The House voting to ‘repeal’ the health care insurance reform laws. Since this shameless pandering to some of their base will have no legislative impact, we can keep the benefits we have already gained, including adding sons and daughters of up to age 26 to our family plans, free check-ups and diagnostic procedures, and help for those in the Medicare Part D coverage gap.
Author: chasdarwin
Active in Americans United, Center For Inquiry, and ACLU
He was able to buy a gun!
The first issue which must be addressed in this tragedy is why Jared Loughner – with a history of mental illness – was able to walk into a store and – with no background checks – buy a gun. In addition, he was – thanks to the expiration of the assault weapons law in 2004 – able to buy an extended magazine holding thirty rounds of ammunition, which he emptied on the victims. In Canada, for example, there is a 28 day waiting period before one can purchase a handgun. No one needs thirty rounds in any weapon to hunt animals, nor do they need thirty rounds for self protection.
The claim that “people kill, guns don’t”, does not excuse allowing an unstable or unqualified person to buy or own a gun.
No GOP Mandate here!
Think the Nov 2 2010 elections were a mandate for the tea party?
Think Again!
Steven Thomma | McClatchy Newspapers
last updated: November 22, 2010 07:38:06 PM
WASHINGTON — A majority of Americans want the Congress to keep the new health care law or actually expand it, despite Republican claims that they have a mandate from the people to kill it, according to a new McClatchy-Marist poll.
The post-election survey showed that 51 percent of registered voters want to keep the law or change it to do more, while 44 percent want to change it to do less or repeal it altogether.
Driving support for the law: Voters by margins of 2-1 or greater want to keep some of its best-known benefits, such as barring insurers from denying coverage for pre-existing conditions. One thing they don’t like: the mandate that everyone must buy insurance.
At the same time, the survey showed that a majority of voters side with the Democrats on another hot-button issue, extending the Bush era tax cuts that are set to expire Dec. 31 only for those making less than $250,000.
The poll also showed the country split over ending the “don’t ask, don’t tell” policy prohibiting gays and lesbians from serving openly in the military, with 47 percent favoring its repeal and 48 percent opposing it.
The results signal a more complicated and challenging political landscape for Republicans in Congress than their sweeping midterm wins suggested. Party leaders call the election a mandate, and vow votes to repeal the health care law and to block an extension of middle-class tax cuts unless tax cuts for the wealthy also are extended.
“The political give and take is very different than public opinion,” said Lee M. Miringoff, the director of the Marist Institute for Public Opinion at Marist College in Poughkeepsie, N.Y., which conducted the poll. “On health care, there is a wide gap between public opinion and the political community.”
Far from the all-or-nothing positions staked out by politicians and pundits, Americans are more divided about the health care law.
On the side favoring it, 16 percent of registered voters want to let it stand as is.
Another 35 percent want to change it to do more. Among groups with pluralities who want to expand it: women, minorities, people younger than 45, Democrats, liberals, Northeasterners and those making less than $50,000 a year.
Lining up against the law, 11 percent want to amend it to rein it in.
Another 33 percent want to repeal it.
Among groups with pluralities favoring repeal: men, whites, those older than 45, those making more than $50,000 annually, conservatives, Republicans and tea party supporters.
Independents, who swung to the Republicans in the Nov. 2 elections, are evenly divided on how to handle the health care law, with 36 percent for repealing it and 12 percent for restraining it — a total of 48 percent negative — while 34 percent want to expand it and 14 percent want to leave it as is — also totaling 48 percent.
Several benefits of the new law are broadly popular.
Registered voters by a margin of 59 percent to 36 percent want to keep the requirement that insurance companies provide coverage to people with pre-existing conditions.
Among supporters, Republicans want to keep that part of the law rather than repeal it by a margin of 51-45. Independents want to keep it by a margin of 59-37. Even 46 percent of conservatives and 48 percent of tea party supporters want to keep it.
The section of the law requiring insurance companies to allow young adults to remain on their parents’ policies until age 26 also is popular, with voters saying keep it rather than repeal it by a margin of 68 percent to 29 percent.
Among those who like it, 75 percent of women, 80 percent of independent women, and 54 percent of Republican women.
Voters, by a margin of 57 percent to 32 percent, also want to keep the part of the law that closes the so-called “donut hole” in Medicare prescription drug coverage.
They turn a solid thumbs down on the law’s mandate that every American must buy insurance, with 65 percent calling that unconstitutional and 29 percent saying it should be kept.
A majority of every type of American called the mandate wrong, except for Democrats overall and Democratic men in particular. Among critics of the mandate: 50 percent of liberals, 53 percent of Democratic women, 68 percent of independents, and 83 percent of tea party supporters.
As Congress prepares to debate whether to extend the Bush-era tax cuts, the poll showed that 51 percent want to extend the tax cuts only for households making less than $250,000 a year, and 45 percent want to extend the tax cuts for all.
Those who support tax cuts only for those making less than $250,000 a year include minorities, Democrats, liberals and moderates, women, college graduates, Midwesterners and Northeasterners.
Those who want to extend all of the tax cuts, including for the wealthy, include Republicans, tea party supporters, conservatives, Southerners and Westerners,
Independents were closely divided, with 49 percent for extending only the “middle class” tax cuts, and 48 percent for extending all of them.
METHODLOGY
This survey of 1,020 adults was conducted Nov. 15-18. Adults 18 and older residing in the continental U.S. were interviewed by telephone. Telephone numbers were selected based upon a list of telephone exchanges from throughout the nation. The exchanges were selected to ensure that each region was represented in proportion to its population. To increase coverage, this land-line sample was supplemented by respondents reached through random dialing of cell phone numbers. The two samples were then combined. The margin of error is plus or minus 3 percentage points.
There are 810 registered voters. The results for this subset have a margin of error of plus or minus 3.5 percentage points. There are 371 Democrats and Democratic leaning independents and 337 Republicans and Republican leaning independents. The results for these subsets have margins of error of plus or minus 5 percentage points and plus or minus 5.5 percentage points, respectively. The error margin increases for cross-tabulations.
MORE FROM MCCLATCHY
The 2010 electorate: Old, white, rich and Republican
Jim DeMint still battling to keep Murkowski from Senate
Why Progressives Get No Respect.
“One of the biggest problems facing the Democrats going into this election is that they’re getting absolutely zero respect for everything they’ve done for the average American over the past two years. Tax cuts, health care reform, financial reform, expanded veterans’ benefits, direct funding of student loans
The Myth Of The Self-Made American: Why Progressives Get No Respect
“One of the biggest problems facing the Democrats going into this election is that they’re getting absolutely zero respect for everything they’ve done for the average American over the past two years. Tax cuts, health care reform, financial reform, expanded veterans’ benefits, direct funding of student loans — the list is long, and one that, by rights, should get the Democrats re-elected handily.
The problem is that the average voter has no idea that any of this ever happened. In fact, if you ask most Americans (even a lot of Democrats), they’ll tell you that Obama raised their taxes.
This ignorance is on full display at your average Tea Party gathering, which is full of people who will proudly insist that they’re entirely self-made. “I did it all myself,” they’ll snarl, quivering in spittle-flecked outrage. “I didn’t get any government handouts. Nobody ever did anything for me — so why are all my tax dollars going to support those shiftless welfare cheats who aren’t willing to work like I did?”
The magnitude of the self-delusion is gobstopping. Did Mr. Self-Made Man grow up in a VA or FHA-funded house? Attend a public school or college? Go to school on the GI Bill, Pell Grants, or student loans? Does he claim a mortgage interest tax deduction every year? Does he support his retired parents out of pocket, or does Social Security do it for him? Does his employer get government contracts or subsidies that make his paycheck possible? Does his business depend on a sound currency, enforceable contracts, or reliable transportation systems?
It’s like his rich Uncle Sam, the benefactor whose generous bequests paid his way into the middle class, has been written totally out of his entire life story. Forget gratitude; these social contract deniers insist loudly that none of that ever happened. At all. They pay taxes; but they’ve never seen a cent returned to them for anything. And they write their “self-made” myths accordingly.
Unfortunately, this is just a symptom of a much larger problem, one that progressives need to resolve if we are to prevail in the future. The bizarre fact is that most Americans who’ve made it into the middle class got there with the help of seriously life-changing government investments and subsidies — and yet, ironically, if you ask them if they’ve ever used a government program in their lives, they’re very likely to tell you: Nope. Never. I did it all on my own.
Suzanne Mettler, a professor at Cornell, actually documented this effect in a 2008 study. She asked people who’d been the beneficiaries of 19 specific government programs — including some of the most popular and widespread programs in the country — whether or not they’d ever used a government social program. Here’s what she found:
There it is, in black and white. Sixty percent of people who get home mortgage interest deductions (one of the most important and lucrative middle-class subsidies going) don’t see this as a form of government help to their households, even though many of them wouldn’t be homeowners at all without it. Fifty-three percent of the people who got through college on student loans — and 40 percent of GI Bill beneficiaries — also think they’ve paid their own freight. And 44 percent of Social Security recipients don’t think that Social Security is a government program — which comes as no surprise to those of us who remember the ubiquitous calls during last year’s health care fight to “get your fllthy government hands off my Social Security.”
What’s going on here? How can so many people receive so much, and yet remain in such obstinate denial about where it all came from?
A big part of the problem, says Mettler, is that some government programs are simply more visible to the average voter than others. The visible ones tend to be the ones that are administered directly by a government agency, and show up in the budgets as clear line items. In particular, the programs that benefit the poor are often right out there on the table, where voters can see them and activists can ignite them into political issues: welfare, food stamps, government subsidized housing, education, Head Start.
But these programs are just a small fraction of America’s overall social spending. The bulk of our tax money goes to other programs — such as the mortgage interest deduction, student loan programs, and military spending — that are hidden from easy public view in what Mettler calls “the submerged state.” This spending is usually done in ways that are not directly visible to voters. A lot of it is corporate welfare, designed to prop up favored industries that are so powerful that no change is possible unless they’re somehow bought off with new profit opportunities or subsidies. These industries have a strong interest in keeping this spending out of the public eye and off the political table, where it might be challenged. An important subcategory includes government-funded programs that are run through private companies, like prisons or pre-reform student loans (or, for that matter, Obamacare). The money comes straight out of Uncle Sam’s pocket, but the beneficiaries never see his hand directly.
The big disconnect occurs because so many of the programs that benefit the middle class fall into this category. Take the mortgage interest deduction. This is, in effect, a subsidy that keeps America’s real estate and building trades sectors in business — and, as we’ve painfully discovered, was also of huge interest to the banks as well. But even though every homeowner in America profits handsomely from this subsidy, most Americans don’t understand very much about it. It’s just a line item on their income taxes. And there’s strong pressure to keep it that way. If the magnitude of this subsidy somehow moved into general awareness, it might be challenged. It would be subject to political debate. And that’s the last thing the builders and bankers want.
The 58 percent of our federal spending that goes to defense is almost certainly the biggest skeleton in the “submerged state” closet. A lot of that spending goes to businesses, large and small, around the country. If you’re a Congress member protecting jobs in your district (including your own), there is absolutely no upside to making an issue out of this. And, again, the beneficiaries are largely middle-class households, who fail to see the very real connection between these “government programs” and their own paychecks.
Mettler argues that any real reform that involves these hidden non-state actors must begin with explicitly making the invisible visible to the eyes of the public. It takes time and effort to bring the machinery of the submerged state up into the light of day, but it’s necessary — and effective. Obama’s effort to restore direct federal funding of student loans was a good example of this. The banks were making billions each year off this program, at the expense of millions of students who should have been getting that money instead. He was able to pull this off because activists and journalists had already spent several years hauling the ugly wreck of a policy up into public view, which weakened the ability of banking lobbyists to defend their position. By the time Obama arrived, they were weak enough that he could demand — and get — a complete end to this lucrative subsidy.
Making the invisible visible is also essential if we’re going to counter the Tea Party‘s self-serving, denial-wracked narratives, and open the way for Democrats and progressives to get the credit they deserve for the good that they do. We need to start pointing out, loudly and often, all the covert-but-effective ways that government investment and intervention has made the middle class possible.
Specifically, we need to drive home the fact that anybody who calls themselves an American cannot, in the same breath, declare that they are in any sense entirely “self-made.” This is indeed the land of opportunity. But those opportunities exist only as long as we work together to create them; and willfully denying that is an insult to every other American who sacrificed to make your opportunities possible. It’s like saying your parents had nothing to do with raising you. You’d expect them to be hurt, offended, and angry at your lack of gratitude. The rest of us who contributed to your success aren’t wrong to feel insulted, too.
Progressives know the truth: Nobody in America ever did it alone, for themselves. For the past 220 years, we’ve done it together, for each other. Bringing that interdependence back out into the light and putting at the center of our politics shifts the entire dialogue in ways that can help the progressives over the long haul, in at least three ways.
First, it reaffirms the democratic social contract. From the arrogant Wall Street bankers who still think they deserve bonuses for tanking the economy to the furious white men of the Tea Party, people who’ve convinced themselves that nobody ever gave them anything are justified (at least in their own minds) in deciding that they don’t owe anything to anyone else, either. And as long as they can keep the “self-made” lie going, they’ll also go on believing that they’re totally exempt from the whole social contract on which a democracy runs.
Second: It calls the conservatives’ politics-of-rage game. The self-made myth allows the conservative movement to keep feeding on the fury of aggrieved people who falsely think they’re getting nothing for something, even while they’re standing on a pile of wealth that we helped put under their feet. Setting the record straight on exactly what they did get for their tax dollars removes a lot of the justification for this outrage, and makes them look like the tantrum-throwing spoiled brats they are.
Third: It demands that people give credit where credit is due. Nothing changes until those of us who’ve paid our share of taxes, worked hard and played by the rules, struggled to raise sound families and build decent communities, and served our country at home and abroad start demanding acknowledgment, respect, and a proper “Thank you” for everything we’ve each contributed to make so much mutual success possible. And the real patriot is the one who always makes sure that Uncle Sam himself is the very first one to stand for applause.
Putting the lie to the “self-made” myth is critical to restoring the progressive ideas of common wealth, common sense, and the common good to a central place in our political story. It’s time to hand the country’s real “entitlement classes” the full, complete, annotated bill for everything they’ve received from the government’s hand — and demand that they never again forget to thank the 300 million of us who made it all possible.
see: http://ourfuture.org/blog-entry/2010104329/myth-self-made-american-why-progressives-get-no-respect
Emphasis Mine
02 Nov 2010: a day that shall live in infamy
I predict that the new “Republican revival” will burn brightly for a brief moment and flame out like a sparkler.
From Creamer: (HuffPost)
“…
What caused this disaster? First let’s talk about what didn’t cause Democratic defeat.
The Republicans will argue that their electoral success represented a ringing rebuke of progressive policies and values — and a popular renunciation of the Obama administration. That reading of this election would be completely wrong.
The polling shows that Americans still very much support Social Security and Medicare and want nothing to do with the Ryan “roadmap” that would privatize Social Security, eliminate Medicare and replace it with vouchers.
Americans support Wall Street reform and the reject attempts to allow the big banks to return to the recklessness that cost eight million Americans their jobs.
Americans do not favor eliminating the new law that prevents insurance companies from discriminating against people with pre-existing conditions.
Americans favor more investment in education, good public schools, money spent on infrastructure and spending by the government that creates new jobs.
Why then did they buy the Republican sales pitch and once again hand them the gavel of the House?
Two reasons:
1). It’s the economy stupid. Middle class Americans are frightened and angry. For two decades the largest corporations and the big Wall Street banks have, in effect, waged war on the middle class. They have siphoned off every bit of economic growth for themselves. They have left middle class incomes stagnant, and made it more and more difficult for many families to believe in the American dream that their kids will be better off than they were.
The voters threw out George Bush and the Republicans two years ago because of the economy, and yesterday they took out their frustration on Democrats in Congress.
If the recession had not been so deep, if we had been able to pass a larger stimulus, if circumstances had allowed the administration to preside over the creation of three or four million jobs over the last two years, the right would not have found the fertile soil in which to grow its Tea Party.
In the end, the wide spread popular anger and frustration is about the economy.
2). The ferocious counter attack by Wall Street and the corporate special interests worked.
When the President and Democrats in Congress were forced to confront the worst economic downturn in 60 years — a downturn that was caused by the actions of Wall Street and the same crowd that has made war on the middle class — progressives fought for — and won historic legislation to rein in the power of the insurance companies, and the big Wall Street banks.
Those actions provoked a furious counter assault by corporate special interests — that included their use of unprecedented amounts of secret and foreign money — to take back control of the House and stop the president’s agenda. Those actions were not a political “mistake” as some will no doubt try to describe them. They were necessary to lay the foundation for long term, widely shared prosperity and short term economic recovery. But they involved major short term political cost. Many Democrats knew the potential political risk and decided do it anyway.
But it turned out that you can’t be out-communicated seven or eight to one for months on end and not expect negative attacks to take their toll.
Some might argue that Democrats could have done a better job taking the offense. In fact many of them did, but often they were drowned out by the massive fusillade of corporate advertising.
In this election, the Empire struck back. Or I suppose you could be that the right wingers on the Supreme Court struck back by reversing a hundred years of American law and deciding that corporations had the same rights a people to “free speech” and could spend any amount to manipulate the outcome of American elections.
Of course the irony is that the same forces that created the economic crisis, and profited from it, then turned around and played off the fear that the crisis created to convince voters to turnout Democrats who had stood up to them and reined them in.
So what do we do now?
- First and foremost we cannot once again retreat into a defensive crouch, nor can we allow ourselves to be beguiled by those who say that Progressives should become more “moderate”. It isn’t progressive values that the voters rejected. It was economic stagnation. Many Americans are not frustrated because the government has done too much over the last two years; they are frustrated that the government did not do enough to create new jobs. There has never been a time when it has been more important for Progressives to stand up proudly for our values and our policies — including health care and Wall Street reform, Social Security.
- And we must be unwavering in our faith that while fighting for what is truly good for everyday Americans may provoke a successful short term reaction by the corporate special interests — and involve short term political cost — in the end it is not only the right thing to do, it is good politics as well. Standing up for universal health care, and widely shared economic growth, and education, and scientific research, and human rights is about being on the right side of history. In the long run that is always good politics.
- We must make certain that the Republicans are forced to confront the hypocrisy of their own positions — beginning immediately. In particular we should start by challenging them about how they intend square their frantic concern for deficits during the campaign with their proposal to raise the deficit in order to give millionaires a $700 billion tax cut. That issue will be front and center on the agenda of the upcoming lame duck session of Congress. And we must draw a line in the sand and say no to any attempt to cut Social Security or Medicare or to free the insurance companies from the restraints that were placed on their rates and practices by the new health care reform bill.
- We must go to war to improve the American economy — and even if we cannot pass them all, we should propose real solutions and fight for them — including a major public works program that puts people to work and primes the national economic pump.Over the next two years it is critical that increasing numbers of Americans come to believe that their lives — and those of their children — are improving. And just as important they need to see Democrats fighting for their jobs.
- Democrats in the Senate should move to change the filibuster rules that have been used continuously to ham string President Obama and his agenda. Over the last two years the Republicans have been all about preventing economic recovery and preventing the success of the Democratic Administration for their own political gain – even though the economic prospects of everyday Americans suffered as a result. That tactic worked. We should do everything we can to eliminate the weapons that made them successful at obstruction.
- We must avoid the natural tendency to turn on our allies – especially the White House and Democratic Leadership. Many progressives would argue that if they had just been tougher… just listened to us … they would have done better in these elections.In some cases that is no doubt true. But recriminations and disarray among the progressive forces will only help to our enemies. Unless we want to return to the dark ages of complete Republican control, we need to make sure that President Obama is strong and successful. This election should make it crystal clear that if we do not hang together, we will all hang separately.
- Finally, we need to remember that the political tide shifts rapidly. It’s not time to panic. It’s time to be resolute. It was only nineteen months ago that three million people came to the Capitol Mall to witness the changing of the political guard and the Republicans were in the political equivalent of Siberia. When the Republicans took back the House in 1994 it was partially in response to a backlash from the wealthy over Clinton’s increase in taxes for the rich that created a Federal budget surplus and set the stage for the most prosperous period in human history. Clinton, let us recall, was overwhelming reelected just two years after that first “Republican Revolution”.
It will not take long for the voters to see that some of them were sold snake oil by Republicans who feigned their concern of everyday Americans and all the while are entirely beholden to the corporate special interests that they detest.
I predict that the new “Republican revival” will burn brightly for a brief moment and flame out like a sparkler.
Robert Creamer is a long-time political organizer and strategist, and author of the recent book: “Stand Up Straight: How Progressives Can Win,” available on amazon.com.
Emphasis mine
see:http://www.huffingtonpost.com/robert-creamer/what-yesterdays-election_b_778101.html
Eight Nasty right wing lies about Obama
The public has been misled on a ton of issues like tax cuts, the deficit, the economy, and the cost of health care.
From Alternet:
“The public has been misled on a ton of issues like tax cuts, the deficit, the economy, and the cost of health care.
There are a number things the public “knows” as we head into the election that are just false. If people elect leaders based on false information, the things those leaders do in office will not be what the public expects or needs.”
Here are eight of the biggest myths:
“1) President Obama tripled the deficit.
Reality: Bush’s last budgethad a $1.416 trillion deficit. Obama’s first budgetreduced that to $1.29 trillion.
2) President Obama raised taxes, which hurt the economy.
Reality: Obama cut taxes. 40% of the “stimulus” was wasted on tax cuts which only create debt, which is why it was so much less effective than it could have been.
3) President Obama bailed out the banks.
Reality: While many people conflate the “stimulus” with the bank bailouts, the bank bailouts were requested by President Bush and his Treasury Secretary, former Goldman Sachs CEO Henry Paulson. (Paulson also wanted the bailoutsto be “non-reviewable by any court or any agency.”) The bailouts passed and began before the 2008 election of President Obama.
4) The stimulus didn’t work.
Reality: The stimulus worked, but was not enough. In fact, according to the Congressional Budget Office, the stimulus raised employment by between 1.4 million and 3.3 million jobs.
5) Businesses will hire if they get tax cuts.
Reality: A business hires the right number of employees to meet demand. Having extra cash does not cause a business to hire, but a business that has a demand for what it does will find the money to hire. Businesses want customers, not tax cuts.
6) Health care reform costs $1 trillion.
Reality: The health care reform reduces government deficits by $138 billion.
7) Social Security is a Ponzi scheme, is “going broke,” people live longer, fewer workers per retiree, etc.
Reality: Social Security has run a surplus since it began, has a trust fund in the trillions, is completely sound for at least 25 more years and cannot legally borrow so cannot contribute to the deficit (compare that to the military budget!) Life expectancy is only longer because fewer babies die; people who reach 65 live about the same number of years as they used to.
8) Government spending takes money out of the economy.
Reality: Government is We, the People and the money it spends is on We, the People. Many people do not know that it is government that builds the roads, airports, ports, courts, schools and other things that are the soil in which business thrives. Many people think that all government spending is on “welfare” and “foreign aid” when that is only a small part of the government’s budget.
This stuff really matters.
If the public VOTESin a new Congress because a majority of voters think this one tripled the deficit, and as a result the new people follow the policies that actuallytripled the deficit, the country could go broke.
If the public VOTES in a new Congress that rejects the idea of helping to create demand in the economy because they think it didn’t work, then the new Congress could do things that cause a DEPRESSION.
If the public VOTES in a new Congress because they think the health care reform will increase the deficit when it is actually projected to reduce the deficit, then the new Congress could repeal health care reform and thereby make the deficit worse. And on it goes.”
Dave Johnson blogs at Seeing the Forest and is a Fellow at theCommonweal Institute. He has over 25 years of technology industry experience.
EMPHASIS mine.
The Republican Swindle About ‘Obamacare and Stimulus’
The Republican strategy for this midterm election is simple: Treat voters like easily manipulated hoopleheads
Bob Cesca
If you happen to be a swing voter who’s considering the Republican slate next month, you’re being tricked. That’s not to say you’re an idiot, but the Republicans are doing an excellent job masking over what they really stand for, and millions of Americans seem to be falling for it.
The Republican strategy for this midterm election is simple: Treat voters like easily manipulated hoopleheads. The GOP and its various apparatchiks are spending untold millions of dollars, much of it from anonymous donors and, perhaps, even some illegal foreign donors, in order to play out this nationwide swindle. They’re investing heavily on the wager that Americans are so kerfuffled by the slow-growth (but growth nevertheless) economy that they’re willing to buy any line of nonsense as an alternative solution.
Regarding that nonsense, just about every GOP solution and every GOP idea reveals either a hilariously obvious contradiction or an utterly transparent hypocrisy. Say nothing of unchecked awfulness like Southern Strategy race-baiting or bald-faced lies. But it doesn’t seem to matter much because they’ve buried most of it under heaping piles of inchoate outrage and fear. Just like always. It’s not unlike the 2000s all over again. They’re engaging in the same bumper sticker sloganeering and myopic agitprop, but with updated content for 2010.
If you’ve seen any of the Republican TV spots this cycle, you’re probably familiar with the focus-group-tested duet of fear: “Obamacare and Stimulus.” For example, that infamous John Raese commercial featuring two not-West-Virginian West Virginians in full “hicky” regalia discussing why they’re voting Republican. Among the reasons: “Obamacare and Stimulus.” No specific reasons why those items are evil, they’re just two scary things the hicky guys are pissed about.
And why aren’t there any specific gripes cited along with those two items? Because the actual gripes are ridiculous.
Let’s start with “Obamacare,” then hit “Stimulus” presently.
The Republicans are trying to tell us that the health-care-reform bill is a hugely expensive trespass against freedom and liberty. This obviously refers to the price tag and the individual mandate. What they don’t mention is that “Obamacare” will actually achieve several very significant goals.
1) The health-care-reform bill will help working and middle class Americans to afford quality health insurance via hundreds of billions of dollars in subsidies. For example, families of four earning $54,000 will see their insurance premiums reduced by around $10,000 per year. That’s a lot. Who in their right mind would turn down a government check for $10,000? Every year. That’s a full semester of state university tuition, among other things.
2) Contrary to the “Obama-is-spending-too-much” meme, the bill does not increase the deficit. According to the nonpartisan CBO, the bill cuts the deficit by $130 billion over ten years. Put another way, all that scaremongering about the cost of the bill is just that: scaremongering. The bill pays for itself and then some.
3) There are no enforcement mechanisms for the super-duper terrifying individual mandate. If you choose not to buy insurance when the mandate takes effect in 2014, and are consequently fined $695, there is no means of actually enforcing the payment of that penalty. No liens, levies, no jail, no Obamacare Goons swooping into your house like America-hating Kenyan ninjas. Nothing will happen to you. Nothing. So, you know, chill out about the mandate.
The question about “Obamacare,” then, is very simply: Why are the Republicans against reducing the deficit by $130 billion, and why are they against more accessible and affordable healthcare? I have no idea, other than they’re taking the childish opposite position of what was passed (despite the deficit reduction and subsidies for the middle class, etc.). Oh, and they call it “Obamacare,” which is spooky and one letter away from being “Osamacare.” Scary, but entirely without substance.
Oh, and speaking of the deficit, the Republicans are lying to voters about the Democratic handling of the deficit as well. It turns out the Democrats and the Obama administration cut the deficit this year. Cut it. The 2009 Bush-approved budget was $1.416 trillion and the 2010 Obama-approved budget was $122 billion less. Meanwhile, the Republicans are admitting to increasing the deficit by $4 trillion by making the Bush tax cuts permanent. And they won’t say what they plan to cut from the budget in order to pay for it. Once again, we’re back in the early Bush years with so-called fiscal conservatives engaged in big, irresponsible spending without any way to make up the shortfall.
Actually, the only spending cuts that appear to be on the table are the Social Security checks, the Medicare reimbursements and the veteran’s benefits that will stop when the Republicans gleefully shut down the government. (Any senior citizen who votes Republican is voting for their Social Security and Medicare checks to stop — indefinitely. Just thought I’d mention that.)
Circling back, it’s important to repeat: President Obama and the congressional Democrats cut the deficit. Fact: The first Obama budget was billions less than the final Bush budget. And, in the process, President Obama’s policies have pushed the DJIA from 6,000 to 11,000; his policies have turned Bush-era job losses into job creation; and pulled the nation from the brink of another Great Depression.
Again, why are the Republicans against all of this?
By the same token, why are they against the stimulus? They really won’t say other than to screech about how expensive it was. But, before we go further, read the paragraph about the deficit again. The Democrats cut the deficit. And then factor into the mix that $288 billion out of the $800 billion cost of the recovery act was composed entirely of tax cuts. Tax cuts! As a matter of history and taken as a lump sum, this was the largest American middle class tax cut ever. So it’s not a stretch to suggest that the Republicans are suddenly against the largest middle-class tax cut in American history.
Despite the attempt to turn a derivation of the positive word “stimulate” into a negative, there’s very little about the stimulus that actually sucked, other than the fact that it wasn’t big enough. Beyond that, Republican voters need to ask themselves if the tax cuts were bad — or maybe was it the new roads and infrastructure that helped to create jobs, or was it the money that was spent to keep the states out of bankruptcy and police, teachers and firemen from losing their jobs? What’s awful about any of that?
Then they need to ask themselves why Republican politicians like Rep. Pete Sessions (R-TX), along with dozens of other Republicans, actually petitioned and received from the Obama administration millions in stimulus dollars? Some of them evenposing with giant novelty stimulus checks and literally campaigning on the wads of money they received from the stimulus. Pete Sessions, in fact, wrote to Secretary Ray LaHood and emphasized that the funds would literally “stimulate the economy” in his district. Naturally, Sessions turned around and campaigned against the stimulus. He thinks you won’t notice.
Elsewhere, Newt Gingrich and others are trying to deceive voters by insisting that it’s “liberal math” for an investment to earn a return — for, say, a one dollar investment to grow into $1.74. Since when do Republicans believe that wise investments are “liberal math?” Specifically, Newt was talking about government spending on food stamps as a means of stimulating the economy. Based on simple math, one dollar in government money spent on food stamps creates $1.74 in economic stimulus, according to Moody’s. Why? Because food stamps help Americans to buy things. Whereas the Bush tax cuts, for example, are a poor investment, only earning 32 cents for every dollar spent. Why? Because rich people tend to save their tax cuts rather than pumping that money into the marketplace.
Back to our refrain: Why are the Republicans against smart investing?
Yeah, Obamacare and the Stimulus. Destroying America from within, right?
It’s worth noting here that this same Republican deception runs across other issues as well. Republicans are suggesting they’ll protect individual liberty, while shrinking government small enough to fit into your bedroom or your uterus. Or they’re running on the Constitution, while also having their hired thugs handcuff and detain a reporter in a flagrant violation of the First Amendment. Hell, some Republicans are running for U.S. Senate while opposing the 17th Amendment that established popular elections of senators. Wrap your head around that one.
Sure, there are still many things the Democrats have yet to unravel after 30 years of Reaganomics. But, despite their obvious faults, they’re moving in that direction. And they’re being as honest as politicians can be with their intentions. The Republicans, meanwhile, are running on some sort of Mobius Loop of backwards logic and flimsy, if not totally destructive, policy positions.
With less than two weeks to go, the sooner voters wise up to this Republican flimflam, the better off we’ll all be.
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see: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/bob-cesca/the-republican-swindle-ab_b_770692.html?view=print
Don’t sit it out – vote!
Sam Webb:
Some voters on our side of the struggle are taking a powder on the elections. They claim that President Obama raised their hopes as a candidate and let them down as a president.
They expected bold action on the economic crisis, but it didn’t happen. The stimulus didn’t go far enough. Ditto for health care legislation. The scale and pace of change has been too slow – too many people are out of work, out of affordable health care, and out of their homes.
Meanwhile, their riff goes, bloodletting continues in Afghanistan, corporations are sitting on nearly $2 trillion of idle money, profits are up, inequality is growing, and tax cuts for the wealthy are draining our treasury and driving up the national deficit.
There is truth here, but the question is: is it enough to stay home? I say no for three reasons.
To begin with the most obvious, the elections’ impact on people’s lives. Even though the size of the stimulus was inadequate and a public option was missing in the new health care law, both bills bring a measure of relief to millions of people. And as a friend of mine keeps reminding me, it may make only an inch of difference, but a lot of people live on that inch.
Which brings me to next month’s congressional elections. If the Republicans regain control of the House of Representatives, that inch of difference (things like unemployment insurance extensions, food stamps, relief for local and state governments, modest jobs and infrastructure programs, readjustment of tax policy in favor of working people, funding for education, a real fight over military appropriations for Afghanistan) will probably vanish – along with hope for more far-reaching measures.
Furthermore, “austerity” will become the watchword, the pressures to weaken Social Security and Medicare will grow, and the economic pain for working people is likely to get much worse.
A second reason to vote is a little less obvious, but you don’t have to know higher math to understand it: A Republican victory at the polls on Nov. 2 – defined as winning a majority of seats in the House – would be the opening act of a horror show, culminating in the Republican right reclaiming full dominance of Congress and the White House in 2012.
For the far right, electoral success in the current elections and then in 2012 is the eye of the needle through which it must past in order to radically transform the country to the advantage of the most reactionary section of monopoly capital and its allies, motley and dangerous as they are.
No one on their side is going to stay home on Election Day. A “no show” is a “no-no” for them. Everyone is expected to march to the polls and bring others with them.
You won’t hear of any of them scaling down the importance of the elections. Their lens is wide-angled enough to see the big picture. The claim that the two parties of capitalism are indistinguishable is a fool’s notion in their world. And they see this election and the one two years from now as a crossroads in American politics whose outcome will determine the kind of nation we will become.
Finally, a Republican victory this fall will not simply weaken the president and his party, but likely demoralize and take the wind out of the sails of the loose coalition that emerged in 2008 and after a post-election hiatus is finding its stride again, as evidenced by the Oct. 2 rally in the nation’s capital.
To believe otherwise is naïve at best. Millions will feel that the promise of 2008 evaporated in the voting booths in 2010. They may not be entirely right about that, but that is how they will feel, and people act on the basis of their feelings. The mobilization of people in the post-election period will become more difficult.
Of course, some people are so deeply cynical that nothing could persuade them to vote.
Then there are a few others who will sit these elections out for ideological reasons. They argue that participation in the two-party system spreads illusions about the Democratic Party, delaying the formation of an anti-capitalist alternative.
In their view, the elections are simply a contest between two parties with no differences of any importance; thus, it makes little, if any, difference who wins – Bush or Gore, Bush or Kerry, McCain or Obama, candidates of the right or candidates of the center and left of center.
Any even temporary and tactical alliance with the Democratic Party – well, it’s worse than the plague, to be avoided at all costs. Support for a Democratic candidate as a “lesser evil” is tantamount to craven political bankruptcy and opportunism.
What is to be done? It’s simple, say the advocates of this point of view: make a “strategic break” with the two-party system. But there is an oh-so slight hitch that serious progressive and left-thinking people can’t afford to overlook.
A “strategic break” makes sense only if millions of people and their organizations are ready to march out of the Democratic Party into a labor/people-based political party, but guess what? They aren’t.
Yes, many people stay home on Election Day, but it is not an expression of political acumen nor is it the majority. The most active layers of working people organize others to vote and vote themselves.
While many of them express dissatisfaction with the Democratic Party, it hasn’t risen to the point where they are ready to bolt it in any near term that I can envision.
Moreover, the rise of right-wing extremism reinforces this sentiment. Broad unity, not division, not attacking people’s leaders as the “super leftists” love to do (they see these leaders as the main reason that people stay put in the Democratic Party – how simple-minded) is the blood that flows through the veins of the people’s movement at this moment.
Politics is a contested, complex, and impure process. There are waves and breaks – progressive and reactionary – in continuity to be sure, but in between there are longer periods in which the struggle doesn’t soar to new heights or sink to new depths, but still is consequential to the breaks that do come.
In 2008, politics, economics and mass thinking became unhinged from their old moorings and a political turn, albeit partial, occurred. Since then the completion of this turn has become a more protracted and difficult process than many, including myself, thought.
The elections in less than three weeks, for good or bad, will mark a new phase in this process. No one with an iota of common sense will sit it out. Shoot yourself in the foot if you like, but don’t do it on Nov. 2 because the buckshot will hit the rest of us!
Photo: http://www.flickr.com/photos/robboudon/291583692/ cc 2.0
see: http://www.peoplesworld.org/sitting-out-the-elections-think-again/
Tea Party Time
government – financed by common taxes — is the most efficient provider of so many goods and services.
see: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/robert-creamer/obion-county-fire-tragedy_b_753893.html
Robert Creamer creams the tea party/ GOP ‘less government’ ideology.’
“This week, MSNBC’s Keith Olbermann reported the story of the Cranick family’s house fire. When the family’s Obion County, Tennessee house caught fire on the night of October 5th, the fire department from the nearby town failed to respond since the Cranick’s had forgotten to pay a $75 fee. Firefighters finally responded to a call by Cranick’s neighbor, who had paid his fee. They sprayed the property line to protect the home of the neighbor and watched at the Cranick’s home burned to the ground.
The firefighters had been ordered not to intervene to save the Cranick’s house — even though they were already at the scene — because, apparently, it would have encouraged others not to pay the $75.
The Obion County fire incident is symbolic of the moral and economic bankruptcy of the Tea-Party-Republican vision of government and the economy. And it poses the stark choice facing American voters in the Mid-Term elections.
The Tea-Party-Republicans — including the Republican Congressional leadership – talk incessantly about how government services should be slashed. They believe that society should maximize the extent to which each individual is responsible to fend for themselves. They claim that is more “efficient”. The Obion County fire illustrates clearly why that assertion is simply wrong.
Competitive markets are extremely efficient at encouraging innovation, increasing productivity and distributing goods and services in many arenas. But there are other arenas where history and experience have demonstrated that it is both more efficient and more humane to provide goods and services through government — which, as Congressman Barney Frank likes to say, is the name we give to the things we have chosen to do together.
The core difference in values between the right wing and progressives is whether we create a society where we’re all in this together, or all in this alone.
Mainstream Americans understand that there are a number of areas where it makes much more economic and moral sense to guarantee goods and services to everyone in the society and ask our citizens to finance them by paying their fair share of taxes rather than paying for them “ala carte”.
We came to the conclusion decades ago that government should provide every child with an education, and our public schools have provided the foundation of American economic prosperity.
We use government to provide infrastructure necessary to support our economy — roads, bridges, harbors, airports, sewer and water systems, and street lights.”
N.B.: and the Internet.
“We provide common parks and recreation facilities that are open to public use.
Government provides for our common defense and our domestic security. We don’t require each person to hire a private army or security firm to defend his or her home. That would be stupid, wasteful and lead to anarchy.
Government is particularly efficient when it comes to providing social insurance –– like Social Security and Medicare. The overhead for these programs is tiny compared with other insurance programs (including private health insurance plans) run by the private sector. They have covered everyone reliably and effectively for generations. That’s why they have virtually unanimous public support.
At long last, with the health care reform bill, America joined the company of every other industrial nation, in understanding that it is more efficient and more humane for government to assure that everyone in society has access to health care. Of course one of the signals that prompted this change was the sheer fact that private market health insurance caused our health care cost to skyrocket to 50% more per person than any other nation — with worse outcomes. Almost certainly, the Affordable Care Act is just the first step in reform, since a public option will certainly be needed to ultimately bring our spending in line with other nations. But it was a critical first step.
Of course, most everywhere in America, we provide fire protection through the government. We all pay — through our taxes — to assure that if the time ever comes when we need to call 911 because of a fire, no one will have to check to see if we have paid a fee, a clerical error on payment records will not cost us our homes, and firefighters will not stand by and watch our homes and lives go up in smoke. And of course we also support common protection because fire doesn’t necessarily stop at the property line — just ask Ms O’Leary of the legendary Chicago Fire.
The Obion county story demonstrates what happens when we forget that government – financed by common taxes — is the most efficient provider of so many goods and services.
It makes no economic sense to allow what is likely a multi-hundred thousand dollar home to be consumed by flames because a failure to pay a $75 fee. Now, either the insurance company or the Cranick’s will have to build a brand new home in its place. Their former home was wasted because of the absurdity of the system that had been set up to protect it.
That same absurdity is implicit in so many of the other Republican economic positions. Its ultimate expression is the Republican desire to repeal health care reform and return us to an out of control system run by private health insurance companies that has cost us 50% more than any other country. That system is wasting trillions of dollars that come out of the pockets of middle class Americans — just to allow private insurance companies and their top executives to make obscene amounts of money.
And with fire protection and health care, the moral consequences are also clear. Bad enough that someone’s home was allowed to be destroyed because of the failure to pay a $75 fee. Would the firefighters have been allowed to intervene if the family pets were inside the house — what about a child?
The Republicans want to return us to a health care system that allowed for-profit health insurance companies to brazenly make those same choices everyday. They made life and death decisions that determined whether people were treated or not — and often whether they lived or not — using their own bottom line as their only real guide. They wouldn’t cover you because you have a “pre-existing condition“. They would cut you off when you got sick. They hired armies of bureaucrats who do nothing but deny claims. Some of the worst of these abuses are now history because of health insurance reform. If the Republicans have their way, those new protections will be repealed.
But let’s be clear. The people behind the “drown government in the bath tub” politics are not the kind of folks who run around in three corner hats and George Washington wigs. The Tea Party rank and file is not the principal engine of anti-government fervor. The money for the ads and the buses and the radio shows are provided by big corporations — by people like Rupert Murdoch of Fox and David and Charles Koch.
The Koch brothers own virtually all of Koch Industries, a conglomerate whose annual revenues exceed a hundred billion dollars and is the second largest privately owed company in the country.
The Koch’s combined fortune of thirty five billion dollars is exceeded only by those of Bill Gates and Warren Buffett.
They may be libertarian true believers. But the Kochs would also benefit mightily by making government small and toothless. They would benefit more than most anyone from lowering tax rates for the wealthy. They have a massive stake in lowering the standards for environmental regulation since their oil companies and other holdings have made them one of the top ten air polluters in the United States.
The same goes for the many funders of these ultra-right causes. The money comes from very wealthy families and massive corporations. For them the right wing ideology is nothing more than a vindication for their own wealth — and a justification for their own economic self interest. And the fact is that their economic self interests conflict with those of the vast majority of their fellow citizens.
Progressives cannot be cowed by the anti-government propaganda that spews forth from these giant economic interests even when it’s dressed up in the clothing of the small number of ordinary Americans who have become Tea Party activists.
In fact the Cranicks of Obion County Tennessee are truly emblematic of the victims of the Koch brother’s vision of America. The Cranicks are victims, as are the eight million Americans who lost their jobs because of the greed and recklessness of the big Wall Street banks — because of the traders and CEO’s that ride around in corporate jets and demand that smaller and smaller quantities of their billions be taxed to pay for our common welfare.
The choice we face on November 2nd is between the interests of the Cranicks and the interests of the Kochs.
Hopefully the fire in Obion County, Tennessee will provide the light necessary to illuminate the true consequences of the Tea Party Republican agenda. And it may help provide the spark that is needed to help mobilize millions of Americans to vote November 2nd and reject that agenda at the polls.”
Robert Creamer is a long-time political organizer and strategist, and author of the recent book: Stand Up Straight: How Progressives Can Win, available on Amazon.com.
(Emphasis mine)
Framing Innocence
We must vigilantly defend our own and other’s civil liberties, and we must always take the dialog away from those who find human sexuality inherently wrong, or, as they might say, evil.
It was an overflow crowd in a meeting room at The First Church in Oberlin (1834) – the location on Sept 13 for the launch of the book “Framing Innocence” A Mothers Photographs, A Prosecutor’s Zeal, and a Small Town Response, by Lynn Powell: the story of the prosecution of Cynthia Stewart for child pornography. On 6 July 1999, Ms. Stewart – an amateur photographer, school bus driver, and mother of two- dropped off 11 rolls of film at a drug store near her home in Oberlin, Ohio. The rolls of film contained pictures of her eight year old daughter, Nora, including two of her in the shower. She picked up ten of the rolls a week later (adding to the nearly 35,000 pictures she had already taken), but the store and its lab refused to return that last roll. A month later the police arrived, and she was eventually arrested for child pornography. She faced as many as 16 years in prison, the loss of her children, and the destruction of her life. The case attracted much local, regional, and national attention. Life must have looked grim for Cynthia at that time, but her life partner David, many friends and others in the community came together for her cause, created a legal defense fund, and recruited legal help including the ACLU of Ohio, which filed an amicus brief. Offers of help came in from across the nation, and in the end, justice was served: the charges were dropped.
A warm reception was held afterwards at the Black River Cafe – no tea served, if you know what I mean, and I think you do…
We must vigilantly defend our own and other’s civil liberties, and we must always take the dialog away from those who find human sexuality inherently wrong, or, as they might say, evil.
The book is published by The New Press, and is an enlightening, entertaining, and inspiring experience.
ISBN 978-1-59558-551-6
Four years ago, I was also in a packed crowd in a church – The Civic – in Cleveland Hts. The occasion that Nov 4 was a big political rally, and the pastor observed how painful it was to have that many people in his church and not take a collection! After an out of town speaker captivated the audience, Sherrod Brown – about to be elected to the Senate – looked back as he strolled to the podium and said “He’s going somewhere!” Indeed: two years later to the day, Barrack Obama was elected President of the United States. Both his victory and Cynthia’s were achieved the same way: by many people coming together to work for a result in which they deeply believed.
charles' log 