Ramblings of Bob

The Republican/Tea Party War On Mass Transit

2012-02-13T19:52:00.000-07:00

The Republican/Tea Party War On Mass TransitLink to Salon.com The Tea Party’s war on mass transit

(Credit: iStockphoto/Peterfactors)

In the week since House Republicans introduced their proposed transportation bill, one thing has become clear: It has virtually nothing to do with fiscal responsibility.

The Tea Party soared to power on the notion that it was the antidote to wasteful government spending. It’s now clear that reigniting the culture wars was a top priority, too. From guns to abortion, the extremist wing of the Republican Party has fought to turn back the clock on many socially progressive ideals.

Mass transit is its newest target.

“Federal transportation and infrastructure policy has traditionally been an area of strong bipartisan agreement,” says Aaron Naparstek, a Loeb Fellow at Harvard University’s Graduate School of Design and founder of Streetsblog.org. “Now, it seems, Republicans want to turn cities into a part of the culture wars.

Now it’s abortion, gay marriage and subways.”

House Republicans seek to eliminate the Mass Transit Account from the federal Highway Trust Fund. The Mass Transit Account is where public transportation programs get their steady source of funding. Without it, transit would be devastated, and urban life as we know it could become untenable.

And there’s the rub. “The Tea Party leaders and the Republicans who pander to them do not care about cost-effectiveness in the slightest,” wrote blogger Alon Levy in a comment about the bill on the Transport Politic. “They dislike transit for purely cultural and ideological reasons.” To the Tea Party, transit smacks of the public sector, social engineering and alternative lifestyles.

How do we know this is a cultural battle and not an economic one? Because transit spending is far more fiscally fair than spending on roads and highways. Transit riders subsidize roads to a greater degree than drivers subsidize transit. And cities, which are the chief engines behind the American economy, rely on buses and trains to function. “The economic future for states hinges largely on the performance of their metropolitan economies,” determined a recent Brookings Institution study.

Tea Party leaders know all of this. But they also knew that defunding NPR wouldn’t help balance the budget, and they voted to do it anyway. They knew that by law no federal money can go toward abortion services, yet they voted to defund Planned Parenthood too. The Tea Party is superb at disguising cultural battles as the pursuit of responsible thrift. And mass transit exists at the vortex of many of their No. 1 ideological targets. It’s brilliant, when you think about it.

Defunding transit is how you smack down urbanites, environmentalists, and people of color, all in one fell swoop. It’s how you telegraph a disdain for all things European. It’s how you show solidarity with swing-state suburbanites who don’t understand why their taxes are going toward subways they don’t even use. And it’s how you subtly reassure your base that you’re not concerned about the very poor.

Republicans haven’t pretended to care about cities for decades. In January, none of the candidates showed up to the annual Conference of Mayors. (Two of them didn’t even RSVP.) And even just a month ago, you could argue, as this website did, that “today cities are more ignored than attacked” by Republicans. But the calculus just changed. The transportation bill sends an aggressive message: “Tea Party to Cities: Drop Dead.”

It doesn’t matter to the Tea Party that Ronald Reagan, in 1982, created the Mass Transit Account that Republicans now want to kill. Reagan was no friend to cities. But even he earned a respectable share of the vote in New York, Philadelphia and San Francisco. Things hadn’t yet gotten so personal.

That era is over. Over the past couple of decades, the GOP has found that bashing “elites” can translate into victory at the polls. And by “elites” they don’t mean folks with Chevy Tahoes and McMansions in the exurbs. They mean urbanites, no matter what their net worth. When they tar Nancy Pelosi as a San Francisco liberal, or Barack Obama as a Chicago politician, they’re not just referencing those cities’ stereotypes. They’re referencing the stereotypes of city culture itself: full of swindlers and gays and blacks and other suspect types. Calling Obama the “food stamp president” conjures up images of housing projects.

Sarah Palin calling small-town folks “real America” states unequivocally that urbanites aren’t real Americans.

The offensiveness of that statement still boggles the mind.

The Tea Party plan to decimate transit is no less explicit a statement. “House Republicans are, essentially, declaring war on cities in the federal transportation bill,” tweeted Naparstek. It’s not just that they know they can’t expect many votes from urban dwellers — that at least would be political calculus. It’s that they despise cities in general. They see “smart growth” principles as a U.N. plot, gun control as fascist, and funding for transit not just as wasteful, but un-American. Don’t like it? Get a car like the rest of us.

The House transportation bill will not become law, but that doesn’t make it benign. Like the debt ceiling battle, it could become a political bargaining chip, or reframe the national debate: Maybe cities are getting more than their fair share? Are we overspending on transit? Why should I help fund some faraway bus system? It plants these questions in voters’ minds.

This is why transit advocates are apoplectic, and why Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood (a former Republican congressman) called it “the worst transportation bill I’ve ever seen in 35 years of public service.” If conservatives have truly decided that transit is next on their culture war hit list, anyone who believes in the importance of cities had better start firing back right now.

Total Health Care Costs Fall When Poor Are Provided Insurance: Study

2012-02-13T19:28:00.000-07:00

First Posted: 02/10/2012 9:06 am Updated: 02/10/2012 9:06 am

The concept of support for universal health care is taboo among Republicans who scrutinize the Affordable Care Act -- dubbing it the "Job-Killing Health Care Law Act" -- and call for its repeal. But a new UC Irvine study challenges the GOP argument that the health care law is too costly, with data illustrating that health care costs on the whole fall when poorer, uninsured patients are provided with insurance.

"In a case study involving low-income people enrolled in a community-based health insurance program, we found that use of primary care increased but use of emergency services fell, and -- over time -- total health care costs declined," David Neumark, a co-author of the study, said in a release accompanying the findings.

The study -- which focused on uninsured people in Richmond, Virginia who fell 200 percent below the poverty line -- found that over three years, health care costs fell by almost 50 percent per participant, from $8,899 in the first year to $4,569 in the third after they received insurance. Participants who enrolled in health coverage made fewer trips to the emergency room, which are notorious for running up patient bills.

Instead, insured participants went for more primary care visits.

"A lot of the debate about health care reform surrounds the issue of whether we're setting up something that's going to cost us more by increasing use of medical services or something that will cut costs through more appropriate and timely use of medical services," Neumark said in the release. "[O]ver time, costs can be reduced through increased use of primary care and reductions in emergency-department visits and hospital admissions, but it may take several years of coverage for substantive savings to occur."

Health care spending in the U.S. has been on the rise for years. Americans spent more than three times on health care in 2008 than they spent in the 18 years before, according to a Kaiser report.

Low-income, uninsured individuals tend to rack up exorbitant health-care bills because they often rely on emergency room visits instead of primary care. In the long run, these bills are paid by taxpayers. The Affordable Care Act "is set to extend Medicaid benefits to about 16 million uninsured, low-income adults and children by the end of 2014," according to the study.

In an extreme example of the societal cost of leaving some uninsured, New Yorker writer Malcolm Gladwell once chronicled the medical costs of a homeless man in Nevada who "used more health-care dollars, after all, than almost anyone in the state."

"It would probably have been cheaper to give him a full-time nurse and his own apartment," Gladwell wrote.
Mandatory health care already saw some success in Massachusetts last decade, when current GOP presidential candidate and then-Massachusetts governor Mitt Romney signed a health care law that inspired the Affordable Care Act. Today, Massachusetts has the highest percentage of insured residents of any state.
Though he initially supported the plan, Romney's rival, GOP candidate Newt Gingrich, continues to slam Romney for enacting the health care law.

"Your plan essentially is one more big-government, bureaucratic high-cost system." Gingrich said. Gingrich's views are reflective of a majority of Americans who say they are in favor of repealing the health care law.
A repeal of the act could potentially add "at least a trillion dollars to the deficit," according to HealthCare.gov.

Also on HuffPost:

Healthcare costs decrease over time when low-income uninsured are provided coverage

10/02/2012 02:28:00

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Study co-authored by UCI’s David Neumark indicates results of newly enacted reforms

Irvine, Calif. — Enrollment of uninsured patients in a program with benefits comparable to those offered under the Affordable Care Act of 2010 resulted in significant healthcare cost savings, a new study finds.

Published in the February issue of Health Affairs, the research sheds light on the potential outcomes of newly enacted healthcare reforms.

“In a case study involving low-income people enrolled in a community-based health insurance program, we found that use of primary care increased but use of emergency services fell, and – over time – total healthcare costs declined,” said study co-author David Neumark, UC Irvine Chancellor’s Professor of economics and director of UCI’s Center for Economics & Public Policy study.

Working with researchers from the Virginia Commonwealth University Health System, Neumark tracked the emergency room, inpatient, outpatient and primary-care service utilization of about 26,000 previously uninsured Richmond residents between 2000 and 2007 whose household incomes fell 200 percent below the federal poverty level. Qualified enrollees were granted health insurance and assigned a primary-care provider for one year. They were required to proactively re-enroll for subsequent annual coverage.

The demographics of these participants paralleled those of the population that will be affected by changes under the Affordable Care Act of 2010, Neumark said. The legislation is set to extend Medicaid benefits to about 16 million uninsured, low-income adults and children by the end of 2014.

The study found that primary-care visits for patients who enrolled continuously over three years rose from 1.06 in year one to 1.60 annually, while emergency-room visits fell from 1.02 in year one to 0.74 by year three. Costs per visit for both inpatients and outpatients also decreased, as did the length of inpatient stays.

On average, total healthcare costs per enrollee per year for this subset were cut nearly in half – from $8,899 in year one to $4,569 in year three. Overall costs per enrollee per year for all participants with at least one year of enrollment declined from $7,604 to $4,726.

“A lot of the debate about healthcare reform surrounds the issue of whether we’re setting up something that’s going to cost us more by increasing use of medical services or something that will cut costs through more appropriate and timely use of medical services,” Neumark said. “Our research shows that, over time, costs can be reduced through increased use of primary care and reductions in emergency-department visits and hospital admissions, but it may take several years of coverage for substantive savings to occur.”

Co-authors of the study include Cathy Bradley, professor and chair of healthcare policy & research at Virginia Commonwealth University; Sabina Gandhi, who earned a doctorate in economics at UCI and is now a VCU assistant research professor; Sheryl Garland, vice president of health policy and community relations at the VCU Health System; and Dr. Sheldon Retchin, VCU professor of internal medicine, gerontology and health administration and CEO of the VCU Health System.

About the University of California, Irvine: Founded in 1965, UCI is a top-ranked university dedicated to research, scholarship and community service. Led by Chancellor Michael Drake since 2005, UCI is among the most dynamic campuses in the University of California system, with nearly 28,000 undergraduate and graduate students, 1,100 faculty and 9,000 staff. Orange County’s second-largest employer, UCI contributes an annual economic impact of $4 billion. For more UCI news, visit www.today.uci.edu.

News Radio: UCI maintains on campus an ISDN line for conducting interviews with its faculty and experts. Use of this line is available for a fee to radio news programs/stations that wish to interview UCI faculty and experts. Use of the ISDN line is subject to availability and approval by the university.

Joshua Bell "Stop and Hear the Music" by the Washington Post

2012-02-12T23:00:00.000-07:00

"In Washington DC , at a Metro Station, on a cold January morning in 2007, a man with a violin played six Bach pieces for about 45 minutes. During that time, approximately 2000 people went through the station, most of them on their way to work. After about four minutes, a middle-aged man noticed that there was a musician playing. He slowed his pace and stopped for a few seconds, and then he hurried on to meet his schedule.

About four minutes later, the violinist received his first dollar. A woman threw money in the hat and, without stopping, continued to walk. At six minutes, a young man leaned against the wall to listen to him, then looked at his watch and started to walk again. At ten minutes, a three-year old boy stopped, but his mother tugged him along hurriedly. The kid stopped to look at the violinist again, but the mother pushed hard and the child continued to walk, turning his head the whole time. This action was repeated by several other children, but every parent - without exception - forced their children to move on quickly.

At forty-five minutes: The musician played continuously. Only six people stopped and listened for a short while. About twenty gave money but continued to walk at their normal pace. The man collected a total of $32. After one hour:

He finished playing and silence took over. No one noticed and no one applauded. There was no recognition at all.

No one knew this, but the violinist was Joshua Bell, one of the greatest musicians in the world. He played one of the most intricate pieces ever written, with a violin worth $3.5 million dollars. Two days before, Joshua Bell sold-out a theater in Boston where the seats averaged $100 each to sit and listen to him play the same music.

This is a true story. Joshua Bell, playing incognito in the D.C. Metro Station, was organized by the Washington Post as part of a social experiment about perception, taste and people’s priorities. This experiment raised several questions: In a common-place environment, at an inappropriate hour, do we perceive beauty? If so, do we stop to appreciate it? Do we recognize talent in an unexpected context? One possible conclusion reached from this experiment could be this:

If we do not have a moment to stop and listen to one of the best musicians in the world, playing some of the finest music ever written, with one of the most beautiful instruments ever made… How many other things are we missing as we rush through life?" Video : http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=myq8upzJDJc Click "like"

McConnell: Any employer should be able to deny birth control

2012-02-12T16:37:00.000-07:00

Here we go again. Update: The Bishops have rejected the compromise that Pres. Obama agreed to. The Bishops want absolute exclusion from even having the benefit in their health insurance plan, regardless if they pay for it or not.

None of their employees will have access to birth control, unless they purchase it on their own and it is not known by the employer, the Catholic Church.

They also want the exclusion extended to any private employer who may abide by the Catholic cannon of not using any form of birth control to limit the size of your family. Thus not only would Catholic owned businesses be exempted, but also other employers also.

That puts a huge hole in this mandatory benefit that has been fought for by 90% of women for decades. Now the Catholic church together with the Republicans are trying to again deny them this needed benefit under their health care policy.

From: The Raw Story coverage of the CBS Face the Nation.

By: By David Edwards
Sunday, February 12, 2012 14:34 EST

In the wake of a controversy over a requirement that religious institutions provide contraceptive coverage, Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) now supports a bill that gives any employer the right to exclude any type health service that they find objectionable.

Speaking to CBS host Bob Schieffer on Sunday, McConnell said that he wasn’t satisfied with the way that the Obama administration had mandated health insurance companies cover birth control, even though Catholic hospitals and universities will no longer have to provide the services directly.

“The fact that the White House thinks this is about contraception is the whole problem,” the Kentucky Republican explained. “This is about freedom of religion. It’s right there in the First Amendment. You can’t miss it right there in the very First Amendment to our Constitution. And the government doesn’t get to decide for religious people what their religious beliefs are.”

“The [Catholic] Bishops came back and said they want to push now for stronger legislation to extend this ban on religious institutions having to buy these things,” Schieffer noted. “And Sen. [Roy] Blunt from Missouri — one of your Republican colleagues — he wants an amendment now that would allow any group that had a moral objection to this to not have to pay for birth control pills. Are you willing to go as far a Sen. Blunt?”

“This issue will not go away until the administration simply backs down,” McConnell replied.

Schieffer pressed: “Are you willing to go as far as Sen. Blunt now wants to go and just write in legislation that would ban any group that had just a — quote — moral objection, not just a religious group, but just any group. Would you be willing to push that in the Senate?”

“Yeah,” McConnell admitted. “If we end up having to overcome the president’s opposition by legislation then, of course, I’d be happy to support it and intend to support it. It will be difficult as long as the president is rigid in his view that he gets to decide what somebody else’s religion is.”

According to the National Women’s Law Center, Blunt’s amendment (PDF) actually goes a lot farther than contraception, creating a loophole that allows any employer to exclude any health service.

“For example, any corporation whose CEO opposes contraception based on his ‘moral convictions’ could deny all coverage of contraception or any other service to the company’s employees,” the center observed. “Even more disturbing, a CEO’s view of ‘morality’ could potentially include concern for the cost of a particular benefit. Such broad, undefined refusals (without any protections for the insured) would result in millions of individuals losing vital health service coverage.”

Watch this video from CBS’s Face the Nation, broadcast Feb. 12, 2012. Video Courtesy CBS:

Santorum would reverse Supreme Court if they legalize Gay Marriages

2012-02-12T15:49:00.002-07:00

Republican Candidate Rick Santorum Speaks about reversing any Supreme Court ruling that may grant equality under the 14th Amendment of the US Constitution. He thinks citizens should have a right to vote on who gets what civil rights and equal protection under the constitution.

GOP presidential candidate Rick Santorum said Sunday morning he would try to overturn any Supreme Court decision in favor of same-sex marriage if he became president.

Santorum was asked by Meet The Press host David Gregory about the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals finding Proposition 8 unconstitutional and whether he would seek any change if the highest court ruled in favor of the LGBT community.

“I would do the same thing I would with Roe v Wade, which I would seek to try and overturn it,” he said. “I think judicial tyranny is a serious issue in this race and this country. And we need judges who respect the people’s voice. Let the people decide with respect to what the constitution says, if in fact they would go through a constitutional amendment process.”

Santorum earlier this week slammed the Ninth Circuit’s decision, calling it “another in a long line of radical activist rulings by this rogue circuit.”

Unfortunately for Santorum, his effort would be futile. No president can overturn any Supreme Court decision.

WATCH: Video from NBC, which was broadcast on February 12, 2012.

Visit msnbc.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy

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My Thoughts,

Now think about this, the conservatives have a majority on the Supreme Court. Should they agree with the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals that marriage is a civil liberty and must treat all citizens equal under the 14th Amendment. To then attempt to get both Houses of Congress to pass by 2/3 vote and then two thirds of all the states must ratify the amendment. That is a difficult thing to accomplish.

So Santorum would be very busy in the White House, he has proposed a constitutional amendment to define person-hood at the time a human egg cell is fertilized by a male sperm. This would make any abortion murder and the use of any contraception that would prevent a fertilized egg to attach to the uterus, thus being a criminal act of murder. To include miscarriages, and after intercourse when an egg my become fertilized, but expelled before it can attach to the uterus. So most forms of contraception would be illegal.

So much for civil liberties that were supposed to be guaranteed by our constitution.

Seth McFarlane's Comedy about Religion

2012-02-12T11:44:00.000-07:00

Religion in a nut shell:

How Christian of You:

Monkeys and Monkey God:

HAPPY DARWIN DAY!

2012-02-12T11:25:00.000-07:00

Happy Darwin Day!

Here is a clip from the Rachel Maddow show celebrating Darwin's 200th Birthday. Below her clip is another clip of Pat Robertson demonizing Darwin. Notice the contrast.

Rachel Maddow:

Pat Robertson:

Which one do you think is more reasonable in their argument?

THE ORIGINAL SIN

2012-02-12T08:40:00.001-07:00

THIS CHILD IS THE PRODUCT OF THE ORIGINAL SIN.

Every child is born without any fear and guilt. But that will change soon because religion will spend billions of dollars to teach this child that they were born because of an original sin, the very act of sex, which is how they came to be on earth because of some ancient ghost made humans and put them in a garden, with a snake and an apple tree.

When the man eat the apple the woman gave him because the snake told her to do it, they both suddenly became so damn horny, they fell into lust at the very sight of each other. The man had this big woody and figured out that it should be impaled in that woman who gave him the apple to eat. They dropped to the ground and had sex for the very first time. These two individuals just did nothing but have sex, day in and day out until the woman's belly began to grow.

This ghost then said they must leave this garden and make it on their own now that they figured out what sex is all about. This sex thing was very bad, a sin, and they must be punished for enjoying this pleasurable act.

Shame on them, they could have lived in the garden for eternity as just two people, doing their own thing, never really noticing the other one.

This child will be taught to be fearful of this supreme ghost that punished these two people way back in ancient times. That is ghost lives someplace in the universe and can sees and hear everything that everyone on earth is doing and speaking all at the same time. Much like the American National Security Agency is doing today with electronic surveillance.

This child will be taught to ask this ghost for help with everything from winning a sports game, making the right choices at a town hall meeting, making you safe when you travel or race a car at hundreds of miles an hour around a track or when flying a plane full of people into a tall office building.

This ghost will help some people and not others it doesn't like. This ghost may even cause a disaster and kill many who he doesn't likes because there were a few that didn't get on their knees and tell him he is perfect and the best. Such an ego.

Teaching this little thing that anyone who doesn't have fear of this ghost is immoral, godless and a heathen, not to be trusted and is your mortal enemy.

They will teach this beautiful child to take up arms and use violence to force anyone who has not been taught to be fearful of this ghost, to join in this fear or die.

They will require this child as it goes through life to spend countless hours gathering with others who fear this ghost trying to convince this ghost that they are fearful, but still love it in some weird way and they will give their very life in protecting this ghost.

They will be taught that they must give their money to this ghost so they will be allowed into the space in the universe that this ghost lives. The more you give, the closer you can live to this special ghost. Kind of like real estate, the better the view the more you pay.

They teach this child to sing songs and do all sorts of rituals in hopes that this ghost will like them and allow them to even be near this special ghost when they die.

This child will be pushed and pulled in the tug of war between knowledge and truth against this fear and need to be ignorant so they can be near this special ghost when they die. How can they learn about science and still be fearful of this special ghost? These religions understand this problem, so they battle to eliminate the teaching of science and replace it with the teaching of fear and ignorance.

So what if this child was raised to explore the universe around it. To ask questions why the universe, the earth and all living things are the way they are. To seek answers to these questions, to find solutions to issues that humans have created. To seek a better way of life by applying critical thinking and reason to find the answers to the problems that confront them.

Would the world be in the state of turmoil it is in today? Think about it...

5 Right-Wing Governors Gutting Schools to Fund Prisons, Tax Breaks for the Rich...And a Bible Theme Park

2012-02-11T22:15:00.000-07:00

February 9, 2012 |

When state after state slashes education dollars, we see what matters to them--and where they spend while cutting schools tells us even more.

It's budget time again, and with the economy still in rough shape, that means it's time for governors to show where their priorities are.

It's probably not surprising that right-wing governors claim they can't fund education properly when revenues are low—we've been seeing this happen for years, even before an actual economic crisis knocked states sideways. But cutting funds to schools isn't the only option for states even if they do have to balance their budgets. There are many other places to cut—and of course, they have the option of raising taxes, something the conservative crowd simply refuses to do.

Like any other choice made by a politician, budgeting is a decision laced with ideology. When state after state slashes education dollars (and often at the same time funnels more of the money they do spend to private companies running charter schools, or gives it away as vouchers) we see what matters to them. And when you take a look at the programs that get funded, or the people who get fat tax cuts as money is drained out of the schools, well, you see what matters to state governments.

Here's a look at five of the governors taking money away from their states' kids, and a look at some of the things they are still funding.

1. Pennsylvania

Governor Tom Corbett set off a wave of anger this week when his new budget hit—and slashed a full $1.2 billion from pre-kindergarten through 12th grade education. According to the Education Law Center, that's taking a full 15 percent out of the budgets of the state's already-struggling schools.

That would be bad enough. But, as the Law Center noted, “the cuts fall hardest on school districts with the greatest student poverty.” That means schools in poor districts will get less funding, while wealthy districts lose very little. So the Reading School District in Berks County, which has a frighting 90 percent student poverty rate, loses $1,083 per student, while the Wyomissing School District, with only 22 percent student poverty, is losing just $112 per student.

Corbett expects the schools to make up the funding cuts, naturally, by cutting teachers' pay and firing more experienced teachers—which probably means bigger classes and more work for those who remain with lower salaries.

And then there's the state's universities, which already took a 20 percent hit last year. According to the Delaware County Daily Times, Corbett's cutting $230 million from Penn State, Pitt and Temple—an “astounding” 25 percent.

Meanwhile, what doesn't get cut in this budget? While schoolkids in poor districts will see their teachers laid off and their classes get bigger, Corbett's pumped up funding for prisons (11 percent) probation and parole (6 percent) and state police (6 percent). Guess we know where he expects those kids to wind up.

2. Ohio

Ohio governor John Kasich should be used to protests by now—he certainly has seen enough of them since he decided to attack his state's public workers last winter. So although candidates for the state legislature joined Occupy protesters in decrying Kasich's budget cuts to education while eliminating the estate tax for the state's wealthiest, it doesn't seem to have made much of an impact.

According to Policy Matters Ohio, the state's budget (signed this summer) takes $1.8 billion in funding away from Ohio's elementary and secondary schools over the next two school years. The new report noted that 65 percent of respondents to its survey of Ohio school districts say they are facing budget shortfalls as a result of state budget cuts—that means pay freezes, pay cuts, not replacing teachers who retire; 45 percent report “reductions in force”--layoffs.

In his State of the State speech, Kasich touted education as a solution to the state's struggles, but it's hard to see how the state can educate its way out of anything when school districts keep facing cuts. (He urged universities to “commercialize” their research, which is a fancy way of saying produce things they can sell to corporations or that will entice grants from corporate America.)

If Kasich really wanted to demonstrate a commitment to education, he could change his mind about the state's estate tax, which hit the 7 percent of wealthy Ohioans who inherit more than $338,333, and will be abolished next January. That'd save about $250 million a year that could go to the far more than 7 percent of Ohioans who make use of public schools.

3. South Carolina

Kasich's elimination of the estate tax is certainly one example of policies that favor the 1 percent and leave students out in the cold, but South Carolina governor Nikki Haley has gone Kasich one better and proposes to entirely eliminate the corporate income tax in her state. That would cost nearly $140 million in the first year alone—so Haley's taking a chunk of that cash out of public schools.

Her budget, according to Columbia, SC news channel WLTX , cuts “a key funding stream” for public schools, one that primarily goes to teachers' salaries. And another local station, WJBF, reports that while Haley cut public school teachers' incomes, she includes an extra $10 million for charter schools. So that's less money for public employees, more money for private companies using state education funds.

John Ruoff, policy analyst and founder of South Carolina Fair Share, pointed out that eliminating the state corporate tax is likely to have little impact on job creation—but a big impact on much-needed public programs like the schools. "Governor Haley ought to be a lot more concerned about how we develop a state that businesses want to come to," Ruoff told Tax Analysts. That means having decent infrastructure and a well-educated workforce, not just a zero tax rate.

4. Alabama

In no state is it so abundantly clear that the governor is prioritizing other spending over education than in Alabama, where Governor Robert Bentley has proposed taking $230 million from the Education Trust Fund and putting it into the General Fund, which pays for prisons, courts and other parts of the state government.

Henry Mabry of the Alabama Education Association (a teachers' group) told the Birmingham News, “The governor's actions are absolutely outrageous and do nothing but cut education to bail out the prison system.” And Bentley seemed to inadvertently echo Mabry when he defended his move by saying, “By doing that, we will not have to let a single prisoner out of prison.”

He also wanted to shift Medicaid costs for children's healthcare into the education fund, an additional drain of about $185 million, and his budget for 2013 cuts 1,381 public school teachers, principals and other staffers, and takes $41.1 million from universities and $5.4 million for two-year colleges.

Bentley's plan is so outrageous that it's drawn condemnations from both parties in the state legislature—including the chair of a committee it would need to pass. "It's not going to fly. It's dead," Rep. Jim Barton,

R-Mobile, told the Birmingham News.

5. Kentucky

Just to note that it's not just Republicans who cut education dollars and spend on ridiculous things instead—Kentucky governor Steve Beshear is a Democrat, albeit one who brags on his official Web site about “trimming the state workforce” and “reforming” child welfare. Yet his budget offered up a 6.4 percent cut to higher ed and a decrease in funds to K-12 students as well.

But that's not the best part. Travis Waldron at ThinkProgress explained that the governor did preserve a $43 million tax break for a “Bible-themed amusement park — which will include a 500-foot by 75-foot reproduction of Noah’s Ark,” as well as $11 million in spending on the highway interchange that will be near the park.

Waldron pointed out, “...lawmakers could jeopardize Kentucky’s substantial gains in K-12 education and ensure ballooning tuition rates at its colleges and universities, all while they preserve tax breaks for what critics have dubbed the “Ark Park.”

Sarah Jaffe is an associate editor at AlterNet, a rabblerouser and frequent Twitterer. You can follow her at @seasonothebitch.

Lobbyist Poses as Mechanic in Anti-Union Super Bowl Ad

2012-02-11T20:22:00.000-07:00

Friday 10 February 2012

by: Robert Greenwald, Brave New Foundatation | News Analysis (Video)

America just got rickrolled.

There we were last week, innocently partaking in the annual testosterone-fest that is the Super Bowl, when we were treated to an ad featuring a group of supposed auto mechanics lamenting that they never voted for the union they’re in. But look closely. One of these “mechanics” is sporting a gold watch, manicured hands, and a brand new shirt. That’s because he’s not a mechanic, or even an actor.

He’s Washington lobbyist Rick Berman.

Berman is a gun-for-hire—nicknamed Dr. Evil—who specializes in creating nonprofit front groups to push corporate interests. His clients have included the likes of Phillip Morris, Coca Cola, and Tyson’s Foods. But you wouldn’t know it hearing the names of the organizations he starts. The Employment Policies Institute?

They fight minimum wage increases. The American Beverage Institute? They go after Mothers Against Drunk Driving. And the gem of an organization linked to the Super Bowl ad is the Center for Union Facts.

Like other Berman fronts, the Center for Union Facts lists no staff on its website. But it does offer up a lot of false information about labor unions, using distorted statistics to paint their staffers as a bunch of corrupt thugs out to steal workers’ hard-earned money. No mention is made of the better wages and benefits union members receive relative to their non-union counterparts, nor of the far more pervasive acts of corporate corruption and coercion that go on in American workplaces. Without a union, workers are left to fend for themselves against employers with unchecked power.

So Rick Berman is not quite the salt-of-the-earth mechanic that Super Bowl fans were supposed to find relatable while being fed anti-union propaganda. Indeed, he appears to be a master of the bait and switch: He creates fake nonprofits to lure Americans to corporate propaganda, and occasionally he shows up posing as an ordinary American in those groups’ ads.

Americans who want the real facts on unions—fakery-free—will have to go somewhere other than the Center for Union Facts to find them.

A few of my political and religious graphics

2012-02-10T23:47:00.000-07:00

The War Against Women's Reproductive Rights.

2012-02-10T12:00:00.000-07:00

The Catholic bishops have raised a big stink about the mandate that all health insurance plans must include contraception benefits. Currently many policies do not and the out of pocket cost of controlling their family size is about $600.00 per year.

Now that may not sound like much, but when wages are decreasing and other costs are climbing, it is a lot. A couple using no birth control has an 85 percent chance of becoming pregnant in one year. The Agriculture Department estimates that on average, middle-income couples spend around $12,500 per year per child.

The solution is actually very simple:
To eliminate religious organizations objection to pay for birth control, so middle-ages, is to eliminate employer based health insurance.

That means either each individual purchases their own insurance, as they do with life, home and auto insurance and the employer has nothing to do with it. OR you have an expanded Medicare program that eliminates private health insurance as the primary insurer of your health.

As William Kristal stated on the Daily Show, the government run military health system is the best and well run. He also said that the American citizens does not deserve the same high quality, well run health care system, but deserves the private insured less quality, poorly run health care system. Why, because the military personnel place their lives on the line. Well doesn't law enforcement, fire fighters, and so many other critical workers? And why don't we citizens deserve a high quality, well run health care system? (For those who don't know who William Kristal is, he's a ultra-conservative pundit, columnist, and Republican Party activist.)

I do find the very argument about the Catholics and religious freedom a bit archaic. Women have fought hard to raise their level of equality to that of their male counterparts. They have not achieved complete parity yet, but they are getting so much closer.

This religious argument fails on so many levels.

When a religious institution decides to operate an entity, other than their actual churches, temples, etc., and hire individuals who are not members of that faith or adhere to the same religious prohibitions, then that religious institution must still comply with all mandated policies required of all other employers in the nation. To be carved out is not right to the employees to be discriminated against in such a working environment.

When a religious institution have such a moral objection to the policy, then hire only those who are obedient to that religious tenet, in this case only loyal practicing Catholics. Otherwise, they have voluntarily waived that prohibition withing the facility that they are employing non-members.

I understand that in many urban markets there are more than one employer in a given area that the Catholics are involved with, i.e. Universities, hospitals and schools. But there are small communities that the only hospital is a Catholic owned one. If you are a nurse, doctor or other employee, must you adhere to the religious tenet of your employer, even if they are not yours?

That in its self is forcing a religious theology on non-members of that faith, which is also a violation of the first amendment about free exercise of religion and also not being forced to practice a particular religion. So whose rights are superior to the others. In my mind, when you hire non-members, you waive that right so that you can hire non-members as employees. An employer is much different than conducting religious services to members.

I do agree that they do provide some very nice services for the poor. But their universities, hospitals and schools are open for all secular individuals to enter as students, employees, and patients. By that act, they have moved into the secular arena to provide some type of service and thus competing with secular entities doing the same thing. If a religious institution gets a waiver of some mandated policy, then they have a competitive advantage in this supposed free market system. They already get an advantage with not having to pay any taxes on the property and income. To add more is not fair to the others.

If our government excludes the Catholics from this mandate in health care for women, you know that every "Christian" employer who objects to contraception coverage will demand the same treatment as the Catholic institutions. That is bad for women and for the country as a whole. There can't be any carve outs!

High Capital Gains Tax Does Not Deter Capital Investments

2012-02-10T11:18:00.000-07:00

Illustration by David Gibson

By David M. Abromowitz Feb 8, 2012 5:01 PM MT Bloomberg View

For all the attention devoted to Mitt Romney’s tax returns last month, one element went largelyunnoticed: They directly refute the Republican candidate’sargument that higher tax rates deter capital investment.

Simply put, all of the investments made by Bain CapitalLLC, the private-equity company Romney cofounded in 1984 and ranuntil 1999, occurred when capital-gains rates were much higherthan they are today. Yet Bain consistently attracted massiveamounts of private capital, and thrived.

Bain’s haul is further evidence that fair tax rates don’thold back profit-seeking capitalists, at least until those ratesreach a point that no one is proposing. From 1984 until 1999,the top rates on capital gains -- the profit from investments asopposed to compensation for work -- were often at 28 percent,and never lower than 20 percent. Indeed, in 1987, underPresident Ronald Reagan, the 20 percent rate rose to 28 percent-- a 40 percent increase in potential taxation of Baininvestment profit. (Yes, Reagan did raise taxes, even oncapital.)

An analysis by the Wall Street Journal of 77 Bain deals inthat time period showed that the firm “produced about $2.5billion in gains for its investors,” on about $1.1 billioninvested. Clearly, even with capital-gains rates almost doublethose today, fund managers such as Romney didn’t lack investors.

No Deterrent

Others can debate whether the private-equity cruciblecreated more jobs than it destroyed. One thing is certain,though: Investors signing up for a chance to earn, say, a gross$10 million profit on a deal weren’t deterred by the prospectthat taxes meant they would only keep a net $7.2 million.

Potential taxes were certainly disclosed to investors, andfigured into the expected rate of return. And individualinvestors might have had offsets, such as the carried-forwardlosses from other deals reflected in the Romney tax return.

Particularly remarkable is the windfall Romney receivedfrom steep reductions in the capital-gains rate that took placeafter most of the deals he oversaw had closed. In 1997, the ratewas cut to 20 percent, from 28 percent. It was reduced to thecurrent 15 percent in 2003.

No one investing in a private-equity deal in 1990 couldpossibly say they anticipated the rate would be only 15 percenton profit still being paid out in 2010. Applying the reducedrate to deals previously closed couldn’t possibly be viewed asan incentive to investors.

At the same time, because these rate cuts were appliedretroactively, the Romney family enjoyed a windfall of about$600,000 each year in lower taxes paid (assuming the Romneysreceived the same $12 million in income from carried interestand other capital-gains returns since 2001 as they did in 2010).

When multiplied by thousands of similarly situatedtaxpayers, this after-the-fact tax-cut windfall contributedsignificantly to the budget deficit, even though its value tothe economy remains dubious, as numerous analysts of capital-gains rate cuts have concluded.

At a time of ballooning federal deficits and frayed socialsafety nets, higher capital-gains rates can contributemeaningfully to deficit reduction and to helping a middle classthat is struggling to stay afloat, without hampering goodinvestments in American businesses.

The Romney tax returns vividly illustrate that fair taxrates don’t deter those whom Republicans now routinely call “jobcreators” from investing.

As Warren Buffett so aptly put it, “I have worked withinvestors for 60 years and I have yet to see anyone -- not evenwhen capital-gains rates were 39.9 percent in 1976-77 -- shyaway from a sensible investment because of the tax rate on thepotential gain.”

Conservative commentators will continue to recite theircredo that letting the lower Bush-era tax cuts on capital gainsexpire -- and returning to the pre-2001 percent rate of 20percent -- would kill investment and jobs. It will be hard forthem to ignore the window provided by Romney’s returns into thereal world of private-equity investing and the economy.

(David M. Abromowitz is a senior fellow at the Center forAmerican Progress Action Fund. The opinions expressed are hisown.)

Read more opinion online from Bloomberg View.

To contact the writer of this article:David M. Abromowitz at dabromowitz@americanprogress.org

Monsanto & Cancer Milk: FOX NEWS KILLS STORY & FIRES Reporters.

2012-02-10T07:08:00.001-07:00

This is an old story, BUT a very important story even now. Watch and learn:

This another piece of evidence that Fox News is NOT a news organization, but a propaganda machine. It also demonstrates how much power corporations have over our news organizations, even beyond Fox. Our right to know has been breached by big money. As long as new outlets must rely on advertising revenue to produce their product, then the information you receive is filtered by that money.

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FOX NEWS Reporters (Reporters Steve Wilson & Jane Akre *** See below for more info on their status today) uncover that most of the Milk in the USA and across some parts of the world is unfit to drink due to Monsanto Corporation's POSILAC®, which has been proven to be a cancer-causing growth hormone.(known in short as "BGH" "BST" or "rBGH" ), but they were fired for attempting to inform people of the truth.

(Important note: After a long court battle, the Court dismissed the whistle blowers protection for the reporters because the Court stated that there was no law to force that the NEWS state the truth. NEWS was/is no different than other TV shows/reality shows.)

This is type of deceitful corruption is not just FOX news but includes almost all MSM (Main Stream Media).

Self researched, alternative news and information (from multiple sources) is one of the best methods to stay well informed.

Never trust or follow MSM/mega corporations such as Monsanto.

The corrupt FDA has once again turned it's back on the American public and has actually assisted in suppressing the dangers of this issue.

If you consumed or fed regular milk to your family today (8/21/08), there is more than a 90% chance that it was from a cow injected with BGH.

(Bovine somatotropin developed by using recombinant DNA technology).

You could be killing or harming your child every time you pour them a glass of milk, the same as pouring them a glass of slow acting poison.

Please take action to ensure our children's safety, for they can not protect themselves. Remember too, that pus (exudate, infection discharge) is almost always present cow's milk... think about this fact the next time you feed your child this supposedly healthy product.

For great healthy alternative to animal's milk, try Almond, Coconut or Hemp milk (organic).

**** Status of the reports features in this story today (6/20/11): ****
Today, Steve Wilson is Chief Investigative Reporter Action 7 News Detroit were he is making quite a name for himself going after corporate greed/injustice. Many feel he is one of the best reporters in the US today due to the injustice that he experienced. His large following call him the Bulldog. He tirelessly helped to expose Detroit Mayor Kwame Kilpatrick. Search 'Steve Wilson Bulldog'

Jane Akre is the News Editor for the National News Desk of Injuryboard where she is also a great asset.

Every Sperm Is Sacred! Dem. Lawmaker Sneaks 'Life Begins at Ejaculation' Amendment into Vile 'Personhood' Bill

2012-02-09T19:18:00.002-07:00

Despite being rebuffed by voters in Mississippi and Colorado, proponents of the “personhood” movement are still pushing to enact legislation in states like Utah, Ohio and Oklahoma that would give zygotes the same rights as American citizens. These bills would not only criminalize abortion in all circumstances, they would also outlaw common forms of contraception, as well as in vitro fertilization.

To poke fun at the absurdity of the measure, Oklahoma state Sen. Constance Johnson (D), has tacked on a provision affirming — in the words of a famous Monty Python song — that every sperm is sacred:

State Senator Constance Johnson of Oklahoma City has served Oklahoma’s 48th Senate District since 2005, but it was yesterday’s introduction of Senate Bill 1433 that really pushed her over the edge. The bill sought to define human life as beginning at the moment of conception, before it’s even implanted in the womb, and offers full legal protection to those tiny multicelled lumps. In the words of the bill, “the unborn child at every stage of development (has) all the rights, privileges, and immunities available to other persons, citizens, and residents of this state.”

Johnson submitted an amendment of her own to the bill, which would have added the language,
However, any action in which a man ejaculates or otherwise deposits semen anywhere but in a woman’s vagina shall be interpreted and construed as an action against an unborn child.

Among other things, Johnson’s amendment would essentially outlaw oral sex, anal sex, and masturbation. Were it not a satirical bill, it would almost certainly be deemed unconstitutional.

To prove that her amendment was in jest, Johnson voted with her colleagues to table it later in the day. But it does illustrate a serious point: only about half of fertilized eggs develop into a pregnancy. If Republican lawmakers are willing to declare every cluster of cells with the potential to become a fetus a person, why stop at fertilized eggs? Why not sperm as well?

To protest the inherent sexism of the personhood bill, another Democratic senator attempted to add an amendment that would require the father of the child to be financially responsible for the mother’s health care, housing, and other expenses while she is pregnant.

By Marie Diamond | Sourced from ThinkProgress

Posted at February 9, 2012, 6:32 am

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

My Thoughts:

The whole concept of legally establishing personhood on a cluster of cells, is absolutely nuts. Here are some of the medical conditions that would be a criminal act under these bills:

A tubal pregnancy, which can rupture critical blood veins and cause the women to bleed to death and also to become sepsis (infection of the blood) which is also fatal to the women. The small cluster of cells would die because they are not receiving any blood supply from the woman, and when the woman dies, there is no medical way so far to remove the few cells and incubate them into a human. Are these law makers going to have surrogates waiting in the next room to receive these cells to incubate?
Spontaneous Miscarriage. That's when the body rejects the zygotes even after it attaches to the uterus. There are many reasons the body will reject it. Infection, failure of the cells to do what their supposed to do, some even become a cancer rather than developing human cells. This would also be a crime.
When there are problems either with a miscarriage or other reproductive issues, a D&C is required. That is vacuuming out any tissue in the uterus, including a zygotes and fetuses that are not developing or have died or are infected and threatening the life of the woman. This common procedure would be a crime.
And of course any otherwise legal termination of a pregnancy, whether it be elective, because of rape or incest. To perform one of these constitutionally legal procedures would be a crime in that state.
All forms of contraception that prevent the fertilized egg from attaching to the uterus, thus passing out of the body. These include most forms of the "Pill," IUDs, and other hormonal applications. Thus to use one of these forms of birth control would be a crime.
There is the situation that after sexual intercourse sperm will fertilize an egg and that egg will expel from the body, never attaching to the uterus. When this happens, there is a crime that has been committed. Of course, unless they make a law that requires every woman to collect any discharge from their vagina that will be tested in a lab to determine if there was a fertilized egg among the gunk.

So even though the Democrat Senator added the lyrics that ...every sperm is sacred. This is in fact what these laws are progressing to. So in the end they will legislate that every sperm and every egg, even before they meet are sacred and therefore must not be lost, but must be preserved at all cost.

Enough all ready. Let's not regress back to the religiously oppressive dark ages.

Wall Street's Third Party

2012-02-09T08:12:00.000-07:00

Wall Street's Third Party

This is a very interesting story and may upset the election in Nov. It is a good idea, if it can secure the technology so that it can't be gamed. If they can, then obviously it is the way to look at electing our representatives in the cyber age of the 21st century. As with the story of Iceland's online constitution being rewritten online by the public and not politicians, they created a true democratic way of involving ordinary citizens into the process.

Click on the link and read the story.

Iceland Revolutionizes Their Banks, Constitution & Democracy Itself

2012-02-08T20:36:00.000-07:00

Iceland Revolutionizes Their Banks, Constitution & Democracy Itself (via EcoLocalizer)

Washington lawmakers pass gay-marriage bill

2012-02-08T17:27:00.003-07:00

By msnbc.com staff and news services

OLYMPIA, Wash. -- Washington has moved closer to becoming the seventh state in the nation to legalize gay marriage.

The state House of Representatives on Wednesday voted 55-43 in favor of a bill to allow same-sex couples to wed. The state Senate approved the proposal last week on a 28-21 vote.

"Marriage is the word our society uses to describe committed lifelong relationships," said Rep. Jamie Pedersen, D-Seattle, a gay lawmaker who helped lead efforts to push the bill through the Legislature, The Seattle Times reported.

"I would like for our four children ... to grow up understanding that their daddy and papa have made the kind of lifelong commitment to each other," Pedersen said. "Marriage is the word we use in our society to convey that idea."

Democratic Gov. Chris Gregoire is expected to sign the bill next week, and it would take effect 90 days later. But opponents have promised to fight gay marriage with a ballot measure that would allow voters to overturn the legislative approval.

If opponents gather enough signatures to take their fight to the ballot box, the law would be put on hold pending the outcome of a November election.

Related: Court: Calif. ban on gay marriage unconstitutional

Otherwise, gay couples could wed starting in June.Same-sex marriage is legal in New York, Connecticut, Iowa, Massachusetts, New Hampshire, Vermont and Washington, D.C.The Washington state House vote came a day after a federal appeals court declared California's ban on gay marriage unconstitutional.

The Associated Press contributed to this story.

4 New Hamphire Laws that are in the TWILIGHT ZONE!

2012-02-08T17:15:00.000-07:00

GOP Lawmakers Pass Bill Making Public School Curriculum Optional

By Marie Diamond on Jan 5, 2012 at 9:20 am

As the country shifts its attention from the Iowa caucus to the upcoming primary in New Hampshire, the state’s Republican legislators are busy passing some of the most radically conservative laws in the country. Today the GOP-controlled Senate passed HB 542, which allows parents to pull their children out of any school lesson that the parent objects to, forcing the school to design an alternative lesson. Their House colleagues approved the measure earlier last year.
The measure is so extreme that even the conservative Union-Leader editorial board denounced it in July:

House Bill 542 would have amended state law to “Require school districts to adopt a policy allowing an exception to specific course material based on a parent’s or legal guardian’s determination that the material is objectionable.” Though that sounds appealing at first blush, it is so broad that it would make public education essentially an a la carte menu.
It is true that public schools are too inflexible and don’t allow enough choice. They would benefit greatly from the competition that comes from charter schools and vouchers. But this bill put the burden on each public school to create a curriculum catered to each family’s individual tastes. Schools would have to provide alternatives to any instruction a family opposed, and a family could oppose anything for any reason. That is neither workable, nor sensible.

The bill will now go to Gov. John Lynch’s (D) desk. Lynch, who vetoed an earlier version of the same bill, is expected to nix it once again. He pointed out in his last veto message that the bill failed to clearly define what material would be objectionable — allowing any parent to withdraw their child for almost any reason.

New Hampshire’s Democratic Party immediately condemned the move, calling it “an unprecedented attack” on “New Hampshire children’s right to a quality education.” “In fact it will end education in New Hampshire as we know it, allowing children to be removed from any lessons their parents choose, algebra, English language arts, health education, American history, the civil or women’s rights movement, science, absolutely anything,” they said.

The party chair pointed out that the bill places an enormous financial burden on cash-strapped towns and cities by requiring school districts to create a unique curriculum for each and every student.

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New Hampshire Republicans Propose Bills That Prevent Police From Protecting Domestic Abuse Victims

By Marie Diamond on Jan 26, 2012 at 1:30 pm

Since the 1970s, New Hampshire police have operated under a progressive policy for handling domestic violence cases that has saved countless lives. Under current law the presumption is that an arrest will be made when police observe evidence of abuse. They have a large degree of discretion and don’t need to witness the assault firsthand or obtain a legal warrant before they can separate the alleged attacker from his victim.

All that will change if Republicans get their way. The state’s GOP legislators are pushing two bills that will reverse a half century of progress, the Concord Monitor reports:

Domestic violence is no longer taken lightly legally or by society. That’s the way it should be, but two bills under consideration by this most unusual of legislatures, would undo that progress and put lives in danger. Both deserve a speedy defeat.

House Bill 1581 would turn the clock back 40 years to an age when a police officer could not make an arrest in a domestic violence case without first getting a warrant unless he or she actually witnessed the crime. That’s an exceedingly dangerous change. Consider the following scenario, one outlined for lawmakers by retired Henniker police chief Tim Russell:
An officer is called to a home where she sees clear evidence that an assault has occurred. The furniture is overturned, the children are sobbing, and the face of the woman of the house is bruised and bleeding. It’s obvious who the assailant was, but the officer arrived after the assault occurred. It’s a small department, and no one else on the force is available to keep the peace until the officer finds a judge or justice of the peace to issue a warrant. The officer leaves, and the abuser renews his attack with even more ferocity, punishing his victim for having called for help. [...]

It’s impossible to say how many lives the policy, in place since the 1970s, has saved or how many injuries it’s prevented. If they adopt House Bill 1581, lawmakers might find out, but the price paid could be extraordinarily high.

The other bill Republicans have proposed, HB 1608, limits judges’ ability to order the arrest of someone who has violated a domestic violence restraining order by contacting or abusing the person named in the order. It would also prevent judges from ordering defendants to surrender their weapons or block them from buying guns.

Police say the bill stops them from intervening to protect victims. For instance, they would be stripped of their power to arrest someone who is threatening to use violence against a victim or child. It’s unclear why New Hampshire Republicans have set their sights on repealing protections for abuse victims when promised to focus on economic priorities.

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New Hampshire GOP Bill Mandates That New Laws Find Their Origin In 1215 English Magna Carta

By Marie Diamond on Jan 4, 2012 at 3:10 pm

New Hampshire Republicans are taking textual originalism to a whole new level: three lawmakers have proposed a bill that requires that all legislation find its origin not in the U.S. constitution, but an English document crafted in 1215.

When the legislature reconvenes this month, Republicans want their colleagues to justify many new bills with a direct quote from the 800-year-old Magna Carta:

House Bill 1580 is the product of such a brainstorming session this summer between three freshman House Republicans: Bob Kingsbury of Laconia, Tim Twombly of Nashua and Lucien Vita of Middleton. The eyebrow-raiser, set to be introduced when the Legislature reconvenes next month, requires legislation to find its origin in an English document crafted in 1215.

“All members of the general court proposing bills and resolutions addressing individual rights or liberties shall include a direct quote from the Magna Carta which sets forth the article from which the individual right or liberty is derived,” is the bill’s one sentence.

The Magna Carta, while famed as the first major declaration of rights under English monarchy, is a bit outdated in its actual prose.

The Magna Carta is indisputably an important historical document, with ideas about liberty that inspired America’s founders. But as the Concord Monitor points out, the substance of the document is fixated on the tedium of feudal times, and has little if any relevance to modern American life.

New Hampshire lawmakers might have trouble applying passages like, “We shall straightway return the son of Llewelin and all the Welsh hostages,” or, “If anyone who has borrowed a sum of money from Jews dies before the debt has been repaid, his heir shall pay no interest on the debt for so long as he remains under age.”

One of the bill’s sponsors admitted that he wasn’t terribly familiar with the actual text, and mainly saw the measure as an homage. New Hampshire Democratic Party spokesman Ray Buckley said he was “mostly speechless” when he heard about the bill. “I appreciate all the hard work the Republican legislators are putting into the effort to make them look like extremists,” he said. “Saves us the trouble.”

Conservatives have long prided themselves on being constitutional “purists” who want to strip government down to the basic form they say was laid out in the country’s founding document. But requiring textual justification from another country’s founding document, which has no legal history or authority in the U.S., is a curious extension of that principle.

As the country’s focus shifts from the Iowa caucus to the more influential New Hampshire primary, it’s worth noting that the state’s Republicans apparently trying to repeal not just the 20th century “welfare state,” or even the 20th century, but the modern era entirely.

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New Hampshire Republicans Propose Bill To Eliminate Workers’ Lunch Breaks

By Pat Garofalo on Feb 8, 2012 at 3:00 pm

New Hampshire’s GOP legislature has come up with all manner of absurd bills recently, including a proposal making public school curriculum optional, another to prevent police from protecting domestic abuse victims, and even a measure mandating that new laws be based on the Magna Carta. Some of the Granite State’s GOP lawmakers have even proposed doing away with the law that requires employers to give their workers time off for lunch, under the rationale that all employers will simply grant lunch breaks out of the goodness of their hearts:

“This is an unneeded law,” [Republican state Representative Kyle Jones] said. “If I was to deny one of my employees a break, I would be in a very bad position with the company’s human resources representative. If you consider that this is a very easy law to follow in that everyone already does it, then why do we need it? Our constituents have already proven that they have enough common sense to do this on their own.”

The bill’s sponsor, state representative J.R. Hoell, argued that companies failing to provide lunch breaks would be shamed over social media, thus rendering the law unnecessary. “If they are not letting people have lunch, they could put it out though the news media, though social media. I don’t think that abusive behavior would continue, the way communications are today,” he said.

Of course, not every employer can be counted to to follow even the easiest of requirements to look after workers’ health and rights. Back in 2005, Walmart was forced to pay $172 million for denying workers their lunch breaks. Pyramid Breweries Inc. settled a case in 2008 for $1.5 million. Just a few months ago, California ordered Embassy Suites to pay workers tens of thousands of dollars for forcing them to skip breaks.

“The fact that in 2012, I would be even sitting in front of the Labor Committee talking about eliminating the lunch hour is outrageous,” said Mark MacKenzie, New Hampshire’s state AFL-CIO representative.

“People should at least be able to be given the opportunity to eat.” Fortunately, the bill does not seem too appealing to most of the New Hampshire legislature, and the state House’s labor committee adjourned yesterday without voting on it.

William Kristol admits Govt Run Health Care The Best

2012-02-08T08:59:00.001-07:00

William Kristol is an ultra-conservative columnist and Republican activist. When Jon Stewart pushed him, he spoke the truth. Then he tries to justify what he said so he can continue with the party's talking point and lie.

The Gospel of America by Betty Bowers

2012-02-08T08:40:00.000-07:00

Bad LipSinks Videos. Have Some Fun

2012-02-08T08:39:00.000-07:00

This is funny.

GOP lawmakers protest removal of 'God' from Air Force unit's patch

2012-02-08T08:02:00.000-07:00

By Jeremy Herb and Daniel Strauss - 02/07/12 from The Hill

A group of Republican lawmakers is protesting the removal a reference to God in the patch logo for the AirForce Rapid Capabilities Office (RCO).

The 35 lawmakers, led by Rep. Randy Forbes (R-Va.), wrote aletter to Air Force Secretary Michael Donley and Chief of Staff Gen. NortonSchwartz urging them to restore the logo with a reference to God.
Forbes warned that the action taken by the RCO could set a“dangerous precedent” when it comes to religion and the military.

"The action taken by the RCO suggests that allreferences to God, regardless of their context, must be removed from themilitary,” Forbes wrote. “As we are confident that your legal advisors wouldnot suggest that censorship is required for compliance with the FirstAmendment, we ask that you reverse this perplexing decision.”

The patch logo was changed after a military atheist group,the Military Association of Atheists and Freethinkers, protested the referenceto God on the patch. The patch has a saying on it in Latin, which is common formilitary patches, that tranlates to: “Doing God’s Work with Other People’sMoney.”

The saying was then changed last month to say: “DoingMiracles with Other People’s Money.”

The RCO is an office created in 2003 that expedites weaponssystems and reports to a board of directors that includes the Air Forcesecretary and chief of staff.

This isn't the first time Forbes has gotten invovled with God and the government.

In November, Forbes introduced a bill to reaffirm "InGod We Trust" as the country's motto. The bill supports showing the mottoin all American public schools and buildings.

In response, President Obama suggested the legislation was awaste of time.

"I trust in God, but God wants to see us help ourselvesby putting people back to work," Obama said in November according to theRichmond Times-Dispatch.

House Republicans also passed a bill last month that allowsfor religious symbols to be displayed a military memorials and cemeteries inresponse to a federal appeals court decision that found a cross on a San Diegowar memorial was unconstitutional.

The Air Force did not immediately respond to a request forcomment.

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My Thoughts:
How did this patch get approved in the first place, back in 2003. Oh, right G.W. Bush and his Born Again Christian push to break down the wall of separation.

To have a MILITARY patch with the words, Latin or not, that says, "Doing Gods Work with other people's money." Interjecting that the US Military are soldiers of God, as in the Crusaders, who beat, torture and killed thousands because they were not Christian or had violated some Christian tenet.

The military should never be referenced to God and doing Gods work. If I were in that unit, I would protest having to wear that patch on my uniform. I'm not a warrior for God, I'm a soldier of the United States who is defending it from enemies, of whom some are declared warriors of their God, Allah. This then would suggest this unit is fighting a religious war and not a unit to defend our secular government.

In the same vain, the motto: "In God We Trust" should be removed as well. It is a breech of our constitutional separation clause of the first amendment, along with removing from the pledge of allegiance, "... one nation, under God, indivisible..." and return it to the original verse of "... one nation, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all"

It continues to amaze me that these Christian activists are continuing their attempt to strip the first amendment from our constitution and turn America in the theocratic state. They raise their voices as great patriots and absolutists in the constitution, but their action are just the opposite. I don't get it.

A tale of two recoveries

2012-02-06T15:11:00.003-07:00

By Steve Benen

Mon Feb 6, 2012 4:53 PM EST

As many on the right struggle to respond to encouraging economic news, several Republican officials have crafted yet another talking point to consider: the nascent, fragile recovery isn't as strong as the one we saw in 1983 and 1984.

Several [House GOP] members compared the current economic recovery unfavorably to the rebound from recession during the Reagan administration. In January 1984, as Reagan was preparing to run for reelection, the unemployment rate fell to 8 percent, marking an even more marked decline from a jobless rate of 10.4 percent a year earlier.
Rep. Cathy McMorris Rodgers (R-Wash.) said Reagan inherited a "more difficult, deeper recession" than Obama, who has repeatedly called the economic collapse he inherited the most serious since the Great Depression of the 1930s.

At a certain level, this gives away the store, in much the same way Virginia Gov. Bob McDonnell (R) did yesterday -- once Republicans argue, "This recovery isn't as good as the one in the '80s," they're necessarily conceding that the economy has improved under Obama. They are, after all, referencing a "recovery" directly.

But let's put that aside for now. Looking at this on the substance, proponents of the "tale of two recoveries" argument deserve credit for creativity, but the GOP talking points on this are deeply misleading, if not ridiculous.

To McMorris Rodgers' point, Reagan did not inherit a "more difficult" recession. In the early 1980s, the Fed kept interest rates high to combat inflation, but to suggest that was a "deeper recession" than the more recent crisis is just foolish. In 2008, we experienced a crash of the global financial system -- the kind of crisis from which is there is no easy or quick recovery. When we hear the phrase "worst economic conditions since the Great Depression," it's not just a platitude; it's an accurate description of what transpired.

As a result, we're looking at two recoveries with key, qualitative differences. In 1983, the Federal Reserve had decided it had held back the economy long enough, and decided to take its foot off the brake. A robust recovery soon followed. The Great Recession that technically began in late 2007, and then intensified greatly in 2008 before bottoming out in 2009, was a far more severe global crisis, and it necessarily takes far longer to get back to where we were.

Yes, the current recovery isn't as strong as the one in 1983, but that's because of the nature of the recessions themselves. The comparison itself borders on silly. It's like saying a patient who had an appendectomy recovered faster than a patient who'd been hit by a bus -- and then saying the latter's physician must not have been as good a doctor.

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It is just astounding that these Republicans are so hateful of Pres. Obama that they can't recognize improvement in the economy and then to say the Reagan recession was deeper than the crash of '08 and for followers to actually accept that as truth is beyond reason. It is obvious the Republican have no shame or any moral values at all, even though they claim they are the only party that has any morality. How does that work when you keep getting caught lying?

Congressman Uses Old Onion Saterical Article About Planned Parenthood As Evidence To Defund It.

2012-02-06T14:54:00.004-07:00

When you can't find evidence to support your belief, then why not use fake news as your evidence.

Back in May of last year, The Onion wrote a silly article satirizing the growing ridiculousness of the charges being levied against Planned Parenthood entitled “Planned Parenthood Opens $8 Billion Abortionplex.”

Unfortunately, due in part to the anti-PP tidal wave being brought forth by conservative media and the sad fact that there were still people in 2011 that didn’t understand The Onion or satire, a number of people thought the article was real, sharing it on social media platforms. There were so many of these misguided people that their response inspired the fantastic blog Literally Unbelievable, a site dedicated to sharing the tweets and Facebook posts of confused Onion readers. We wrote about the site last May and, nearly a year later, it’s still going strong. Today they even shared a post by someone who was still being fooled by that “Abortionplex” gag. The amazing thing is, though, that that person is a member of Congress.

Yep, lets take a look at the (since deleted, of course) Facebook post from Louisiana’s Rep. John Fleming:

Wow. Not only is this article from The Onion. Not only is it nine months old. Not only does it have the term “Abortionplex” in the headline. The whole thing is also patently ridiculous. Don’t believe me? Lets take a look at the text from the article one of our elected officials believes was real.

“‘The Abortionplex’s high-tech machinery is capable of terminating one pregnancy every three seconds,’ Richards added. ‘That’s almost a million abortions every month. We’re so thrilled!’
…
The remaining space is dedicated to amenities such as coffee shops, bars, dozens of restaurants and retail outlets, a three-story nightclub, and a 10-screen multiplex theater—features intended not only to help clients relax, but to foster a sense of community and make abortion more of a social event.
‘We really want abortion to become a regular part of women’s lives, especially younger women who have enough fertile years ahead of them to potentially have dozens of abortions,’ said Richards, adding that the Abortionplex would provide shuttle service to and from most residences, schools, and shopping malls in the region.” (read the entire story below)

Yep.
I sure am glad that well-informed people like John Fleming who have such a solid grasp on reality have the legal ability to fund and defund organizations that help tons of Americans. Keep up the good work running America, John!

* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *
My Thoughts:
Don't these conservatives ever crawl out from under their rock and seek knowledge from other sources than Fox Fake News? If I remember, Fox News carried this as an actual news story until a viewer called them and told them it was from the Onion site and it was fake. They immediately took the story off their website, but it took two days for it to be removed from the scripts the TV talent was reading. They never did issue a correction, they just acted like it never happened. The couldn't admit that they had failed to fact check a story someone they got stories from, Republican Communication Strategist, that it was fake.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
HERE IS THAT SATIRICAL NEWS REPORT:

Planned Parenthood Opens $8 Billion Abortionplex

May 18, 2011 | ISSUE 47•50 ISSUE 47•20

The state-of-the-art facility, which features an IMAX movie theater as well as multiple fetus incinerators.

TOPEKA, KS—Planned Parenthood announced Tuesday the grand opening of its long-planned $8 billion Abortionplex, a sprawling abortion facility that will allow the organization to terminate unborn lives with an efficiency never before thought possible.

During a press conference, Planned Parenthood president Cecile Richards told reporters that the new state-of-the-art fetus-killing facility located in the nation's heartland offers quick, easy, in-and-out abortions to all women, and represents a bold reinvention of the group's long-standing mission and values.

"Although we've traditionally dedicated 97 percent of our resources to other important services such as contraception distribution, cancer screening, and STD testing, this new complex allows us to devote our full attention to what has always been our true passion: abortion," said Richards, standing under a banner emblazoned with Planned Parenthood's new slogan, "No Life Is Sacred." "And since Congress voted to retain our federal funding, it's going to be that much easier for us to maximize the number of tiny, beating hearts we stop every day."

"The Abortionplex's high-tech machinery is capable of terminating one pregnancy every three seconds," Richards added. "That's almost a million abortions every month. We're so thrilled!"

The 900,000-square-foot facility has more than 2,000 rooms dedicated to the abortion procedure. The abundance of surgical space, Richards said, will ensure that women visiting the facility can be quickly fitted into stirrups without pausing to second-guess their decision or consider alternatives such as adoption.

Hundreds of on-site counselors are also available to meet with clients free of charge and go over the many ways that carrying a child to term will burden them and very likely ruin their lives.

Graphical Feature
A Look Inside Planned Parenthood's $8 Billion Abortionplex

The remaining space is dedicated to amenities such as coffee shops, bars, dozens of restaurants and retail outlets, a three-story nightclub, and a 10-screen multiplex theater—features intended not only to help clients relax, but to foster a sense of community and make abortion more of a social event.

"We really want abortion to become a regular part of women's lives, especially younger women who have enough fertile years ahead of them to potentially have dozens of abortions," said Richards, adding that the Abortionplex would provide shuttle service to and from most residences, schools, and shopping malls in the region. "Our hope is for this facility to become a regular destination where a woman in her second trimester can whoop it up at karaoke and then kick back while we vacuum out the contents of her uterus."

"All women should feel like they have a home at the Abortionplex," Richards continued. "Whether she's a high school junior who doesn't want to go to prom pregnant, a go-getter professional who can't be bothered with the time commitment of raising a child, or a prostitute who knows getting an abortion is the easiest form of birth control—all are welcome."

Nineteen-year-old Marcy Kolrath, one of the Abortionplex's first clients, told reporters that despite her initial hesitancy, she was quickly put at ease by staff members who reassured her that she could have abortions over and over for the next decade before finally committing to motherhood. Kolrath also said she was "wowed" by the facility's many attractions.

"I was kind of on the fence in the beginning," she said. "But after a couple of margaritas and a ride down the lazy river they've got circling the place, I got caught up in the vibe. By the time it was over, I almost wished I could've aborted twins and gotten to stay a little longer."

"I told my boyfriend we had to have sex again that very night," Kolrath added. "I really want to come back over Labor Day."

Mitt Romney's new policy for the very poor.

2012-02-06T10:59:00.000-07:00

Mel Brooks was spot on years before our current Republicans in the Senate. Watch this short clip from his movie "History of the World Part I." I love Mel Brooks satire. He is the best...

Clint Eastwood half-time Commercial or message and the Republican's Message

2012-02-06T09:45:00.001-07:00

Thank you Mr. Eastwood. And thank you Chrysler for creating a very moving message for all Americans to hear. At times when a company makes an ad it it doesn't have much to do with the product, you scratch your head and wonder why they spent the money on it. But then there are those like this one that make a very profound statement without the hype of their product. That is corporate responsibility and citizenship.

Here is that ad, if you missed it during the Super Bowl:

http://www.mediaite.com/online/clint-eastwood-narrates-halftime-in-america-super-bowl-ad/

click here: Cllint Eastwood halftime super bowl ad

Now here is what some of the Republican presidential candidates have stated about the loans to the auto industry:

What is appalling about Mitt's comment is that as a businessman who professes to have such great business knowledge is that he fails to understand the depth and breath of the auto industry in our economy. To seek an organized chapter 11 under the bankruptcy rules, they would have to find private lender who would give them huge loans that would be very high risk and the creditor would have to agree on discounting the amount owed to them. Many of these creditors are small factories that make parts for all the autos made in America by nearly every manufacturer, to include Honda, Toyota, BMW, Mercedes-Benz, Hyundai, Subaru, and many more.

If they failed to pay these small factories, they would have to close shop and lay off their employees. This would harm the other manufacturers because they could not get the parts they need to make their cars. So the entire auto industry in America would go bust. This means millions of jobs from the assembly plants, to the smaller suppliers, to the truckers that move the parts from factory to assembly plant, the trains and truck that haul the autos to dealers, the dealers and all their employees, and so on. Like the Wall Street banks, but to me even more important than they, the auto industry in America had to be saved.

The other issue is that the credit markets were frozen and hardly no one was getting loans. Even if they could get a commercial loan, the interest rate would be so high because of the relative risk, that GM and Chrysler would not have been able to even pay the interest, let alone any principal on the note. So the lender of last resort is of course the government.

As a result of Pres. Obama's complete understanding and comprehension of the gravity of the situation, he acted in the best interest of the nation. To claim otherwise is foolish and demagoguery.

One note: I fear that Clint Eastwood is suffering from some potential life threatening problems as serious as lung cancer or emphysema. The texture of his voice is more about his lung function than dramatic effect. I wish him well. He as been one of the best actors, producers and directors, with maybe Robert Redford, who have given us very thought provoking movies. Thank you Mr. Eastwood for all you have given this country and the visual arts.

Woman's infected jaw removed, 3D printed replacement implanted

2012-02-05T22:29:00.000-07:00

By Cory Doctorow at 7:50 pm Saturday, Feb 4

An 83-year-old woman with a badly infected lower jaw had the entire thing replaced with a 3D printed titanium/bioceramic replica. The surgery was performed by doctors from the University of Hasselt (Belgium) in collaboration with Dutch surgeons.

The 3D printer prints titanium powder layer by layer, while a computer controlled laser ensures that the correct particles are fused together. Using 3D printing technology, less materials are needed and the production time is much shorter than traditional manufacturing. The mandible was finally given a bioceramic coating compatible with the patient's tissue by BioCeramics in Leiden. The artificial jaw weighs 107 grams, it is only 30 grams heavier than a natural jaw, but the patient can easily get used to it.

The operation was performed in June last year in the hospital in Sittard-Geleen. One day later the lady could start talking and swallowing.

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I've been reading a little about 3D printing and it appears that it has huge potential in manufacturing that will reduce cost and waste. We'll start to see it being used more and more over the next decade.

All I can say is -- WOW!

HUMOR: A Lesson Learned in the Classroom.

2012-02-05T14:19:00.000-07:00

Christian Group Shows Up To Chicago Gay Pride Holding Apologetic Signs

2012-02-05T11:08:00.002-07:00

By: Kelli January 27, 2012 on the Practikel blog

This is an amazing photo that captured the moment a gay man hugged a member of a Christian group, that came to Gay Pride to apologize for the way the church has treated homosexuals. It’s nice to see people of faith have common sense enough to know that hate and prejudice is wrong. A step in the right direction towards equality and something everyone should learn from. THIS is the kind of compassion that religion teaches, but far too often doesn’t follow. Well done.

Since seeing this photo, a friend of mine had introduced me to more of the story. A man, by the name of Nathan, is the one you see above hugging the gay guy in his underwear, or Tristan rather. Well, Nathan wrote a blog about this day and this moment and what his and his fellow church-goers had done. Here is what he had to say:

I hugged a man in his underwear. I think Jesus would have too.

I spent the day at Chicago’s Pride Parade. Some friends and I, with The Marin Foundation, wore shirts with “I’m Sorry” written on it. We had signs that said, “I’m sorry that Christians judge you,” “I’m sorry the way churches have treated you,” “I used to be a bible-banging homophobe, sorry.” We wanted to be an alternative Christian voice from the protestors that were there speaking hate into megaphones.

What I loved most about the day is when people “got it.” I loved watching people’s faces as they saw our shirts, read the signs, and looked back at us. Responses were incredible. Some people blew us kisses, some hugged us, some screamed thank you. A couple ladies walked up and said we were the best thing they had seen all day. I wish I had counted how many people hugged me. One guy in particular softly said, “Well, I forgive you.”

Watching people recognize our apology brought me to tears many times. It was reconciliation personified.

My favorite though was a gentleman who was dancing on a float. He was dressed solely in white underwear and had a pack of abs like no one else. As he was dancing on the float, he noticed us and jokingly yelled, “What are you sorry for? It’s pride!” I pointed to our signs and watched him read them.

Then it clicked.

Then he got it.

He stopped dancing. He looked at all of us standing there. A look of utter seriousness came across his face. And as the float passed us he jumped off of it and ran towards us. In all his sweaty beautiful abs of steal, he hugged me and whispered, “thank you.”

Before I had even let go, another guy ran up to me, kissed me on the cheek, and gave me the biggest bear hug ever. I almost had the wind knocked out of me; it was one of those hugs.

This is why I do what I do. This is why I will continue to do what I do. Reconciliation was personified.

I think a lot of people would stop at the whole “man in his underwear dancing” part. That seems to be the most controversial. It’s what makes the evening news. It’s the stereotype most people have in their minds about Pride.

Sadly, most Christians want to run from such a sight rather than engage it. Most Christian won’t even learn if that person dancing in his underwear has a name. Well, he does. His name is Tristan.

However, I think Jesus would have hugged him too. It’s exactly what I read throughout scripture: Jesus hanging out with people that religious people would flee from. Correlation between then and now? I think so.

Acceptance is one thing. Reconciliation is another. Sure at Pride, everyone is accepted (except perhaps the protestors). There are churches that say they accept all. There are business that say the accept everyone. But acceptance isn’t enough. Reconciliation is.

But there isn’t always reconciliation. And when there isn’t reconciliation, there isn’t full acceptance. Reconciliation is more painful; it’s more difficult. Reconciliation forces one to remember the wrongs committed and relive constant pain. Yet it’s more powerful and transformational because two parties that should not be together and have every right to hate one another come together for the good of one another, for forgiveness, reconciliation, unity.

What I saw and experienced at Pride 2010 was the beginning of reconciliation. It was in the shocked faces of gay men and women who did not ever think Christians would apologize to them.
What I saw and experienced at Pride 2010 was the personification of reconciliation. It was in the hugs and kisses I received, in the “thank you’s” and waves, in the smiles and kisses blown.
I hugged a man in his underwear. I hugged him tightly. And I am proud.

THIS is truly heart-warming. I am crying as I write this because I am proud of this man and his willingness to share what he believes, despite the criticism he may receive. After this, even more came together to keep this story going. Someone had recognized Tristan from the photo, and Tristan got in touch with Nathan. These two shared how this moment meant so much for each of them, and that is what’s remarkable. One person meets another, and for each of them, this was a lasting experience and memory.
To read the interview that nathan did with Tristan, visit Nathan’s blog HERE

OK Mormons, it's your turn to say you're sorry! Stop the hate and discrimination by law in Utah.

Koch Brothers-- Looking For The Roots Of The Problem

2012-02-05T08:56:00.000-07:00

By: Down with Tyrrany Nov 2011

The new issue of the Texas Observer digs around in the fetid sewer that is the Koch family background. Yasha Levine's sleuthing helps put in perspective exactly why the Koch's have made themselves the biggest threat to American democracy since Adolph Hitler-- and for many similar-- if not identical-- reasons. To understand why Charles and David Koch are using their billions to assault American democracy-- even teaming up with Iran (the way their father had teamed up with Stalin) to do so-- you have to look back at the history of this demented, hate-filled family. There Levine finds the roots to their antipathy towards democracy, equality, public education, Social Security, organized labor, environmental, consumer and financial protections and the 99%. They've spent hundreds of millions already and plan to spend another $200 million in 2012 electing 1%-ers like Paul Ryan, Mitt Romney, John Boehner, Mitch McConnell, Scott Brown and other right-wing anti-government sociopaths hellbent on turning back the clock on America. Levine starts with their grandfather a wealthy Dutch-German immigrant who settled in Texas and brought his foreign, hate-filled fascist ideology to his new country, where he tried enforcing it on the people he found here.

Little has been written about Harry Koch. He's the least-known member of the Koch family, which has been marching under the same laissez-faire banner for the past three generations. Harry Koch emigrated to America in 1888, settled in a North Texas railroad town and became a newspaper publisher and aggressive corporate booster. He advocated for railroad and banking interests, amassing wealth and helping big business fight organized labor and squelch reforms.

Much of the Koch brothers' ideology can be found in Harry Koch's newspaper editorials of nearly a century ago. Take, for instance, the Kochs' current fight against Social Security. Harry Koch took part in a multi-year right-wing propaganda campaign to shoot down New Deal programs. Grandfather and grandsons employ eerily familiar talking points to bash government pension and welfare programs.

"No political system can possibly guarantee either a national economic security or an individual standard of living. Government can guarantee no man a job or a livelihood," Harry Koch wrote on February 1, 1935, nine months before Charles Koch was born.

Fast-forward 75 years and you can see Charles Koch using the same lines of attack in his company's newsletter: "government actions ... stifle economic growth and job creation, which in turn will significantly reduce the standard of living of American families."

...Harry Koch's rise from immigrant small-town newspaper publisher to entrenched business heavyweight might seem like a classic coming-to-America story, confirming that through hard work, perseverance and luck, anything is possible. But that narrative would be misleading. Harry may have lived among settlers who struggled to eke out a living on the frontier, but he was never really one himself. The difference was right there on the surface for everyone to see: While Harry Koch prospered, almost everyone else in North Texas descended into poverty.

On top of the crippling boom-and-bust cycles that gripped the country from the 1890s through the late 1920s, settlers faced crop failures, low agricultural prices and real estate booms that made it impossible for new farmers to afford land. Many sunk into deep debt and poverty.

The misery and hopelessness of frontier life sparked a powerful new grassroots populist movement, which sought to reform and curb the worst of corporate abuses. Harry Koch was not sympathetic to the cause. (In 1897, while the country was still in the grips of one of the worst economic depressions in its history, Harry Koch penned a long, gushing account of a luxurious trip to a convention thrown for boosters and businessmen in Galveston. Between detailed descriptions of all the oysters eaten and champagne bottles emptied at swanky parties, Harry expressed shock and outrage that the street railway union organized a strike during the convention and forced attendees to temporarily move about on foot. But not for long. "Santa Fe officials took pity on the suffering newspaper men and made up a train to Woolman's lake where the oyster roast was to be held," Koch wrote approvingly.)

In a series of early editorials, Harry Koch scoffed at the idea that land rents should be regulated, and ridiculed the plight of heavily indebted farmers, writing that while they might find indebtedness unpleasant, a much bigger problem was their laziness and inability to take care of the farm equipment they had purchased on credit. He patronized Quanah farmers with platitudes about honesty and success: "Be honest. Dishonesty seldom makes one rich, and when it does riches are a curse. There is no such thing as dishonest success." He delighted in the fact that unlike other cities and towns across America-- filled with strikes, riots, political agitation and violent unrest-- the people of Quanah largely steered clear of politics, concerning themselves with what they understood best: hard, honest labor. "A very commendable trait among western people," Harry wrote, "is that they have no time to give to politics."

Throughout the 1890s, Harry never shied from using his newspaper to promote specific business interests and as a platform to express his aristocratic views on society.

But something began to change at the turn of the century. Koch shed his abrasive attitude toward the masses and began reinventing himself as a champion of the common man.

In 1901, Koch published a long editorial that hinted at this transformation. In the piece, he defends popularly embattled trusts and monopolies with the counter intuitive argument that such protectors of wealth were a force for the common good. He based his argument on the false notion that trusts lowered the price of consumer goods:

"Let this thing be borne in mind as significant, that all real trusts, all that are destined to succeed and endure, are established on a basis of permanent lower prices for their products. Everybody knows that sugar and oil have been considerably cheaper since these industries have been under trust control. And the same is true, barring periods of fluctuation, of all industries under effective monopoly, from steel rails to cigarettes."

Harry Koch's transformation was remarkable: Not only was he attempting to convince readers of his point of view by appealing to their own best interests, but he was fleshing out economic arguments in language that his grandsons continue to use today. Harry's defense of trusts reads exactly like the pro-monopoly propaganda regularly cranked out by scholars at The Cato Institute-- a libertarian think tank founded by Harry's grandson Charles Koch in 1977. University of California-Irvine Professor Richard McKenzie recently published an article in Cato's Regulation magazine titled In Defense of Monopoly, in which he echoes Harry's 110-year-old editorial, including this claim: "The monopolist does not charge higher prices; it lowers them."

This new rhetorical approach was not Harry Koch's invention. Rather, Harry was being swept up in a larger national revolution in the way American business elites communicated with the public.

At the turn of the 20th century, growing public outrage at the way financial elites were handling the economy, combined with a rapid expansion of voting enfranchisement that increased participation in the democratic process from 15 percent of the population in 1890 to 50 percent in 1920, began posing a real threat to the entrenched interests of American corporations.

To protect itself, corporate America began experimenting with modern public relations techniques and developing strategies to manipulate and manage public perceptions.

Harry Koch was right in the thick of it.

In 1910, Koch became the founding director, as well as one of the biggest shareholders, of a small North Texas railroad company called the Quanah, Acme & Pacific. After two decades of laboring to promote other people's railroad interests, he had finally come into his own. The Tribune-Chief became the de facto advertising arm of the QA&P, extolling the region's bright future and certain prosperity while hawking company shares and promoting land in towns created and owned by the line. He had his own railroad and his own newspaper to promote it.

In the 1930s, corporations were forced to ramp up their pro-business public relations campaigns to deal with the violent backlash in public opinion caused by the Great Depression.

Harry Koch rolled out an aggressive multi-year attack on Roosevelt's New Deal. Tribune-Chief criticisms of the program echoed the propaganda of corporate boosters like the National Association of Manufacturers. The paper slammed public pensions, regulations, tariffs, unions, muckrakers, labor laws and deficits, and filled its op-ed space with pro-business opinion pieces delivered fresh from New York lobby groups like the American Bankers Association, whose president, R.S. Becht, wrote to assure Quanah readers that there was no need for the government to regulate banks. Industry self-regulation-- or "voluntary self reform," as he called it-- would be enough.

Despite, or because of, overwhelming public support for FDR's pension and welfare programs, they became major targets, with Harry Koch publishing two or three op-eds in a single day attacking them. "Some ten million old folks are wanting to draw $200 a month from the government, and one hundred million stand ready to quit work when they do. Why not pension all of them?" Koch wrote in a February 1935 editorial, while claiming in a different editorial that the "idea of an old age pension is a splendid idea ... such a pension is proper. But great care should be taken...in preparing old age pension laws."

His editorials contained the same familiar right-wing claims that we hear today: that there is not enough money to support "entitlement" programs, that government will tax industry into ruin, that similar programs in other countries have failed, that regulation is unconstitutional and workers, given the opportunity, will quit en masse and live off government charity.

In a 1934 editorial titled "Democracy's Problem," Harry rejected "mobocracy," which had "been discarded as undesirable, even if attainable." Mobocracy was the right's popular name for "tyranny of the majority," and remains a favorite whipping horse of Koch-funded libertarians, who increasingly promote the idea that America is not a democracy and was never intended to be one. Here's Steve H. Hanke, senior fellow at the Cato Institute, writing in a 2011 editorial: "Contrary to what propaganda has led the public to believe, America's Founding Fathers were skeptical and anxious about democracy. They were aware of the evils that accompany a tyranny of the majority. The Framers of the Constitution went to great lengths to ensure that the federal government was not based on the will of the majority and was not, therefore, democratic."

Harry Koch passed away in 1942, not long after business' epic battle against the New Deal reforms. The Quanah Tribune-Chief was passed on to his eldest son, who took over the paper with his wife and kept it in the family until the 1970s. Meanwhile, Harry's other son, Fred Koch, used the fortune he made building refineries for Stalin in the 1930s Soviet Union to ramp up his own business in Wichita, Kansas. He would build a successful oil transportation empire that would one day grow into Koch Industries, the largest privately held oil company in the country.

But even after the family's base of operations moved away from Quanah, Harry Koch's ghost would never be far removed. His life at the intersection of news media, big business, public relations and ideological warfare would be passed on as a family tradition from father to son to grandson, elevating his offspring to ever higher levels of wealth and influence.

Why the NFL and the Super Bowl Are A Lot Like Socialism

2012-02-05T08:02:00.001-07:00

Bill Maher is another of those rational thinkers who can use comedic satire to present compelling arguments.

Bill Maher - Irritable Bowl Syndrome from Fraser Davidson on Vimeo.

Here is another aspect of all professional sports. The stadiums and arenas that they play in are financed by taxpayer money through bonds that the taxpayer must pay. The teams are supposed to pay rent to use the stadiums, but some recent studies show that the cost of building and maintaining the stadiums exceed the rental paid by the teams and the other uses the stadium might generate revenue from, like music concerts.

The players and owners of these teams make millions of dollars, but can't afford to build these multimillion dollar stadiums on their own. There may be a few exceptions, such as the basketball arena in Salt Lake City built and paid for by the Utah Jazz owner, the late Larry H. Miller. But in the beginning he did rent the smaller arena attached to the Salt Palace Convention Center in which the building is owned by the County and the land by the LDS Church, talk about commingling of church and state.

So when you think about it professional sports is socialism because taxes are used to build entertainment facilities instead of the private sector sports teams building them for themselves. Why, they cost too much and most companies could not profit from such an overhead cost.

So if the Conservatives want to eliminate socialism, then they should be passing legislation that requires these private companies to purchase all these stadiums and arenas and hope for the best for profits to stay alive. If they cant' then they go out of business.

When the Utah Legislature was debating if they were going to bond for the building of a professional soccer stadium, the argument that they should is that it improves the quality of life for the citizens to have such a facility and having a professional sports team. They also stated that it would benefit the small businesses located near the stadium, such as restaurants, pubs, etc.

Well that is true, these business did increase business on the days the team played their home games, but the taxes related to this increase and the episodic nature of the schedule still does not produce the needed revenue to pay the bond used to build the stadium. So we the tax payer is paying for it and our public education is suffering because they are reducing funding to them so they can pay the bonds for this stadium. Now that is pure socialism created by one of the most conservative legislatures who always profess hatred for socialism. Hypocrites...

Now I don't know what Gov. Scott Walker of Wisconson is going to do with the Greenbay Packers, because the town of 100,000 owns the team and the stadium. This is the purist form of socialism and Gov. Walker is on a crusade to eliminate any and all socialistic program in the state.

Mitch McConnell Banking On American Amnesia

2012-02-04T22:13:00.001-07:00

February 3, 2012

By Justin "Filthy Liberal Scum" Rosario

That Republicans pretend history started the day Barack Obama was sworn in as president is nothing new. Their entire platform for the last three years has been based on denouncing the deficit they created while blaming Obama for it. And it mostly worked. The 2010 election was a referendum on the government’s out of control spending. Specifically, the spending done by the GOP. But that didn’t matter to conservative voters. It was all Obama’s fault and that was that.

Never one to let a successful tactic go, the Chief Obstructionist in the Senate, Mitch McConnell, has recently taken to making the wild claim that not only did President Obama have a fully compliant Congress for two years but that they rubber stamped everything he asked for. TPM reports:

The White House has “been trying to pretend like the President just showed up yesterday, just got sworn in and started fresh,” McConnell declared Sunday on CNN’s State of the Union. “In fact, he’s been in office for three years. He got everything he wanted from a completely compliant Congress for two of those three years… We are living in the Obama economy.”

First to explain what Cloture Motions are: When there is a debate on a particular bill, the members will vote to terminate the debate and move on to voting on the actual bill, this vote is called the Cloture Motion Vote. However, when a party evokes a filibuster, that being continuous debating, but in reality it is just one party talking on anything, even at times reading the names in a phone book or some long novel, just to keep the debate open. It doesn't have to pertain to the bill. The opposition party to that filibustering will put forth a Cloture Motion to cut off the filibuster, but it requires 60 votes to terminate the filibuster. If the cloture vote does not close debate, then they continue filibustering or the party that presented the bill to the floor can withdraw the bill to end the debate. The filibuster was intended to counter any excessive use of power by the majority in the Senate, but has now become common by the minority party, mainly the Republicans, to require a super majority of 60 votes on nearly every bill presented on the floor for debate and just the mere threat of a filibuster has caused many bills not be present to the floor for debate and/or actual vote on the bill.

That’s a most…interesting interpretation of the last three years. Let’s take a closer look at that:

The 111th would the “rubber stamping” Congress McConnell is referring to. That almost, but not quite, record breaking amount of filibusters would be, what, exactly? Bills that Obama didn’t want passed? In reality, Obama only had a full sixty votes for eight months of the 111th Congress. Between Al Franken’s victory being contested as a means of denying Democrats the key sixtieth seat and Scott Brown winning Ted Kennedy’s seat due to a sloppy and lazy campaign run by Martha Coakle, there was a filibuster proof majority for only a short time. Al Franken was sworn in July 7, 2009 while Scott Brown was sworn in February 4, 2010. Eight months. You’d be surprised how many people, including liberals (especially liberals), can’t do the basic math involved.

But even during those eight months, when the GOP was helpless before the monolithic juggernaut of liberalism, Obama still didn’t get everything he wanted. Why? Because of Joe Lieberman and the blue dog Democrats. I don’t necessarily blame the blue dogs. They’re Democratic Senators in traditionally Red states and if they’re doing their job correctly, they will reflect the values of their constituency. Of course, every now and then you just have to vote for what’s right regardless of what kind of propaganda Fox has been feeding your voters. Lieberman, on the other hand, threatened to join the Republicans in filibustering his own party which is unheard of. Why he has been allowed to retain his place in the caucus is a mystery to me. I would have kicked him out in a heartbeat and stripped him of his committee chairmanship. Even more so after the mid term elections when he became unnecessary. But that’s just me. Then again, he campaigned for John McCain so he should have been banished long before the health care debate in the first place.

Whatever the case may be, only a simpleton would believe McConnell’s whopper of a tale of Obama getting “everything he wanted from a completely compliant Congress for two of those three years.” It didn’t happen. Further, Obama didn’t even try to make that happen. Much to the annoyance of the firebagger left, Obama did not act like an emperor but more like a community organizer. He sought to build consensus and was open (a little too open, perhaps) to compromise. Which is exactly what he campaigned on. Instead of working with the president and the majority party, the GOP decided that they would take the unprecedented step of forcing a 60 vote requirement for almost every piece of legislation and certainly all major pieces. The minority party took the country hostage. How this translates into a “fully compliant Congress” is unclear.

One quick note on Obama’s critics on the Left who insist he rule by executive order or simply run roughshod over the GOP: First, executive orders can be overturned by the next president. for instance, ending DADT by executive order means it can be reinstated by executive order. Having it overturned by Congress means it has to be passed again from scratch. Good luck with that. So which is the more permanent solution? Second, we spent years complaining, and legitimately so, that Bush ran the country like a king. Why in the world would we want to do the same? The ends do not justify the means. That is not to say that we shouldn’t hold Obama accountable for capitulating to the GOP when he could have fought harder, but do it like adults and not by stamping your feet and holding your breath (or withholding your vote). That helps no one but the GOP.

Which brings us back to Mitch McConnell and his latest Big Lie. The closer we get to the election, the more you will here this particular line of bullshit. It is of paramount importance to the GOP election strategy that not only the economy not improve (or, by the grace of Republican Jesus™, get worse) but that Obama be fully responsible with no input from the Republican Party at all. In keeping with their victim-hood meme, they need to act as if they were helpless bystanders, powerless to stop the misguided policies of a socialist president bent on destroying Capitalism, Mom and Apple Pie.

We have eight months to counter this kind of garbage but shouting the truth from the rooftops. The GOP is the party of No Ideas, No Solutions and No Compromise. And that’s a lack of change you can believe in.

Secret Oil Spill Has Been Poisoning The Gulf For 7 Years

2012-02-04T21:21:00.000-07:00

By: Beth Buczynski February 3, 2012

The BP oil spill happened suddenly, and its devastation was palpable: quickly spreading sheens of toxic oil that poisoned birds, fish and marine mammals, and trashed Gulf Coast beaches.

But the BP spill wasn’t the first major oil spill to poison the warm waters of the Gulf of Mexico. In fact, a slower but no less deadly spill started years earlier and is still flowing today, according to an ongoing investigation by Waterkeeper Alliance.

Aided by satellite imagery and research conducted by SkyTruth and aerial observation by SouthWings, the Waterkeeper Alliance and its local Waterkeeper organizations learned that an offshore platform and 28 wells belonging to Taylor Energy Company LLC have been quietly leaking oil into the Gulf for years.

Waterkeeper Alliance and several Gulf Coast Waterkeeper organizations filed suit against Taylor Energy under the citizen suit provisions of the Clean Water Act and Resource Conservation Recovery Act in Federal Court on Thursday.

“The plaintiffs filed suit to stop the spill and lift the veil of secrecy surrounding Taylor Oil’s seven-year long response and recovery operation,” explained Marc Yaggi, Executive Director of Waterkeeper Alliance. “Neither the government nor Taylor will answer basic questions related to the spill response, citing privacy concerns.”

The spill, located approximately 11 miles off the coast of Louisiana, started after an undersea landslide during the aftermath of Hurricane Ivan in 2004. Waterkeeper estimates that hundreds of gallons of oil have leaked from the site each day for the last seven years.

“The Taylor Oil spill is emblematic of a broken system, where oil production is prioritized over concerns for human health and the environment,” said Justin Bloom, Eastern Regional Director of Waterkeeper Alliance. “Nearly two years after the BP Deepwater Horizon Spill, none of the comprehensive reforms recommended by the National Oil Spill Commission have been enacted and Congress has yet to pass a single law to better protect workers, the environment or coastal communities.”

Uncovering the ongoing Taylor Energy spill illuminates the danger of President Obama’s recent call for increased offshore drilling on 38 million acres of the Gulf of Mexico as well as the Arctic. The Taylor spill is in relatively shallow and accessible waters compared to the deepwater environments on which Big Oil has set its sights, yet it’s continued unchecked for years.

Waterkeeper and its allies allege that oil exploration and extraction technology has dramatically outpaced the development of safety and recovery technology and it appears that the current regulatory regime is incapable of protecting us from a runaway industry.

Read more: http://www.care2.com/causes/secret-oil-spill-has-been-poisoning-the-gulf-for-7-years.html#ixzz1lTfco8Bn

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This is another reason we need to shift to nonpolluting alternative energy production, the sooner the better.

It is important that we quickly develop containment technologies that actually work. As we venture deeper and more frequently oil well in the gulf and other sensitive waters, we must have in place these new technologies before drilling and pumping any oil.

For the Republicans to be so captured by the fossil fuel corporations and forsaking the country and the planet earth for quick profits is unforgivable. But as I've learned, the new Republicans have no shame.

How Do Conservatives and Liberals See the World?

2012-02-04T13:41:00.001-07:00

Whether you classify yourself as Liberal, Progressive, Centrist, or Conservative, this video is very important to understand why are what we are and how things have changed with the Baby Boomer Generation.

How do Conservatives and Liberals See the World? from BillMoyers.com on Vimeo.

After watching this video, I must admit that I have placed myself in a mind set that has in fact demonized the current conservative movement. I now understand a little more why their "moral" outlook is so diametrically opposite of mine.

However, one question social psychologist Jonathan Haidt did not address is why the religious Christians who follow the gospels of their Jesus Christ are of the Conservative narrative since the bases of their Christian faith is from their God, Jesus Christ whose whole narrative was compassion for the weak and disadvantaged, so I would assume based on the research by Haidt Jesus was a liberal in his political and moral compass. So I do find it strange that the Social Conservatives are so aligned with Conservatives when that is still opposite of their religious faiths tenets.

I my mind they would be more aligned with the Liberals than the Conservatives, so my only answer would be that they discount their religious faith because their predisposition by genetics is toward Conservatism that have the more "level" of the moral outlooks, based on Dr. Haidt's graph, than the Liberals who are more slanted toward compassion, liberty, and other moral values of the "Left." Hmmm, More research is needed to answer some of these profound answers before total understanding of human moral behavior can be achieved.

Now Dr. Haidt states that one of the moral issues that Liberals fail in and the Conservatives excel in is the moral value of "SANCTITY." Conservatives inject sanctity into their perspective of all things, including political ideology, social morality, fairness, individual responsibility, and so on. As stated below, tho the graphic is about marriage the definition of sanctity applies here, thus religion is the base from which they perceive the world and why they demonize the opposition, who does not exude sanctity in all things and keep that part of their inner personality as private. Thus the conservatives have no room for compromise when their political position is a religion to them. That is why they see the US Constitution as SACRED and literal, not a working and living document to be interpreted relative to current realities and changed when obsolete or in need to deal with new issues relative to individual freedom and retaining the power to the people.

Scientists Fight For Open Access For Research

2012-02-03T22:41:00.001-07:00

by Kristina Chew February 1, 2012 3:07 pm

Researchers around the world have expressed concern and alarm about HR 3699, the Research Works Act, which endangers the public’s access to federally-funded research — to research funded by taxpayers’ own contributions. A number of scientists and mathematicians have signed an online pledge at the Cost of Knowledge saying that they will not publish or do any editorial work for Elsevier, the world’s largest publisher of scientific journals, which has declared its support for HR 3699.

A January 21st blog post by Timothy Gowers, a University of Cambridge mathematician who has won the Fields Medal, math’s equivalent of the Nobel Prize, voiced the views of many about Elsevier. “Why do we allow ourselves to be messed about to this extraordinary extent, when one would have thought that nothing would be easier than to do without them?” Gowers wrote. The online pledge surfaced after a few days and has been signed by over 2,400 biologists, social scientists and mathematicians.

H.R. 3699, The Research Works Act

The reasons for the boycott are far from academic.

The National Institutes of Health made all federally-funded research publications openly accessible in 2008. But HR 3699, which is sponsored by by Rep. Darrell Issa (R-CA) and Committee member Rep. Carolyn Maloney (D-NY), proposes to limit access, based not on who has funded the research (the public or private sector), but by defining research as “private-sector work” based on the “intent” of an author, i.e., the researchers. The American Association of Publishers – self-described “private-sector research publishers” — support HR 3699, on the grounds of seeking “regulatory interference” about the research they publish.

Suppliers and “Middlemen” in Peer-Reviewed Publishing

Currently, scientists, mathematicians and others strive to publish in certain highly regarded peer-reviewed journals. They of course wish to make the results of their research known to the public. Getting an article published in a peer-reviewed journal involves a number of stages after submitting an article: The manuscript is sent to reviewers who are other researchers and who, very often, hold academic positions at universities. The journal’s editorial board makes the decision to publish the article or not. The reviewers are not paid by the journal.

However, to read the research in a journal, you have to have a subscription to it, or to belong to an institution that has one. Elsevier publishes over 2,000 scientific journals including two that are very prestigious, The Cell and The Lancet. Scientists must be familiar with and cite research published in such journals; for researchers who are junior faculty at universities or in post-doctoral positions, getting research published in these journals can make their careers.

Boycott Elsevier

The Chronicle of Higher Education sums up scientists’ concerns about Elsevier:

First there are the prices. Then the company bundles subscriptions to lesser journals together with valuable ones, forcing libraries to spend money to buy things they don’t want in order to get a few things they do want. And, most recently, Elsevier has supported a proposed federal law, the Research Works Act (HR 3699), that could prevent agencies like the National Institutes of Health from making all articles written by grant recipients freely available.

Sean M. Carroll, a prominent cosmologist and senior research associate at the California Institute of Technology, has signed the online pledge; he notes that Elsevier indeed charges “amazingly exorbitant prices to university libraries—and then makes the published papers very hard to access for anyone not at one of the universities.”

In calling for a boycott of Elsevier, researchers are more than aware that they are the suppliers of content to the journals. Without scientific research, you can’t really have a scientific journal.

Scientists are attempting to publish without the likes of Elsevier and other private-sector publishers at sites including F1000 research and the arXiv, at which physicists and mathematicians can post work in progress. Such “instant publishing” is still in its infancy as a valid, and validated, venue for scientific research.

But I commend these researchers’ intentions and efforts. I’m an academic at a small, chronically under-funded urban college. We don’t have access to a number of publications because the subscription costs are just too high. My college is not a research institution but the more research that is available via open access, the more our students — the more that anyone — can benefit.

Soaking the Poor, State by State

2012-02-03T17:47:00.002-07:00

By Kevin Drum| Fri Feb. 3, 2012 Mother Jones.

You have heard, perhaps, that rich people in America are egregiously overtaxed. And the poor? They're the lucky duckies! Why, 47 percent of Americans pay no taxes at all!

(This is not true, of course. Many poor and elderly Americans pay no federal income tax, but they pay plenty of other taxes.)

Still and all, it's true that the federal income tax is indeed progressive. Conservatives are right about that—though it's not as progressive as it used to be, back before top marginal rates were lowered and capital gains taxes were slashed in half. But conservatives are a little less excited to talk about other kinds of taxes. Payroll taxes aren't progressive, for example. In fact, they're actively regressive, with the poor and middle classes paying higher rates than the rich.

And then there are state taxes. Those include state income taxes, property taxes, sales taxes, and fees of various kinds. How progressive are state taxes?

Answer: They aren't. The Corporation for Enterprise Development recently released a scorecard for all 50 states, and it has boatloads of useful information. That includes overall tax rates, where data from the Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy shows that in the median state (Mississippi, as it turns out) the poorest 20 percent pay twice the tax rate of the top 1 percent. In the worst states, the poorest 20 percent pay five to six times the rate of the richest 1 percent. Lucky duckies indeed. There's not one single state with a tax system that's progressive. Check the table below to see how your state scores.

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MY THOUGHTS:

This is another indicator of how the Republicans have been purchased by the top 1% of the country and the corresponding large corporations and banking institutions.

The level of GREED is so reminiscent of the Gilded Age of America and the Roaring Twenties that came to an abrupt halt in 1929. This greed is manifested in the huge tax reduction that the 1% of the population, the very wealthy, got from G.W. Bush's two tax reductions. Do you remember him saying during the State of The Union address, "The country has a surplus and this money is your money and I intend to give it back." He was not talking to the middle class or the poor, he was talking to his buddies the very wealthy. The ones that did evil things with our money that brought the economy to it knees and the world near another Great Depression Part II.

HUMOR: SEVEN DEGREES OF BLONDES

2012-02-03T14:15:00.000-07:00

FIRST DEGREE

A married couple were asleep when the phone rang at 2 in the morning.

The wife (undoubtedly blonde), picked up the phone, listened a moment
and said, "How should I know, that's 200 miles from here!" and hungup.

The husband said, "Who was that?"

The wife said, "I don't know, some woman wanting to know if
the coast is clear."

` *:-.,_,.-:* ` *:-.! ,_,.-:* ` *:-.,_,.-:* ` *:-.,_,-:*

SECOND DEGREE

Two blondes are walking down the street. One notices a compact on the
sidewalk and leans down to pick it up. She opens it, looks in the
mirror and says, "Hmm, this person looks familiar."

The second blonde says, "Here, let me see!"

So the first blonde hands her the compact.

The second one looks in the mirror and says, "You dummy, it's me!"

` *:-.,_,.-:* ` *:-.,_,.-:* ` *:-.,_,.-:* ` *:-,_,-:*

THIRD DEGREE

A blonde suspects her boyfriend of cheating on her, so she goes out
and buys a gun. She goes to his apartment unexpectedly and when
she opens the door she finds him in the arms of a redhead.

Well, the blonde is really angry. She opens her purse to take out
the gun, and as she does so, she is overcome with grief. She
takes the gun and puts it to her head.

The boyfriend yells, "No, honey, don't do it!!!"

The blonde replies, "Shut up, you're next!"

` *:-.,_,.-:* ` *:-.,_,.-:* ` *:-,_,.-:* ` *:-.,_,-:*

FOURTH DEGREE

A blonde was bragging about her knowledge of state capitals. She
proudly says, "Go ahead, ask me, I know all of them."

A friend says, "OK, what's the capital of Wisconsin ?"

The blonde replies, "Oh, that's easy: W."

` *:-.,_,.-:* ` *:-.,_,.-:* ` *:-.,_,.-:* ` *:-.,_,-:*

FIFTH DEGREE

What did the blonde ask her doctor when he told her she was pregnant?

"Is it mine?"

` *:-.,_,.-:* ` *:-.,_,.-:* ` *:-.,_,.-:* ` *:-,_,.-:*

SIXTH DEGREE

Bambi, a blonde in her fourth year as a UCLA freshman, sat in her US
government class.

The professor asked Bambi if she knew what Roe vs. Wade was about.

Bambi pondered the question then finally said, "That was the decision
George Washington had to make before he crossed the Delaware."

` *:-.,_,.-:* ` *:-.,_,.-:* ` *:-.,_,.-:* ` *:-.,_,-:*

SEVENTH DEGREE

Returning home from work, a blonde was shocked to find her house
ransacked and burglarized. She telephoned the police at once and
reported the crime.

The police dispatcher broadcast the call on the radio, and a K-9
unit, patrolling nearby was the first to respond.

As the K-9 officer approached the house with his dog on a leash, the
blonde ran out on the porch, shuddered at the sight of the cop and
his dog, then sat down on the steps.

Putting her face in her hands, she moaned, "I come home to find all
my possessions stolen. I call the police for help, and what do
they do? They send me a BLIND policeman."

Paul Krugman reviews the flip flop of Mitt's "I'm Not Worried About The Poor."

2012-02-03T08:42:00.002-07:00

Krugman about Romney's flip flop on Social Safety Net

By PAUL KRUGMAN

Published: February 2, 2012

New York Times Op-Ed

If you’re an American down on your luck, Mitt Romney has a message for you: He doesn’t feel your pain. Earlier this week, Mr. Romney told a startled CNN interviewer, “I’m not concerned about the very poor. We have a safety net there.”

Faced with criticism, the candidate has claimed that he didn’t mean what he seemed to mean, and that his words were taken out of context. But he quite clearly did mean what he said. And the more context you give to his statement, the worse it gets.

First of all, just a few days ago, Mr. Romney was denying that the very programs he now says take care of the poor actually provide any significant help. On Jan. 22, he asserted that safety-net programs — yes, he specifically used that term — have “massive overhead,” and that because of the cost of a huge bureaucracy “very little of the money that’s actually needed by those that really need help, those that can’t care for themselves, actually reaches them.”

This claim, like much of what Mr. Romney says, was completely false: U.S. poverty programs have nothing like as much bureaucracy and overhead as, say, private health insurance companies. As the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities has documented, between 90 percent and 99 percent of the dollars allocated to safety-net programs do, in fact, reach the beneficiaries. But the dishonesty of his initial claim aside, how could a candidate declare that safety-net programs do no good and declare only 10 days later that those programs take such good care of the poor that he feels no concern for their welfare?

Also, given this whopper about how safety-net programs actually work, how credible was Mr. Romney’s assertion, after expressing his lack of concern about the poor, that if the safety net needs a repair, “I’ll fix it”?

Now, the truth is that the safety net does need repair. It provides a lot of help to the poor, but not enough. Medicaid, for example, provides essential health care to millions of unlucky citizens, children especially, but many people still fall through the cracks: among Americans with annual incomes under $25,000, more than a quarter — 28.7 percent — don’t have any kind of health insurance. And, no, they can’t make up for that lack of coverage by going to emergency rooms.

Similarly, food aid programs help a lot, but one in six Americans living below the poverty line suffers from “low food security.” This is officially defined as involving situations in which “food intake was reduced at times during the year because [households] had insufficient money or other resources for food” — in other words, hunger.

So we do need to strengthen our safety net. Mr. Romney, however, wants to make the safety net weaker instead.

Specifically, the candidate has endorsed Representative Paul Ryan’s plan for drastic cuts in federal spending — with almost two-thirds of the proposed spending cuts coming at the expense of low-income Americans. To the extent that Mr. Romney has differentiated his position from the Ryan plan, it is in the direction of even harsher cuts for the poor; his Medicaid proposal appears to involve a 40 percent reduction in financing compared with current law.

So Mr. Romney’s position seems to be that we need not worry about the poor thanks to programs that he insists, falsely, don’t actually help the needy, and which he intends, in any case, to destroy.

Still, I believe Mr. Romney when he says he isn’t concerned about the poor. What I don’t believe is his assertion that he’s equally unconcerned about the rich, who are “doing fine.” After all, if that’s what he really feels, why does he propose showering them with money?

And we’re talking about a lot of money. According to the nonpartisan Tax Policy Center, Mr. Romney’s tax plan would actually raise taxes on many lower-income Americans, while sharply cutting taxes at the top end. More than 80 percent of the tax cuts would go to people making more than $200,000 a year, almost half to those making more than $1 million a year, with the average member of the million-plus club getting a $145,000 tax break.

And these big tax breaks would create a big budget hole, increasing the deficit by $180 billion a year — and making those draconian cuts in safety-net programs necessary.

Which brings us back to Mr. Romney’s lack of concern. You can say this for the former Massachusetts governor and Bain Capital executive: He is opening up new frontiers in American politics. Even conservative politicians used to find it necessary to pretend that they cared about the poor. Remember “compassionate conservatism”? Mr. Romney has, however, done away with that pretense.

At this rate, we may soon have politicians who admit what has been obvious all along: that they don’t care about the middle class either, that they aren’t concerned about the lives of ordinary Americans, and never were.

A version of this op-ed appeared in print on February 3, 2012, on pageA25 of the New York edition with the headline: Romney Isn’t Concerned.

Intelligence Study Links Low I.Q. To Prejudice, Racism, Conservatism

2012-02-03T06:24:00.001-07:00

Are racists dumb? Do conservatives tend to be less intelligent than liberals? A provocative new study from Brock University in Ontario suggests the answer to both questions may be a qualified yes.

The study, published in Psychological Science, showed that people who score low on I.Q. tests in childhood are more likely to develop prejudiced beliefs and socially conservative politics in adulthood.

I.Q., or intelligence quotient, is a score determined by standardized tests, but whether the tests truly reveal intelligence remains a topic of hot debate among psychologists.

Dr. Gordon Hodson, a professor of psychology at the university and the study's lead author, said the finding represented evidence of a vicious cycle: People of low intelligence gravitate toward socially conservative ideologies, which stress resistance to change and, in turn, prejudice, he told LiveScience.

Why might less intelligent people be drawn to conservative ideologies? Because such ideologies feature "structure and order" that make it easier to comprehend a complicated world, Dodson said. "Unfortunately, many of these features can also contribute to prejudice," he added.

Dr. Brian Nosek, a University of Virginia psychologist, echoed those sentiments.

"Reality is complicated and messy," he told The Huffington Post in an email. "Ideologies get rid of the messiness and impose a simpler solution. So, it may not be surprising that people with less cognitive capacity will be attracted to simplifying ideologies."

But Nosek said less intelligent types might be attracted to liberal "simplifying ideologies" as well as conservative ones.

In any case, the study has taken the Internet by storm, with some outspoken liberals saying that it validates their suspicions about conservatives and conservatives arguing thatthe research has been misinterpreted.

Full Text Abstract

Major Romney Bundler Is Agent Of Foreign Government!

2012-02-02T16:28:00.000-07:00

EXCLUSIVE: Major Romney Bundler Is Agent Of Foreign Government:

Ignacio E. Sanchez is a lobbyist at DLA Piper, an influential global law firm and a major bundler for the Mitt Romney campaign. A ThinkProgress review of public records reveals Sanchez is also a registered foreign agent representing the interests of the United Arab Emirates and a former president of the Dominican Republic.
While political candidates are not legally required to identify bundlers — volunteer fundraisers who collect bundles of campaign contribution checks for the campaign — a 2007 law requires that federal candidates disclose the names of any registered lobbyists who bundle large amounts for their campaign. On Tuesday, Romney’s campaign reported that 14 lobbyists combined to raise more than $1.6 million last year in bundled contributions.
One of those lobbyist-bundlers was Sanchez, who raked in $86,700 for the former Massachusetts governor. This major fundraising raises questions about the level of access and influence Sanchez — and by extension, his corporate and international clients — would have in a Romney administration.
Unlike the other 13 identified lobbyist-bundlers, Sanchez is a registered foreign agent. A form filed Monday with the U.S. Department of Justice reveals that he beyond just representing the interests of those domestic clients, Sanchez also represents the embassy of the United Arab Emirates and the presidential campaign of Dominican Republic former president Hipolito Mejia.
Mejia is seeking to reclaim the job he held from 2000 to 2004 and lost in a landslide defeat, amid a national economic crisis and financial near-collapse.
The United Arab Emirates has been among the stronger U.S. allies in the Middle East and is a key player in OPEC, the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries. But the interests of the two countries don’t always converge and groups like Human Rights Watch have raised concerns about the country’s suppression of free speech and political disagreement.
In the past, Sanchez also represented the governments of Turkey and Ethiopia. Current federal lobbying disclosure forms show that he lobbies Congress and the administration on behalf of Starwood Hotels and Resorts Worldwide (which includes the Sheraton, W, and St. Regis brands) and Diageo North America, the makers of Guinness, Jose Cuervo, Captain Morgan, and dozens of other alcoholic beverages.
President Obama does not accept campaign contributions donated or bundled by federal lobbyists or foreign agents. In last week’s State of the Union address, he called for a ban on bundlers lobbying saying “Let’s make sure people who bundle campaign contributions for Congress can’t lobby Congress, and vice versa — an idea that has bipartisan support, at least outside of Washington.”
But Romney — who has not voluntarily disclosed any other bundlers — is apparently all too happy to accept money from those who are paid to influence policy decisions on behalf of special interests, foreign and domestic.