Huffington Post User

This from a Huffington Post user (Outlandish):

 "What do a handful of billionaires want from the wholesale purchase of American Democracy? 

Does having your kid’s education sold from under them and all schools being privatized for profit, teacher’s wages cut for profit and class sizes much larger for profit make you want to vote for their cause, because all you want is a far more expensive yet inferior education for your kids? How about giving them tax cuts even though about 100 billionaires make more money annually than 100 million of you working stiffs and most pay little or no taxes, is that what your hoping for and how will you benefit apart from admiring them for their greed? 

Maybe you want to drive on toll roads and pay retail to have your roads and bridges repaired so a bridge you cross doesn’t collapse when you and your family are on it, for surely they will own the companies that will set your bridges to right and you’ll pay the going rate. Be sure that they will skim a lot of profit by cutting costs and under paying the workers but will charge you a premium without a guarantee of a job well done. 

Maybe you want to pay an annual levy that is half profit in case you are burgled or your house catches fire and you might just want it put out, you might be in need of first responders so be prepared to pay those billionaires a higher rate than you do in taxes for the same service and therefore depriving those good for nothing first responders a living wage. Because the services are privatized, an extra layer will be added for profit. Of course you have to believe the media has a left leaning bias but rest assured, the same billionaires own that media and have programmed you into thinking that a left wing media exists in America by allowing a token. 

They are banking on the fact that a lot of you will be gullible enough to kiss democracy goodbye because far too many of you already have and are on board the billionaires propaganda express. When everything that your precedents worked 2 centuries to own and develop for you is in the hands of a small number of billionaires, will you feel that losing the America you knew, your ancestors fought and died to create was worth losing will you sleep comfortably in your beds, knowing you did nothing to stop the future from being stolen away from you, my brave little Republican corporate soldiers? If all you hold sacrosanct vanishes and you’re living on sub minimum wages, will you be proud of your gullibility and be relieved because you’ve been had? Seriously! What’s wrong with you?"

Good on ya, lad!!

Time After Time...

The constant yammering from the Right says that they want to "fix" Medicare/ObamaCare.  Nothing could be further from the truth.



This time around we can "fix" the Republican party.  The Tea Partiers have broken it so severely that is unrecognizable.

ObamaCare v. VoucherCare

What no one spouting the Republican nonsense seems to get is that Paul Ryan is the author of voucherizing Medicare.  The math of that is pretty simple.  By ineffectively running a voucher system to replace Medicare, one the most efficient programs anywhere, it will make it easier to "drown government in a bathtub," to quote Grover Norquist.

Spin

In commenting on a Huffington Post story about the string of lies told at the Republican Convention this past week I collected a very negative return comment about how the Democratic Party is always lying:

"There has never been in American history a bigger group of downright liars than we have seen from team Obama and the Democratic Party every day. I hate to see a person try to do what he is unable to do. Obama is completely out of his league, he is incompetent and incapable of being President. The evidence is everywhere."

My response was:

"I am pretty sure that you misspelled Democratic it is spelled R-e-p-u-b-l-i-c-a-n. The mounting lies from the Right are stunning in their size and volume. Use a bit of fact checking and you will be forced to admit you are full of the Right-side Koolaid. Only the low information voter can believe the Righties any more. They have become the Party of Treason."

What has struck me more than ever that those on the Right are suddenly, blatantly saying things that border on or have crossed the line on what is treasonous language.  It has happened subtly and at first I didn't even notice.  They are charging ahead now however and saying they want to dismantle all of government.  It is not enough to dismantle parts of government a brick at a time they are closer to a take over and burn mentality now.  These are very scary times.

There may well be riots in the streets from the 99%-er's at some overtly oppressive moment but the gun toters are mostly Right-wingers not Lefties.  The hate speech is Right-wing driven for the most part and the stack of lies being doubled down on is thickly from the Right.  Fact checking has become a defense of sorts but the volume and vitriol of the lying is astounding.

Another, "Stupid is as Stupid does," Moment.

Are you as tired of repeating the same activity over and over again as I am?  There's that currently popular quote (or, idea) that says,"If you continue to do the same thing over and over again expecting a different outcome it is the definition of insane...", or something like that. 

Republicans have ZERO to offer us.

That will make thirty-one (31) votes of the same sort on the same subject.  If I were a moderate Republican (are there any left?) I would caucus with other moderates to vote against this next vote on "defeating" Obamacare (yes, that would be the ACA legislation/law).  Such a struggle to show just how stupid you are if you vote with the TEA PARTY surrogates on this one.  Eventually the public will identify that you were trying to take away Rights and take away Benefits.  Do you really want to go down in flames at the next election cycle by being identified WITH insane people??  No, really, do you want the forever label of "insane"??

ObamaCare... It's a Good Name.

NOT A TAX INCREASE, A TAX CUT FOR THE MIDDLE CLASS,
AND GOOD FOR THE ECONOMY

There is no massive tax hike- best estimates are 1 to 2 percent will have to pay the tax.

    28.6 million Americans entering health care exchanges will be eligible for the tax credits in 2014, valued at $110.1 billion to provide much-needed assistance to insured individuals and families facing ever increasing rising premiums, as well as to uninsured individuals and families who need help purchasing coverage.. Most of the eligible families will be employed, many for small businesses, and will have incomes between two and four times poverty (between $44,100 and $88,200 for a family of four based on 2010 poverty guidelines).

    AND THE OVERALL IMPACT ON THE ECONOMY WILL BE POSITIVE:

1) Obamacare will reduce the deficit. The Congressional Budget Office estimated in 2011 that Obamacare will reduce the federal deficit by $210 billion over the next decade. The law is expected to save about $1 trillion over its second decade, according to other CBO analyses. The CBO found that repealing the law, as Republicans attempted to do in 2011, would increase the deficit by $230 billion over the next 10 years.

2) Health care costs for young Americans won’t skyrocket. More than 3.1 million young Americans have insurance thanks to Obamacare. Without the law, the cost of acquiring an equivalent health care plan would have risen dramatically at a time when young people are still struggling with the effects of the Great Recession.

3) Millions of jobs will be created. Health reform will help create roughly 4 million jobs over the next decade, according to a 2010 Center for American Progress report, by reducing the cost of health care and making it cheaper for businesses to hire. The law will create between 250,000 and 400,000 jobs a year, and they will be spread across sectors: according to the study, the law will help create more than 200,000 manufacturing and 900,000 in the service sector by 2016.

4) It will be cheaper for employers to provide health care. American businesses are under tremendous pressure thanks to rising health care costs, and these costs are often passed on to customers (one study estimates that each car sold by General Motors contains $1,200 in built-in health costs). The ACA, however, will make it cheaper for businesses to provide care, and not just by reducing the cost of care. Small businesses are already receiving tax credits contained in the law to help insure their employees, and it has already offered more than $4.7 billion in reinsurance payments to companies that are providing health care to retirees who aren’t yet eligible for Medicare.

Lifted as a whole bit from a Democratic website.

More Supreme Drama

Now that the hoopla about the Supreme Court making a historic decision is over (at least for the moment) we can examine a few things.

Last post I talked about some things of historical record about the SCOTUS.  This is a continuation of those ideas. 

One of the powers that most people believe the court has is called Judicial Review.  That is, the theory is that the court can be asked to rule on the constitutionality of a law that has been passed by both the House of Representatives and Senate and then signed by the President.  If you go scrounging around in the Constitution looking for the enabling paragraph for this power you won’t find it.  It simply is not there.  The SCOTUS took this power to itself without a serious challenge even though the founding fathers NEVER intended to grant this sort of power to the high court.  Judicial Review needs to be legislated against since we have allowed precedence to build up from the first day the court took on this power.  The SCOTUS has put itself in the position of the ruling Kings and Queens of the country and it is just plain wrong.  As the court has become more politicized during the last several years and certain members have slipped in their ability to even approximately follow the concept of Judicial Restraint (notably Justices Scalia, Alito and Thomas) this has become apparent.

The court answers to the other two branches of government but has worked to distance themselves from any controls.  Impeachment is not a useable tool since it takes such a large number of Representatives and Senators to bring this about.  If Congress passes law and the President signed and We the People do not like what they did we need to vote those folks out of office AND elect people that will do what WE want.

Now, we can push the one idea that makes political sense in depoliticizing the high court.  Elect Presidents that act in a less political way when appointing justices.  Push for reform, as a matter of law, through Congress.  That is, money out of politics, establish federal restraint for the high court as a matter of law and other similar ideas.

On a separate note the fight is now to be engaged for keeping ObamaCare.  That’s right, the fight starts now.  The Right-wing has now declared that there should be a revolution.  Seriously, that has been the war cry from the right almost minutes after the decision was announced.  The money will come pouring into the Right-wing coffers will likely be astounding.  Already the lies have started, for example, the fear mongered warning that there would now be a 3.8% on the sale of your home.  This is nonsense.  Put your back into it and go to Snopes to debunk this for yourself.  IF you make more than $250,000 per year (tax bracket in the 15% range) you will be taxed an additional 3.8% on your investment income… not on your house.  This misdirection and dis-information is typical of the formation of lies to push you to the Right.  It is just another lie based on low information input.