Wage Jobs back into this country.
The government needs to spend money in THIS country. Money that will help those in need of help, the middle and lower class.
Without money, people cannot buy anything. If they cannot buy anything, businesses cannot sell anything. If they cannot sell anything, they lay off their workers, making the situation worse.
Cutting Social security, Medicare and Medicaid is counter productive, as that only makes matters worse because that removes even more money from circulation. The fix is to get more money into circulation. You do not do that by giving tax cuts to the Rich. They will not spend it.
You do it by getting our Living Wage Jobs back into this country. You do it by COLA's for Social Security. You do it by Single Payer Universal Health Care. You do that by WPA style work programs, rebuilding our crumbling infrastructure. You do it by building high speed rail crisscrossing our once great county, as the Interstate highways were built.

Don't listen the the Republicans. Their way is what cause this recession in the first place and they are still working for the same old results, saying what was done to break it is the way to fix it. No, it ain't. The fix is to do the opposite of what got us in this economic mess.
Raise taxes on the Well to Do.
Stop the wars.
Get our Living Wage Jobs back into this country.

Even simpler that the self serving, bought and paid for corrupt loons in WDC.

1 - Stop the wars. All of them. Over 16 trillion dollars wasted so far.

2 - Let bush's tax cuts on his rich friends expire. Start wars, cut taxes? That's stupid.

3 - Raise taxes on those most able to pay them. The highest tax rate was 91% during Eisenhower's Administration. The economy boomed. Clinton raised taxes, the economy took off again. Bush cut taxes, we crashed - twice.

4 - Close the tax loop holes on multi-national corporation with billions in profits so they start paying their share of taxes. No need to make poor people destitute by cutting Social Security and Medicare.

5 - Get our Living Wage Jobs back into this country. No wonder we can't recover from the recession, way too many people for the available jobs and most of those jobs do not pay a Living Wage.

6 - Re-regulate Wall Street and the banks. Why do we let them gamble with our money. Heads they win, tails we lose.

7 - Prosecute OUR war criminals. The survivors in Iraq could get behind that.

8 - Single Payer, Universal Health Care. We are the last hold out and pay twice as much as any other country for our health care. Put the "Your Money or Your Life" health insurance companies out of business.

Where are "We the people..." in any so-called solution from our so-called leaders.

We need to spread the pain to those that caused the problem in the first place.

The real problem is not too much spending that helps the people, the problem is too much greed and corruption and bought off politicians that make the rich even richer.

Any so-called solution by the Gang of Six, or who ever, that negatively effects the middle and lower classes, as this does, the Heart of America, is not any real solution. We are not the problem. We did not cause this economic mess.

What needs to be done is to stop our expensive high tech terrorism in the Middle East and else where and close over 800 military basses world wide.
Start taxing those who can most afford it.
During the Eisenhower years, the top tax rate was 91% and the economy soared. Each year that the top tax rate was cut, the economy got worse. After the corruption that was bush II's administration, we are now circling the drain and most of the ideas coming out of WDC, are designed to make things worse for the average citizens and better for our corporate owners.
Clinton managed to raise taxes on those who could most afford it to 35% and we as a nation, started doing pretty good. The accumulated debt would have been paid off in ten years, except for the appointment of Bush the lesser. He cut taxes, thereby decreasing revenue, then drastically increased spending, mostly on the credit card. Two needless wars and a prescription drug program, also on the credit card, finished the job.

Social Security and Medicare are line items on our pay stubs. Neither have anything to do with the debt or the deficit. So why are they on the table when the real problem is our military spending and lack of equable taxation? The Social Security and Medicare "problems" are cause by our loss of living wage jobs overseas. Get them back into this country, so those people can pay their share of taxes again, instead of being on unemployment and welfare.

Our representatives in Washington are not representing us, U.S. any more. They are not representing the best interest of the United States as a whole.
Our representatives are representing the corporations that have bought and paid for them. The so-called gang of 6 are not doing any of us any favors. They are working for others.

What is behind the real problem here? The real problem is because the Republicans don't want to improve government. They want it to be inefficient and corrupt so they can justify butchering the hell out of it, and that's why they do such a bang up job making government fail whenever they are elected. The party of NO! is working to bankrupt this country for their own benefit.

The treasonous Grover Norquist's "No New Tax pledge" is only one way they plan to bankrupt this country. The wars are off the table. The Pentagon budget, larger than the rest of the world combined, will suffer only minor token cuts at best. But programs that have proven to be of benefit to millions of middle and lower class citizens that depend on them, are on the table to be basically destroyed.

Our Constitution Starts out "We the people.." Where are the people in all this budget cutting? Where is the general welfare of the people the Constitution talks about?

How can we be the Greatest nation on earth,
if we can't/won't even take care of our own citizens?

And the deficit in the first place. Rescind Bush's tax cuts on those most able to pay them. Stop the wars of choice he started on our children's credit card. If you cut your own pay and increased your spending by the amount you cut your own pay, would not you also go into debt? Of course you would. This is exactly what Bush did to our country. Living Wage Jobs were plentiful when bush took over. He instituted tax cuts for his rich friends. Now where are our Living Wage Jobs? More tax cuts will get us more Living Wage Jobs? Isn't that the definition of insanity? There was a surplus when little bush was appointed. If he would have left things alone, by the time his second term was over, this country would have been pretty much debt free, instead of double digit trillions in debt. Oh yeah, the GOP absolutely is responsible for the debt. Look at pre and post bush II.

Undo everything the Republican President George Walker Bush did to destroy this country.
Stop his self perpetuating wars. We are making more of the so-called terrorists we are fighting with every civilian we kill.
Bring our troops home and close most of the almost 800 military bases we have around the world. Each single troop in Afghanistan and Iraq is costing us, U.S. one million dollars a year to supply. Each and every Troop!
With no wars, we can slice our so-called Defense budget in half, then slice it in half again. We will still be out spending both Russia and China together.
Reinstate the taxes George W. Bush cut for his well to do friends. No more tax subsidies for multinational corporations.

Get our manufacturing and other Living Wage Jobs back into this country. That is the biggest reason Social Security and Medicare are "in trouble". The high unemployment rate and lack of Living Wage Jobs that cut revenue for a properly functioning government.
Rebuild our own failing infrastructure. Build a High Speed Rail system in this country. Imagine the many hundreds of thousands of jobs that will make. And the spinoffs from those jobs. This will jump-start the economy. Look at our Interstate Highway system for inspiration.

Put in place a Single Payer, Universal Health Care system. Put the money sucking parasitic health insurance companies out of business. They are killing too many of us for their profit. We are the last industrialized country to go to Single Payer, the only holdout.

These actions will supply and shore up the Living Wage jobs that pay the taxes that Social Security and Medicare depend on, far into the future. And yes, everything I have listed is all tied together and needs to be done. Do what I listed and there will then be plenty of money for Medicare and Social Security. And for paying off the debt, all at the same time.

Without living wage jobs and full employment, the recovery is nothing more than discussions of how many angels can dance on the head of a pin.

04/14/2010

Stop Bush's terrorists making wars of Choice. Close the almost 800 military bases around the world. Being the self-appointed World Police is bankrupting us, U.S. Let someone else do it, if it needs to be done.

Rescind the Bush era Tax Cuts on those most able to pay them: the Well-To-Do upper tier.

Close the tax loop holes on Corporations so they have a tax to pay in the first place and stop subsidizing multi-billion dollar international corporations with our tax dollars, especially when those multi-billion $$$ businesses that are not paying any taxes in this country in the first place. They want to be people, tax them at people rates!

Re-regulate our business so they can not continue to get away with the fraud, corruption, gambling and outright greed that are driving our stock markets and our financial institutions. Put the criminals in prison.

Get our Living Wage Jobs back into this country so we have people working at realistic wages, high enough that they have discretionary spending and to get the economy moving again and so more of us make enough to pay taxes again.

Stop trying to scuttle the public sector employee using the excuse that the private sector employee is hurting, so therefore the government employee has to be hurt also. Instead of dragging the government employees down in the race to the bottom, raise the private sector up!

How did we get where we are? Why are we so deep in debt? One only needs to go back 10 years or so to find out. Two things happened:

* The George W. Bush administration's tax cuts. Why were they cut? Why were they so lopsided toward the rich? The rest of us got crumbs to keep us quiet.

* Bush's two wars of choice. Both were put on the credit card to keep them off the books.

These two items alone would have bankrupted the U.S. But that wasn't good enough for the Republicans. Throw in all the deregulation done during the Bush years, the heads-we-win-tails-you- lose greed, fraud and gambling banks and Wall Street did with our money.

Is it not obvious that the fix should be to let the Bush administration's temporary tax cuts expire? Is it not obvious that illegal invasion and wars need to be stopped? One trillion dollars and counting: for what, really?

Wars don't stop terrorists, they breed them. Terrorism is a crime - vandalism gone big time. Treat it as such. War is not the answer. We don't gun down or blow up innocents in crime areas in this country to stop vandalism. So why does anyone think we can invade other countries and do that and it will work?

We have three major causes for the trillion-dollar debt: tax cuts, wars and deregulation. We need to let the tax cuts expire, stop the wars and re-regulate Wall Street and the rest of the financial institutions. In other words, undo everything Bush did.

Social Security has nothing to do with the debt. Nothing. Social Security needs fine-tuning. Why is there a problem in the first place? Because of all the job losses caused by shipping living-wage jobs overseas. Our economy will never recover without those living-wage jobs, along with the discretionary spending and the local, state and federal taxes that they generated.

We cannot have a recovery without a strong middle class - a middle class with low unemployment and living-wage jobs. That means manufacturing jobs.

Our government is charged by Article 8 of our Constitution to "... provide for the common defense and general welfare ..." Medicaid and Medicare both come under Article 8, as does Social Security - the government providing for the "general welfare." These programs are not part of any impediment to recovery. In fact, they are needed to help the recovery; they get money into general circulation.

The Republicans, the party of no, are on record saying they will do anything necessary to bring down President Barack Obama. Does it not stand to reason anything the Republicans want to do would then be suspect because of their public admission and treasonous goal of bringing down the government from the inside?

Liberal - "And that's the way the right wing wants it. They don't want to improve government. They want it to be inefficient and corrupt so they can justify butchering the hell out of it, and that's why they do such a bang up job making government fail whenever they are elected."

It is both a spending and a revenue problem. It is a spending problem because of Bush's two wars of choice. Over One Trillion dollars and counting.
It is a revenue problem because of Bush's tax cuts.
Because of Bush's fiscal irresponsibility, the Federal income went down at the same time outgo went up. And also for the next ten years, our Living Wage Jobs were being outsourced, throwing millions out of work.
Because of job losses, federal tax revenues from those people went way down also, at the same time they started drawing unemployment, furthering the federal revenue problem.
The fix: Let all the tax cuts expire, at least those above $100,000. (Not $250,000) Stop the outsourcing of our Living Wage Jobs. Stop both of Bush's illegal wars of choice.
In other words undo everything Bush did since 2001.

What is so hard to understand?

Approximately 30 years later we suffered the worst economic depression in our history because of the excesses of the 1920s unregulated capital and banking industries. Again the government stepped in to regulate the markets through the FDR administration which prevailed for almost 50 years. The Republicans took control of government in 1981 and almost 30 years later we are again back into economic crisis. Do we now understand what the Republicans have done to our economy?

The reason all of this happens is because the productivity of America is not shared equitably between the working class and the ownership class. And when the working class runs out of money the economy has to tank as it has done several times in the last 140 years. Without government oversight and redistribution of wealth through a progressive tax system, the ownership class is actually self destructing by stripping the working class of the ability to participate in the economy through consumption and investment. That is why we must help the rich predatory class understand that it is actually suicidal to continue the economic policy of the Republicans for the last 140 years.

---

8/22/2010
The Truth

The reason you were much better off under bu$h than now is because bush inherited a booming economy from Clinton, then proceeded to trash it with his tax cuts for the rich and 2 wars off the books.

To say nothing of the deregulation. It took time to put things in place and for the effects to kick in. They did too good of a job. The second stock marked crash wasn't supposed to happen till AFTER Obama took over.

They failed to privatize Social Security by putting the funds in the stock market. That failer to move it was a good thing, because if that had happened, you would now be destitute if you depended on Social Security. Social Security doesn't need fixing. All that is wrong with Social Security is the high unemployment in this country cause by outsourcing of our living wage jobs over seas to better the bottom line for the stock-holders. Not enough people have living wage jobs anymore to fully support Social Security. You can thank Republican deregulation for that.

The government has determined that there has been no inflation (wrongly, I think, because the government uses cooked numbers). That determination was originally made on bush's watch and carried over to Obama's. The numbers used by necessity have to be 1-2 years behind reality.

As for bush's war(s), we were fed lies and misinformation, not the truth. I knew at the time we were being set up by the bush administration and even got into a shouting match with a boss (not mine) at work over it.

I have since been vindicated in my views. A country did not attack us. Saddam had absolutely nothing to do with 9/11.^* Shock and awe wiped out, destroyed whole residential neighborhoods of innocent people. Turned them into a pink mist in the middle of the night. None of them had done anything to deserve their fate. A true war crime.

There were over 14 million people world wide demonstrating against bush's war. The media mostly ignored or down played the demonstrations. If we had been given the truth at the time, the wars would never have been started. Doesn't sound like we have a Liberal media in this country to me. The rest of the world knew. Why didn't we?

As under Clinton, a police investigation was called for after 9/11 and we had the whole world ready to help us. Our country did the absolutely the worst thing it could possably do and bush destroyed that good will we had and we are living with the results.

What Obama wants to do and what he can do are two different things. With the party of NO! fighting him every step of the way, no matter what he says or does, is it any wonder things haven't gotten much better? Beside it takes time, as in many decades, to repair all the damage bush did.

The bush years was in the planing since Nixon left. BTY, compared with what we have with Republicans today, Nixon would be a Left wing Liberal. Compare the Republican party up until the '60's to the embarrassment we have today with the Republican party.

This includes Guantanamo and the embarrassment of the treatment of the captives we have there. bu$h's torture fixation really complicated things. What with International law, Geneva Convention and all. To say nothing of our own Constitution. The prisoners were and still are mostly civilians, not prisoners of war of any army.

I am disappointed with Obama's stand on the Patriot Act also. It needs to be repealed in its entirety. It sure came out of nowhere, full blown shortly after 9/11. Just like there was a plan by somebody and they were ready. Large chunks do not pass the Constitutional test.

As for Health care, what this country really needs is to go to some form of Single Payer, Universal Health Care. Get rid of the greedy health insurance companies that are driving up health care costs. Do we really need all these many health insurance companies, each with its own highly paid CEO, board of directors, with their bonuses and 30 to 40% profit margins? That 7% BCBS-ND gives out as profit is a cooked number (see my last sentence).

As I said further up, it took time for the Republican's policies to kick in. The last stock market crash on bush's watch was not supposed to happen till after Obama took over. The Right had done too good of a job trashing this country.

How can the Democrats fix all that is wrong when not only are they fought every step of the way by no New Ideas Republicans, but the so called Democratic party is full of DINO's and ex-republicans helping the Republicans gutting of this once fine country. Please pay attention to what is going on, what our various congress critters are doing and not so much as to whether or not they have (D) or (R) by their name.

^*The most ludicrous conspiracy theory [about 9/11]is the one about a bunch of untrained pilots armed with box cutters that managed to simultaneously evade the most sophisticated and formidable air defense system ever created and fly precise aerobatic maneuvers with giant passenger planes striking buildings with such precision they fell neatly into their own footprints. - Bob Dobbs

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7/27/2010
How to cut the Deficit

It seems rather obvious to me on how to cut the deficit. Undo everything Bush did!
We were doing great when he took over. Not so great when left.
He started two wars. Stop them both.
With no wars, we can cut the largest military budget in the world in half, then cut it in half again and still out spend any other country in the world.
He cut taxes for his rich friends. Reinstate them.
He deregulated Wall Street and it crashed twice. Re-regulate them.
He deregulated the banks. Re-regulate them.
He deregulated the oil companies. The result was the destruction of an entire ecosystem and a loss of hundreds of thousands of jobs.
We had living wage manufacturing jobs in this country. Change the laws to make it more profitable not to outsource our jobs overseas.
Break up the monopolies that are killing our new business.
Raise the interest rates on savings accounts.
Go to a Single Payer Universal Health Care system. Eliminate the greedy middle men that stand between our health care providers and our health care and sucks the money out of the recovery.
See how easy that is?
The Party of NO! has no answers except for more of the Bush same that got us into this finical mess in the first place. So why is anyone listening to them?

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7/5/2010

Environmentalists documenting dead and injured wildlife in the Gulf of Mexico say BP will never be able to compensate for those that have lost their lives in the world's worst accidental oil spill ever, Press TV reported.

Seventy-five days after the Deepwater Horizon disaster, the US Fish and Wildlife Service staff along with a team with the National Oceanic Atmosphere Administration investigating the loss of wildlife and marine reported that BP would never be able to recover the loss of this life, WorldNewsVine said Sunday.

"Although, rehabilitation centers have been established in and around the Gulf states, BP will never be able to compensate for those that have lost their lives due to the carelessness and unsafe practices of deepwater oil drilling and exploration," the report added.
[More at link above]
"Accidental?" What accidental?
It seems BP did everything in their power to make this happen. They knew the BOP (Blow Out Preventer) was defective when they installed it. They damaged it further when they "tested" it. They knew it and ignored the evidence. There were no backup systems in place.
And the final straw was when PB had the heavy drilling mud replaced with sea water just before it blew out.
Then afterwards, the continued the use of the highly toxic dispersant, that is banned in most of the world for its toxicity, even after they were questioned on the toxicity. The sole purpose of this dispersant was to hide the real extent of the oil leaking from their mismanaged well.
Why are we allowing BP to be in charge of anything? Why don't we have anyone in jail yet? BP just destroyed an entire ecosystem and the livelyhoods of hundreds of thousands of people. And worse, this toxic shit is on its way around the world! RC

The next time you hear, "I want my country back..." Think!

Democrat's plan: Medicare for all available on a sliding-scale basis, based on income - or lack of it. Plan would be open to ALL the uninsured & uninsurable. Anyone who likes their insurance, & can afford to, can keep it, 30-75% increases and all. Others can change over to Medicare for all. Tax cuts to businesses who give fully-paid health insurance to their employees. Wellness care, dental and eyecare included. Donut holes will close. Access to purchasing Canadian drugs, although it won't be necessary. This plan would go into effect immediately.

Republican's plan: Status Quo, with the exception of having to pay for the 30-75% increases in health insurance and pharmaceutical drugs. The good news is they will be able to buy across state lines and, by showing their Voters Registration Card (Republican), there will be Tort Reform, and if they get in an accident, they will be S.O.L.; as will those with pre-existing conditions.

Did I miss anything?

ChicagoSuz219 Democratic Underground

A strong public option would create better competition in our health insurance markets. Many Americans have no or little real choice of health insurance provider. Far too often, it's "take it or leave it" for families and small businesses. This lack of competition drives up costs and leaves private health insurance companies with little incentive to provide quality customer service.

A recent Health Care for America Now report on private insurance companies found that the largest five for-profit health insurance providers made $12 billion in profits last year, yet they actually dropped 2.7 million people from coverage. Private insurance -- by gouging the public even during a severe economic recession -- has shown it cannot function in the public's interest without a public alternative. Americans have nowhere to turn. That is not healthy market competition, and it is not good for the public.

If families or individuals like their current coverage through a private insurance company, then they can keep that coverage. And in some markets where consumers have many alternatives, a public option may be less necessary. But many local markets have broken down, with only one or two insurance providers available to consumers. Each and every health insurance market should have real choices for consumers.

There is a history of using reconciliation for significant pieces of health care legislation.

There is substantial Senate precedent for using reconciliation to enact important health care policies. The Children's Health Insurance Program (CHIP), Medicare Advantage, and the Consolidated Omnibus Budget Reconciliation Act of 1985 (COBRA), which actually contains the term 'reconciliation' in its title, were all enacted under reconciliation.

The American Enterprise Institute's Norman Ornstein and Brookings' Thomas Mann and Molly Reynolds jointly wrote, "Are Democrats making an egregious power grab by sidestepping the filibuster? Hardly." They continued that the precedent for using reconciliation to enact major policy changes is "much more extensive . . . than Senate Republicans are willing to admit these days."

There is strong public support for a public option, across party lines.

The overwhelming majority of Americans want a public option. The latest New York Times poll on this issue, in December, shows that despite the attacks of recent months Americans support the public option 59% to 29%. Support includes 80% of Democrats, 59% of Independents, and even 33% of Republicans.

Much of the public identifies a public option as the key component of health care reform -- and as the best thing we can do to stand up for regular people against big insurance companies. In fact, overall support for health care reform declined steadily as the public option was removed from reform legislation.

Although we strongly support the important reforms made by the Senate-passed health reform package, including a strong public option would improve both its substance and the public's perception of it. The Senate has an obligation to reform our unworkable health insurance market -- both to reduce costs and to give consumers more choices. A strong public option is the best way to deliver on both of these goals, and we urge its consideration under reconciliation rules.

Respectfully,

Michael Bennet (D-CO), U.S. Senator
Kirsten Gillibrand (D-NY), U.S. Senator
Jeff Merkley (D-OR), U.S. Senator
Sherrod Brown (D-OH), U.S. Senator
Source: Huffington Post

Corporations, which did exist at the time the United States was founded, were viewed with great mistrust by the founding fathers. In an 1816 letter to George Logan, Thomas Jefferson said: "I hope we shall... crush in its birth the aristocracy of our moneyed corporations, which dare already to challenge our government to a trial of strength and bid defiance to the laws of our country." Having just fought a revolution to free themselves from the King of England, the founders NEVER would have given the human rights that they fought and died for, to Corporations, which they saw as being nearly as autocratic.

The five conservative Supreme Court Justices in the majority in the Citizens' United case are all men who have claimed to be "strict constructionists" - judges who base their legal decisions on "the original intent of the framers of the Constitution." Instead, with this decision, they have proven themselves to be the most radical activist judges to have ever sat on the Supreme Court.

Mr. Carroll may think I am being an alarmist, but, it is not possible to OVERSTATE the terribly negative impact of Citizens' United decision. The Supreme Court has given Corporations - including huge, foreign multi-national corporations - the Constitutional right to spend an UNLIMITED amount of corporate money to influence U.S. elections.

So let's say, for example, that my Congressman, Republican Mike Coffman, proposes legislation to cap credit card interest rates at 20%. Now, there is nothing, legally, to prevent an American bank, like Citigroup, or a foreign bank like the Credit Suisse, from coming into Colorado the next time Mike Coffman is up for re-election, and simply buying up ALL of the air time on every local TV station, so that they can run anti-Coffman attack ads, 24 hours a day, seven days a week. It doesn't matter how much money Mike Coffman raises from citizens here in Colorado. A huge multi-national, like Credit Suisse, can simply come in to Colorado, and by writing one big check, match and exceed, every dollar Congressman Coffman has raised.

How is giving Corporations the legal right to buy elections "equality of speech," Mr. Carroll?

It is not an exaggeration to say that the Supreme Court's decision means the end of small "d" democracy in the United States. The rule "one man, one vote" no longer applies. From here on out, elections will be won by the candidates backed by the biggest corporate donors.

Benito Mussolini, who coined the term, defined "fascism" as the merger of the power of the corporations with the power of the State. That is exactly what the Supreme Court accomplished with it decision in the Citizens' United case.

The only question left is whether "We the People" are going to accept the new corporate order, or fight back against it with every legal, and political, means at our disposal?
Krashkopf
Source - Permission
Editor's Note: This is an excellent example of the Republicans having everyone else on the menu, because "We the people..." sure are not dining at this table.

http://recession.org/history
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_recessions_in_the_United_States
http://www.sjsu.edu/faculty/watkins/rec1980
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Economic_history
Source: www.democraticunderground.com journals.democraticunderground.com/mikekohr

You like the price gouging, the outrageous premiums that keep going up and up and up every year. The unpaid claims. Having your insurance dropped when you needed it the most. Losing your insurance when you change jobs. Filing for bankruptcy because profits and stockholders are more important than you or a family members life, even after paying in for decades without any claims. Knowing that the upper management of these FOR-PROFIT insurance companies are in reality profiting off your health problems.

The health insurance companies are in collusion now. What makes you think they will decide to compete with each other if they are allowed to cross state lines? That is what we have now in the For-Profit Health insurance industry. They are in it for the money, you become a liability when you file a claim.

What we need is what the rest of the world has gone to. Some kind of universal health care for everyone. Government controlled. It will cost you less than what you are paying now. You will not have to worry about bankruptcy. You will be covered. You can still choose your doctor. No co-pays. No surprise bills. Keep this in mind; if the right-wing republican, conservative fear mongers are saying something is so, just assume they are lying. They do it all the time so you know the truth and facts lay elsewhere.

The Preamble to the Constitution starts with "We the People of the United States, in Order to form a more perfect Union, ..., promote the general Welfare..."

Good health is part of the general welfare of this country. Don't let anyone tell you otherwise. It is in the Constitution! Look it up.
Don't you think it is time we faced reality and rejected the lies of the Republicans in support of the excessive 'profits before service' insurance companies and joined the rest of the civilized countries around the world in taking care of all of our citizens.

This country is so obsessed with money and death. Overseas, we bomb and shoot innocent people who have done nothing to deserve their fate and in this country we kill our own for profit by denying them health care or sending them to wars we start. This nation's greatest export are arms and ammunition.
Can't we love our country without killing our soldiers? Can't we love our country without killing people around the world for profit?
Spreading Freedom? What kind of freedom needs a gun barrel to enforce it? The wild West ended over a century ago. The mentality that accompanied it should have died then also. However the wild west mentality is still alive and well in the minds of the paranoid, reality challenged war supporters. Saddam had nothing to do with 9/11. Afghanistan has a few caves and no government to speak of. With the tens of billions we spend on our military for wars and we can't find a man with kidney disease in one of those caves? So we bomb wedding parties for something to show for the money? No wonder this country is sliding into 3rd world status.

The Iraqi's were far better off under Saddam than they are now. Safer too. Saddam wasn't threat to his own neighbors, let alone us, U.S.
Hitler was a threat to his neighbors and the world. There is no comparison here. Viet Nam was another war we should never have been involved in. What about the millions WE killed over there? For what? You are probably too young to remember 'Nam anyway. I am not. We don't go to war because we love war, we start wars for the profits of our mega-corporations. GE, Lockheed, Halliburton and a whole host of others. Don't forget their friends like Blackwater, now called Xe. The Empire building is just an excuse to keep the wars going longer. Our own people are suffering. Our own infrastructure is falling apart. We need to start paying attention to this country. Why do we seem to have plenty of money for wars, but not enough to take care of our own country?
Shaking Hands: Iraqi President Saddam Hussein greets Donald Rumsfeld, then special envoy of President Ronald Reagan, in Baghdad on December 20, 1983.

Nobody can see the long term. Just the next bottom line. Why?
Letting the bu$h tax cuts expire will ruin this Christmas for so many. But what about the next Christmas and the Christmas after that, when the economy picks up? Jobs, even Living-Wage-Jobs will be more plentiful? We can't worry about what is down the road, we need to worry only about right now. We can worry about later, later. We have to put out this fire right now. We can't be worrying about how to prevent those fires in the first place. No time! That cuts into the the time needed to fix this problem.

We must continue to diddle with the symptoms, least we accidentally deal with the root cause of something and actually fix a problem.
What will we ever do if we actually start to fix too many problems? What if we run out of problems to fix? How will we function then?
Oh, so much to worry about now, we can't worry about the future. Time is of the essence. Time is running out. There won't be a future if we don't fix this RIGHT NOW!!!!1!1 Forget the future and deal with this NOW!

Let me get this straight

shipping our good paying, Living Wage Jobs over seas and replacing them with part time, minimum wage jobs.
Lower wages means less money payed into Social Security. Also less money payed into Medicare. There is nothing wrong with Social Security that getting our Living Wage Jobs back into this country for American Citizens, will not fix. It is that simple.
Single Payer Universal Health Care is the fix for Medicare. Every other civilized country and many not so civilized countries have some form of universal health care, why not us, US? How can we be the Greatest nation on earth, if we can't/won't even take care of our own citizens? Other countries cover everyone, at far less cost than we do just for those than can afford it. Why is that?

Tying Social Security to the General Budget is a con job to further destroy Social Security, nothing more. In the next round of budget cuts, Social Security in now venerable. The precedent has been set.
The debt and deficit was and still are caused by the tax cuts for those most able to pay and the Bush II Administration's wars of choice, that he put on the credit card. The fix, besides stop generating more new terrorists with our needless, for-corporate-profit wars? Raise taxes back up to where they need to be to pay for what is needed to be done.
Stop the wars, thereby saving many tens of Billions of dollars for needed infrastructure repair in this country. That would also generate hundreds of thousands of Living Wage Jobs, through spin-off jobs, jump starting the economy, insuring Social Security would be solvent far, far into the future.
Basically undo EVERYTHING the last Administration did and the current crop of Republicans are still doing.

Just jobs. Comparing jobs that pay a little better, against part time, minimum wage, no benefit jobs is not really much of an improvement.
For an actual recovery, we need Living-Wage-Jobs with benefits. This is not happening. They are not even talking about Living-Wage-Jobs. Just jobs.
Even if everyone had one or more 'just jobs', there still could not be much of a recovery. Without Living-Wage-Jobs, with everyone having a 'just job', we could still end up at the bottom of Third World status.
We are being had here people. We are being fed the notion that 'just jobs' is enough for a recovery. With a 'just job', working 25 hours a week is not much of an improvement over working 20 hours a week.
Whenever Jobs or Recovery are mentioned, bring up "Living-Wage-Jobs." Ask "Where are they?" There is a reason I hyphenate 'Living-Wage-Jobs'. To tie Living, Wages and Jobs together. For the working class, none of those can stand alone and survive.

Why would any sane person vote for, let alone support anyone the Republican Party has had running for President since 2000? Fascist Clown Car Occupant is much too kind.
The Republican Party, the party or NO!, the party that has brought us 2 wars off the books, record debt and deficits through tax cuts and corrupt war mongering, high joblessness though outsourcing our Living wage jobs to reward CEO's with billions, while doing their best to rip up the safety net programs designed to help those very people made destitute by the Republican's party's actions.
The party whose stated mission is to make Obama a one term President. Instead the Republican party works to fight against the repair of the damage to our country their Sociopathic political platform has caused.
The same Party that has fought tooth and nail to stop any economic recovery, at the expense of the rest of us, just because they have a problem with the Black man in the White House? The party whose stated Number one goal is to make Obama a one term president, even if it means trashing the country to do so?
Why do people vote against their own self interests to elect these greedy multimillionaires that are working to bankrupt the rest of us?
(Updated 01/09/2011)

Picture source: Democratic Underground

A door that was not even there before. That is the real reason this particular tax cut was set up as it was in the first place, to establish that connecting door.

Secondary to that is the propaganda of giving people a little extra money. That was to sell the tax cut and to make it harder to rescind. Those that need the money the most, get the least and vice versa. And down the road that is just that much less money to pay out to retirees. The replacement funds from the general fund is a smoke screen, a Trojan Horse, if you will. The small amount each tax payer gets is too small to do much for any recovery. All it will do is make Christmas revenues look a little better, so they can say "Hey look we are still on the road to recovery". The reality will be 'not so much'.

People should be concerned about taking money from a broken general fund to pay for Social Security paychecks. How long should we expect that to continue? And speaking of the General Fund, they are taking money from the General fund to replace money taken from the Social Security fund. Why not take it from the General fund in the first place? Why the money shuffle?

Most people will not connect the dots, let alone look far enough down the road to if/when the Republicans have full control of Congress again and they will try to balance the budget with their treasonous Grover Norquist's "No new taxes" mime of "if it gets spent here, we have to cut there" mentality.

The cuts will come from Social Security because it is now "funded" from the General Fund. Never mind most of it is still not, but the perception put out by our greedy overlords, will be Social Security is killing any attempt to balance the budget and therefore will have to be cut or eliminated.

And that is why the Payroll Tax Cut is wrong from the get-go. We are being had again people.

Is it any wonder this panel is admitting failure? After all, they have not addressed the root cause of any of the real problems in any realistic way.
With six Republicans and six hand picked DINO's to stack the deck, this was to be expected. That was the plan.

We had a surplus in 2000 and were setup to pay off the debt in 10 years. Our economy was booming. Jobs were plentiful. All that needed to be done was... Nothing. Just let it ride.

9/11 should have been a cost shared, international police action. Not invade and destroy a country that had nothing to do with either 9/11 or with terrorism. And then we shiped them (Iraq) Billion of dollars on shrink wrapped pallets to bribe those left with the power in Iraq, to silence their opposition to their country's destruction and to grease the theft of their oil.

What did bush and the republicans do here? They Cut taxes. They Outsourced good Living Wage Jobs. They Started two unnecessary wars on our children's credit card. They deregulated the big banks, financial institutions and Wall Street, allowing them to not only gamble with our money, but to keep the winnings from their gambling and to socialize their losses at our expense.
The financial institutions got bailed out, but Main Street did not. Main Street is too close to the people for the Republicans to help. In other words the Republicans bailed on, but not out of Main Street. The Republicns blamed the ballooning deficit on government spending for well run programs. Programs that actually helped American citizens. Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, Unemployment insurance, and a host of smaller programs that benefited the 99%. Programs that the Well-To-Do don't need.

This panel ignored the Republican tax cuts, except for lying to us, U.S., by trying to tell us less government revenue generated more money for the government to spend. They all but ignored the Pentagon Defense budget. A defense budget as large as the rest of the world combined. All it got was a token "cut" and not the major slashing it deserves. They all but ignored the deregulation of our financial institutions that are at the root of the recession/depression we are currently enjoying. This panel ignored the cost of the ongoing wars.

And don't forget Grover Norquest's treasonous "No New Tax pledge". A pledge that most Republicans in Congress signed.
The Taxpayer Protection Pledge Signers 112th Congressional List
Grover Norquist's pledge

I, _____, pledge to the taxpayers of the (____ district of the) state of ______ and to the American people that I will: ONE, oppose any and all efforts to increase the marginal income tax rate for individuals and business; and TWO, oppose any net reduction or elimination of deductions and credits, unless matched dollar for dollar by further reducing tax rates."

However, everyone in Congress also took a oath to uphold the Constitution. An oath that overrides any other oaths or pledges they may have taken.

Oath of Office for Congress:
"I do solemnly swear (or affirm) that I will support and defend the Constitution of the United States against all enemies, foreign and domestic; that I will bear true faith and allegiance to the same; that I take this obligation freely, without any mental reservation or purpose of evasion; and that I will well and faithfully discharge the duties of the office on which I am about to enter: So help me God."

Does this Oath sound like what the Republicans are living up to? They would be hard pressed to prove it.

Why is unemployment so high? Because businesses are rewarded with tax breaks when they ship our Living Wage Jobs over seas.
Why is our infrastructure crumbling? Because the tax cuts for the Well-To-Do are sucking the money necessary for a robust economy out of circulation. Without money circulating in the economy, our schools will suffer, our bridges will collapses, our police and fire departments will be short handed and under equipped. Businesses will keep failing for lack of customers, raising the number of unemployed, which will cause more businesses to fail for lack of customers.
The problem is not too much regulation, the problem is not enough regulation. This country was fine, with a healthy economy until gwbush was installed. His administration cut taxes on the Well-To-Do, started two wars off the books and deregulated Wall Street, the big financial institutions and engaged in wholesale deregulation of big business.
The resulting recession is still ongoing because the root causes have not been addressed, merely danced around. This is the fault of both parties.
Without addressing the real causes, the root causes of why this country is in such economic distress, there can be no economic recovery. And there can be no recovery until the Republican Party of NO! is brought under control and voted out of office. Their stated objective is to make the Obama Administration fail and not much else. Nowhere in their words or actions are there any indication they have the general welfare of the country or of the people, as mentioned in the Constitution, in mind. The have no real solutions for any recovery or for any other problems this country faces. For further proof, look at the clown fest that was the Republican presidential candidate debate. Then look at who they had for presidential candidates for the last election. The quitter and the geezer.

Surely now, they can't really be serous... can they?

CM: Bruce Bartlett is former Deputy Assistant Treasury Secretary under the first George Bush and a policy adviser to Ronald Reagan. Bottom line, let's look at the numbers right now. We've got a chart coming up. This shows the Bush tax cuts were responsible for increasing the debts. Now, we have about a $14 trillion debt right now, half came out since the turn of the century, and more than 40% of that has been from tax cuts.

BB: That's right. When Bush took office, we had a debt of about $6 trillion. The projections from the CBO were that we were going to run a $6 trillion surplus. By this point, if we had done nothing, we would have paid off the dead debt, but we added about $3 trillion of tax cuts. We lost about $3 trillion of revenue because of the slower economy and added about $6 trillion of spending, largely due to two unfinished wars and a Medicare drug benefits and a lot of other things. So, instead of getting -- paying off the debt--we ended up with about a $14 trillion debt.

www.dailykos.com

Why do we have such deplorable, expensive health care in this country? Why haven't we gone to a single payer payer health care plan as everyone else has?

It's because the Republicans don't want to improve government. They want it to be inefficient and corrupt so they can justify butchering the hell out of it, and that's why they do such a bang up job making government fail whenever they are elected. The party of NO! is working to bankrupt this country for their own benefit.
The treasonous Grover Norquist's "No New Tax pledge" is only one way they plan to bankrupt this country. The wars are off the table. The Pentagon budget, larger than the rest of the world combined, will suffer only minor token cuts at best. But programs that have proven to be of benefit to millions of middle and lower class American citizens that depend on them, are on the table to be basically destroyed.
Our Constitution Starts out "We the people.." Where are the people in all this budget cutting? How can we be the Greatest nation on earth, if we can't/won't even take care of our own citizens?

Now that we've correctly laid the blame, how do we fix the mess the Republicans made?
Simple. Undo everything the Republicans have done. Rescind Bush's tax cuts on those most able to pay them. Stop the wars. Cut back the Pentagon budget and the military to what it was under Bill Clinton. We make our own enemies because war is profitable. Close most of our military bases around the world. Then slash the Pentagon budget another 50%. Change the laws to make it hurt to out-source our Living Wage Jobs.
Re-regulate Wall Street, the banks, our multinational corporations with head quarters in this country. Reenact the Glass-Steagall Act.
Pay a Living Wage. Enact Single Payer, Universal Health care in this country, as the rest of the world has gone to. Put the greedy, parasitic, useless, middlemen, "Your Money or Your Life" health insurance companies out of business.

In other words do absolutely everything the opposite the Treasonous Republicans and their DINO counter parts around the country want to do and then this country will recover, prosper and once again be a great country that we can be proud of.

Dwight David "Ike" Eisenhower was the last honest Republican President.

Nixion was a crook and resighed just before he was to be impeached for his crimes. Watergate was just the tip of the iceberg in an array of illegal and secret activities undertaken by Nixon or his aides during his administration.

Reagan was a actor reading his lines, a puppet even. A figurehead for more criminal activity. Iran-Contra affair anyone? How about Alzheimer's?

G H W Bush, another shady Republican. The head of BFEE. In business with Saudi Arabia, financiers of terrorism in the middle East and elsewhere.

And then there's George Walker Bush. The Republicans are still trying to explain away or forget this guy's crimes. This Republican President was appointed to the highest office in the land by the Supreme Court and he almost trashed this country into third world status. It will take generations to recover, if ever.
Why 'if ever'? Because the Republicans are still trying their damnest to finish the job. And their supporters are too dumb to realize they ain't gonna be rewarded for their devotion when it happens.

Oh, yeah, I almost forgot. The billions the health insurance companies are spending on buying our congress critters, so as to keep the money train going. More drain on your premium dollars that take away from providing for your health care. How can anyone with a shread of empthy defend our current health care system?

Why, then, is there this seemingly contradictory partnership between the religious right and economic conservatives? What thread do they actually have in common?

The answer is that both religion and conservativism rely on faith instead of facts. And a certain type of person is psychologically and mentally susceptible to believing in things that just aren't true. On one side, you have people who believe an invisible bearded man lives in the sky and sits on a throne of clouds and casts spells on people on earth. On the other, you have unquestioning beliefs in things that never existed, such as the belief that tax cuts for the rich "trickle down" to the poor, and that rich people in this country are taxed more than they ever have been. One side believes that dinosaurs never existed, and that the earth was created in a week. The same movement believes both that global warming is a conspiracy theory and that people on welfare live like royalty. Both conservatives and the religious right believe in fiscal conservativism, yet they believe that the US should spend all the money it can in an effort to conquer the world militarily.

The common thread running through these people is that their minds require no proof, no factual evidence, and no rationality in order to put 100% of their weight behind a proposition that governs their entire life. They throw their entire souls behind ideologies that have no evidentiary value whatsoever. They're constantly living and dealing in the realm of the unprovable -- in the realm of the non-factual. The entire modern conservative movement is based on assumptions that are not only untrue, but absurd. Reducing taxes for the rich is good for the poor? An imaginary man invented in stories 6,000 years old says we have to legislate discriminaion when it comes to marriage? Science (the same discipline that brought you the combustion engine, the nuclear reactor, and the plasma TV that allows you to fix your soul on Fox News) is a conspiracy theory and/or simply a belief system, but Barack Obama is a Muslim born in Africa?

If you've ever argued with a conservative, you'd know: facts have no effect upon them.

Think about that when thinking about voting this upcoming election. This isn't about whether Obama and Democrats are liberal enough. This is about whether we can keep this country out of the hands of the people who put blind faith over facts. Staying home and not voting is like giving power to people who would put on a blindfold and drive an SUV at top speed down a pedestrian-heavy street with their hands folded and saying to that invisible bearded man in the sky: "God please make sure I don't hit anyone and guide me to safety."

When it comes to people's lives, I chose to live with my eyes open. I choose to vote Democrat.

Johnny Cougar, with permission

Case in point:
Reagan years: "Let's give tax cuts to the wealthy, they'll use it to create jobs and prosperity.
They definitely won't use it to stash away in the Cayman Islands or spend it all on cocaine."
Bush years: "Let's give tax cuts to the wealthy, they'll use it to create jobs and prosperity.
They definitely won't use it to stash away in the Cayman Islands or spend it all on cocaine. It'll work this time, we promise."
2010: "Even though, it costs billions of dollars, let's give tax cuts to the wealthy, they'll use it to create jobs and prosperity. They definitely won't use it to stash away in the Cayman Islands or spend it all on cocaine. I mean, come on. It's got to work eventually, right? Right?"
What else could explain why tax cuts for the wealthy aren't immediately shot down?
ck4829
- - - - - - - - - - - - - -
Who said they're expecting different results? They're raiding the treasury as is their specialty.
Greed needs a fig leaf.
www.democraticunderground.com

In order to do the above, we need to first define the problem. The problem is us, U.S., exploiting everybody and everything for money - Profits. People have value... And not as slave labor either.

We as a country do not see that. We are the self serving cold blooded sociopath loose in this world. Yes we are. For example when we kill, murder is better term, a suspected terrorist, we also kill any men, women and children around them.
We blow up houses in residential neighborhoods, vehicles on crowed, busy streets in the Middle Eastern cities, all from the safety of a room in California.

This isn't war, this is high tech murder. Far worse than a border patrol's 9mm against rock throwers on the other side of the Rio Grande.

We have a sanitized name for this type of murder. "Collateral damage". We as a nation just blow it off as "It's their fault. We are at war. They should not have been there..."

Well folks, they LIVE there, we do not. We are the invaders in their country. They have not done us, U.S. any harm. The reverse cannot be said to be true. No country has attacked us, yet we attack and invade other countries and kill their citizens in the name of terrorism. Who are the real terrorist here?

Bring our troops home. Use the money saved to rebuild our country. To get our living wage jobs back. To take the welfare of our own citizens into consideration for a change. The longer we wait, the harder it will be. We should not be a nation dependent on killing to keep our economy going.

Allow the wronged countries to bring Nuremberg style trials of our war criminals. Only our own arrogance is stopping us.
1984 and Animal Farm are books written over 60 years ago. Warnings that apply to us today. We are ignoring those warning. This will bring our own destruction.
Bring our troops home and close the over 700 military bases we have outside our borders around the world. We may be the policeman for the world, but we are a currupt police force.
Updated 8/14/2010

The last administration took us from Record Surplus to Record Debt in Record time by starting 2 wars and cutting taxes. Increased spending and decreased the taxes that would have helped pay for Bush's wars of choice - at the same time, on purpose! And then the conservatives tried to blame the resulting recession that started on Bush's watch and the record debt caused by the tax cuts and 2 unpaid wars, on Obama! - Are you forgetting a thing called History?
Two stock marked crashes. Not keeping us safe from terrorists - 9/11, anthrax, The Beltway Snipers. Torture, both in Iraq and Guantanamo. All that's OK with you.
But Pomeroy voted for a bill to help Americans from being fleeced and dropped by health insurance companies and that makes you mad enough that you want to recall him?
Where the hell are your priories?

kentuck Democratic Underground

It is high time the health insurance companies were put out of business. They are killing too many people for money.
Public, Single Payer, Universal Health Care is more humane than this private, For Profit system that is literally milking the economy dry, hindering recovery.
5 Billion in profits in one year and they do a 39% rate increase on top of that? while we have 45,000 dead? Allowing this to go on is the equivalent of war crimes.
Harvard Medical Study Links Lack of Insurance to 45,000 U.S. Deaths a Year

I got an e-mail the other day that depressed me.

It concerned a piece I recently did that mentioned Henry Johnson, who was awarded the French Croix de Guerre in World War I for singlehandedly fighting off a company of Germans (some accounts say there were 14, some say almost 30, the ones I find most authoritative say there were about two dozen) who threatened to overrun his post. Johnson managed this despite the fact that he was only 5-foot-4 and 130 pounds, despite the fact that his gun had jammed, despite the fact that he was wounded 21 times.

My mention of Johnson's heroics drew a rebuke from a fellow named Ken Thompson, which I quote verbatim and in its entirety: "Hate to tell you that blacks were not allowed into combat intell 1947, that fact. World War II ended in 1945. So all that feel good, one black man killing two dozen Nazi, is just that, PC bull."

In response, my assistant, Judi Smith, sent Mr. Thompson proof of Johnson's heroics: a link to his page on the Web site of Arlington National Cemetery. She thought this settled the matter.

Thompson's reply? "There is no race on headstones and they didn't come up with the story in tell 2002."

Judi: "I guess you can choose to believe Arlington National Cemetery or not."

Thompson: "It is what it is, you don't believe either ..."

At this point, Judi forwarded me their correspondence, along with a despairing note. She is probably somewhere drinking right now.

You see, like me, she can remember a time when facts settled arguments. This is back before everything became a partisan shouting match, back before it was permissible to ignore or deride as "biased" anything that didn't support your worldview.

If you and I had an argument and I produced facts from an authoritative source to back me up, you couldn't just blow that off. You might try to undermine my facts, might counter with facts of your own, but you couldn't just pretend my facts had no weight or meaning.

But that's the intellectual state of the union these days, as evidenced by all the people who still don't believe the president was born in Hawaii or that the planet is warming. And by Mr. Thompson, who doesn't believe Henry Johnson did what he did.

I could send him more proof, I suppose. Johnson is lauded in history books ("Before the Mayflower" by Lerone Bennett Jr., "The Dictionary of American Negro Biography" by Rayford Logan and Michael Winston) and in contemporaneous accounts (The Saturday Evening Post, the New York Times). I could also point out that blacks have fought in every war in American history, though before Harry Truman desegregated the military in 1948, they did so in Jim Crow units. Also, there were no Nazis in World War I.

But those are "facts," and the whole point here is that facts no longer mean what they once did. I suppose I could also ignore him. But you see, Ken Thompson is not just some isolated eccentric. No, he is the Zeitgeist personified.

To listen to talk radio, to watch TV pundits, to read a newspaper's online message board, is to realize that increasingly, we are a people estranged from critical thinking, divorced from logic, alienated from even objective truth. We admit no ideas that do not confirm us, hear no voices that do not echo us, sift out all information that does not validate what we wish to believe.

I submit that any people thus handicapped sow the seeds of their own decline; they respond to the world as they wish it were rather to the world as it is. That's the story of the Iraq War.

But objective reality does not change because you refuse to accept it. The fact that you refuse to acknowledge a wall does not change the fact that it's a wall.

And you shouldn't have to hit it to find that out.

# Contact Leonard Pitts Jr. via e-mail at lpitts@miamiherald.com.
http://www.tallahassee.com/article/20100222/OPINION05/2220305/1001/RSS
"To listen to talk radio, to watch TV pundits, to read a newspaper's online message board, is to realize that increasingly, we are a people estranged from critical thinking, divorced from logic, alienated from even objective truth. We admit no ideas that do not confirm us, hear no voices that do not echo us, sift out all information that does not validate what we wish to believe."
This man nails it square...

30 to 40% of the health insurance premium you pay does NOT go to pay for your health care. What is wrong with this picture? If you don't know, you are part of the problem.

Every other industrialized country in the world has gone to some form of Single Payer, Universal Health Care. The United States is the last hold out. The last hold out! We trail the pack - again!

The United States citizens, with our private health insurance system, pays almost double what the other countries pay for their government controlled systems.

It does not matter how good our actual health care is in this country, if you cannot afford health care. Without that living wage job that pays most of the premium, you aren't going to be able to afford health insurance premiums for long. Their latest rate increases are to cover their costs of buying Congress. Where were you and I, US citizen, in the health care debate? Under the table, that's where, with everything else our bought off Congress will not deal with. To continue to argue and debate health insurance is nothing more than misdirection. Just diddling with the symptoms. Think of a person in quick sand struggling to get out. With the health insurance companies involved, it ain'a gonna happen. You're goin' under. You get sick, you're a liability.

Get rid of the private health insurance companies and do what everyone else has already done. Single Payer, Universal Health Care. It is less costly than what we have now for the above mentioned reasons.
- The caduceus with two serpents coiling around a pole is mistakenly used by the medical profession even though the official symbol of the medical profession is supposed to be the staff of the miraculous healer-god Asclepius, a single serpent entwined around a cypress branch. This caduceus is associated with Hermes (Mercury), the messenger of the gods, also known as the god of trickery, wealth and death! Whoops.
This caduceus is symbolic of the Health Insurance companies?
The Caduceus vs the Staff of Asclepius

The Preamble starts out; "We the people..." So it would stand to reason that the general welfare clause pertains to the people collectively.

In Section 8, it specifies the powers of the Congress and again general welfare is mentioned in the same context as in the Preamble.

Section 8. reads in part:
"The Congress shall have power to lay and collect taxes, duties, imposts and excises, to pay the debts and PROVIDE FOR THE common defense and GENERAL WELFARE of the United States; but all duties, imposts and excises shall be uniform throughout the United States;..."

So, if the government can lay and collect taxes, pay debts and is responsible for the general welfare of the citizens and if the general level of health of the citizens is necessarily a part of the general welfare, then providing for health care coverage is the responsibility of the government.

The general population of this country are therefore beneficiaries of this general welfare clause. Our government is charged with providing for the general welfare of the people. It is a right guaranteed in the Constitution. The general level of health affects the general welfare of the citizens. Right now, in this country, most of us are one accident, one cancer, one major health problem away from bankruptcy because we have a For Profit, Market Driven Health Care System that is geared for profit first over your health.

In other words, we are having this discussion because our health care has been turned into a For Profit, non-competitive, Market Based Commodity.

This country values profits over health. When our money runs out or if we cost the health insurance companies too much in claims, we become a liability to the health insurance companies and coverage stops. You are on your own and bankruptcy and/or death is often the result.

Because of this problem, the whole rest of the industrialized world has gone to some form of Single Payer, Universal Health Care. None of these countries want to go back to what they had before. And absolutely for sure none of these countries want anything to do with our broken health care system.

From the start, the insurance companies have made sure Single Payer was never even on the table. It should have been and it should be the major topic concerning health care reform. But it is not. Our government even went so far as to throw people in jail for trying to get Single Payer on the table. More proof that our government is not responsive to the people.

The other countries have already done the hard work of figuring out what works and what does not. All we would have to do is cherry pick from what does work from the other countries, then we could have the best health care in the world, at half the cost we are paying now, instead of the United States being #38 or so, with the level of affordable health care dropping and the costs skyrocketing.

How do we pay for it? That also is simple. With Single Payer, since you would no longer be paying exorbitant rates for mediocre, hit or miss non-competitive market driven health insurance coverage, you could afford to pay a modest tax increase. That would also mean more money in your pocket, since that would eliminate the For Profit Middle Man, co-pays and surprise non-itemized bills sent months after the fact. Health Care overhead going from 30-40% down to 3%. Savings you can put in your pocket. With Single Payer, businesses would not have to pay health insurance premiums and would have more money to operate on and/or hire more people and/or to grant pay raises to its current employees. As a bonus, all of these would help get the economy moving again.

Also, our defense budget is bigger than the rest of the world combined. There is no justification for why it needs to be any more than Russia and China's defense budgets combined. None. The money saved can be used to pay down the debt and rebuild our own crumbling infrastructure, with enough left over to fully cover paying for civilized Single Payer health care for all of our citizens.
Image: Military Expenditure 2008

If Helen Keller could see that, why can't we? We keep voting for the same Tweedles year after year.

We would have plenty of money to take care of our own if we would stop meddling in the affairs of other countries and making enemies as a excuse to meddle in the internal affairs of other countries and fighting enemies.

But I guess taking care of our own smacks too much of evil socialism now doesn't it? Killing people either through poverty or bullets or both, is better than socialism in some peoples minds.

BTY,You can read about Jesus Christ in the First 4 books of the New Testament. You can find it on-line and at the Public Library. Maybe if James LeRoy Iverson said he was a Conservative Republican who agreed with the birthers and tea-baggers and thought being gouge by the health insurance companies was a good thing, you could find it in your hearts to forgive him as would this Christ guy you profess to believe in tried to teach you.
I know that is asking too much, but you can try anyway.
N.D.'s longest-serving inmate, 70, gets parole
Up Date 9/16/2010:
Man free after serving 40 years for murders
Convicted Grand Forks killer's parole ends today.
James Leroy Iverson, who served more than 40 years on convictions of killing two women in Grand Forks in 1968, is set to become an entirely free man as his parole period ends today.
Convicted Grand Forks killer's parole ends

Encountering right wingers out there blah-blahing about Obama/Dems and "socialism"? Look right at them, point at them, and say, "Republicans like you are SOCIALISTS and now I am going to PROVE it to you." (I have done it, and it turns them red and makes them SQUIRM. I love it
Now say the following things to them as assertions as I have them written here (or you can put them on the spot and re-phrase them as questions: i.e. "So you want to shut down Medicare, right?" "So you want to shut down the public schools, right?" etc. These are also great points for blogs, forums like this, call-in shows, letters to the editor, email blasts, etc.)

1 - When I ask Republicans on Medicare if they want to shut that down, they shout NO!

2 - When I ask Republicans on Social Security if they want to eliminate it, they shout NO!

3 - When I ask Republicans with children in the public school systems if they want to start paying private school tuition and shut down the public schools (among the MOST "socialist" systems we have), especially the sports programs, they shout NO!

4 - When I ask Republicans eligible for VA hospital care or any other VA benefit to which they may be entitled regardless if they ever heard a shot fired in anger if they want those shut down, they shout NO!

5 - When I ask Republicans if they want their trash pickup, road repairs, sewer systems, snow removal, mail delivery, public parks, public pools, public recreation programs, etc. shut down, they shout NO!

6 - When I ask Republicans with children who receive special education services if they want those programs shut down, they shout NO! (** There I was a few years ago providing entirely publicly-funded at-home tutoring services for a Republican family's disabled child, who was receiving TONS of other public services as well, and they had the gaul to rib me about my Kerry for President bumper sticker.
I laughed out loud all the way home.)

7 - When I ask Republicans if they want their local public fire departments and police departments shut down, they shout NO!

8 - When I ask Republicans with kids in Headstart or who need to access to unemployment benefits or other public programs when THEY lose their jobs if they want these shut down, they shout NO!

9 - When I ask Republicans who, like the vast majority that join the military, if they joined the service because they wanted a job and wanted college money, etc., if honest, they shout YES! to that one as the US military, its hospitals, and other services is the MODEL "socialist" jobs and benefits program in America. * Of course, these benefits are the recruiters selling points.

10) REPUBLICANS WANT HEAVY HANDED GOVERNMENT INTERVENTION IN OUR PRIVATE LIVES: Republicans want: to take reproductive decisions away from women and doctors; take other medical decisions always from families and doctors (i.e. the Schaivo case); force selected religious doctrines onto everyone; tell individuals who can commit to each other legally and who can't; tell us what books to read, tv shows to watch, music to listen to, etc. and on it goes.

11 - Here is the Bush/Republican record: surplus turned in to massive DEBT; Medicare-D = complicated, donut hole, still 500 billion added to the DEBT; Iraq war DEBT; tax cuts for the rich DEBT; corporate giveaways and no-bid contracts DEBT; warrantless wiretapping, torture, Gitmo, nationbuilding = national disgrace immorality DEBT and monetary DEBT.; corporate deregulation DEBT; Bush/Paulson TARP DEBT; .......

They should be renamed the DEBTpublican Party.

Republicans? "Conservatives"? They "conserve" very little. And "Socialists?" Republicans need to take a good long honest-for-a-change look in the mirror. By their very own definitions and conceptualizations, they are "SOCIALISTS."

Source: Democratic Underground

What this country needs is government run Single payer, Universal health Care. Expand on Medicare, that works and works very well. Put every American citizen, every legal resident on it. How to pay for this universal health care? Raise taxes proportional by income. Where is this money suppose to come from? That also is simple. You will not be paying so-called health insurance companies money that goes for junkets, excessive salaries, bonuses, Profits. You will not be paying stock options to help fatten the bottom line of any so-called health insurance company. You will not be paying for a room full of people who's job is to find ways to deny your insurance claims after you have paid in for decades. (The real death panels) All this money you will then not be paying to private companies, money that does not really go for any benefits to the premium payers, would then go for your actually health care. With the extra money YOU would then have, maybe we could pool our resources and buy our own congress critters and then we could go to work and start fixing the other problems the republicans have caused these last 40 or so years. Maybe even stop a couple of wars. Think of the money that would save. Why we might even become a prosperous country right up there with Europe or the Scandinavian countries.
The official symbol of the medical profession is supposed to be the staff of the miraculous healer-god Asclepius, a single serpent entwined around a cypress branch.

The truth about Republicans by... George Carlin