The following is an email reply to a fellow MoveOn member concerning the recent last minute Christmas compromise on the payroll tax extension:
Dave,
One-upmanship (cool word) is exactly the game being played.
It seems that everyone thinks that the Dems won this round, including the right.
This was no victory.This deal was awful for the Dems.
I think that this is as bad as the deal they made last year to extend the deficit-causing Bush tax cuts.
Remember that one?
The Dems wanted to extend them only for income under $250,000, plus they wanted to extend unemployment benefits, which was the right thing to do.
Letting the tax cuts expire on the wealthy, who were not investing because of lack of demand, would have helped pay for the extensions, thereby not adding to the deficit/debt, which the Republicons are always screaming about.
I take that back. They do make one exception. They never scream about the deficit/debt when they are fighting for tax cuts for the wealthy. It doesn't matter how big a hole that puts in the deficit because they will then use that gigantic hole as the excuse to cut government programs that help the non-wealthy.
That's what I call "Starve the Beast" economics.
If Obama and the Dems had held out, the Republicons ('cons for short) would have caved. Instead, the stupid and weak Dems caved. And who knows what effect those tax cut extensions are having on the economy other than growing the deficit/debt?
As far as extending unemployment benefits; the non-partisan Congressional Budget Office has estimated that each $1 spent on unemployment benefits generates up to $1.90 in economic growth, making it the most effective policy for increasing growth among 11 options it analyzed in 2010.
This current farce is actually worse than that one if you consider the following:
*The Dems caved on something that was absolutely crucial;
a small increase in taxes on income over one million$ to pay for the payroll tax cuts so that we won't have to replace the lost revenue with revenue from the general fund, which will increase the deficit. You know, that deficit that the 'cons are using as the excuse to cut all social programs?
*The Dems wanted to double the size of the payroll cut in order to make it more effective. They caved on that too.
*They gave the 'cons the Keystone Pipeline vote, which Obama will have to decide. Which makes the double cave-ins doubly worse if he decides in favor.
Dave, you made a very important point, "it's completely misleading to call it a tax cut. It's not a tax cut, it's a tax holiday, meaning it's supposed to be temporary."
This is absolutely crucial.
I even fell into the trap of failing to use the term "tax holiday".
Obama and the Dems were going around accusing the 'cons of "raising taxes on the poor and middle class", using the rhetoric of the "Starve the Beast" game plan.
That plan demonizes taxes in order to condition people into believing that raising taxes is always bad and cutting taxes is always good.
Obama and the Dems compound that error by talking about these payroll taxes as a burden, again using "Starve the Beast" rhetoric. The 'cons can use that against the Dems in the future. I already hear some of them saying "let's get rid of the payroll tax completely".
This is all bullshit. These taxes aren't a burden, they are what's keeping you from starving if you are lucky enough to live past the age to which the 'cons want to raise the Social Security minimum to.
Plus, the people paying these taxes are the ones who are working. They are the ones who are doing OK.
It's the people out of work who are struggling or suffering. They are the ones who need the social programs that the 'cons are desperately trying to destroy by increasing the deficit because they refuse to raise taxes on millionaires.
Rather than using the "Starve the Beast", "taxes are a burden" argument, they should be using the Keynesian "tax cuts as an economic stimulus" argument, emphasizing that they are temporary by calling it a tax "holiday".
The Republicons, however, don't like temporary tax cuts. They only like permanent tax cuts and, now that they are fully engaged in "class warfare", only for the rich. That's right, you've heard them complain that "fifty percent of Americans don't pay any taxes".
All of the Republicon candidates, with the possible exception of Ron Paul, want to raise taxes on those Americans. I actually agree with them. I think that all of the Bush tax cuts should expire (immediately on the top percents, eventually, when the economy is strong, on everyone else) because I don't want the deficit and debt to increase and because I want to fund programs like Medicare and Medicaid.
The 'cons just want to raise taxes on the lower classes, take away all of the social programs that help them and give the wealthy really big tax CUTS.
That's class warfare, Republicon style.
What the 'cons don't tell us about those people "who don't pay any taxes" is that they rounded that number up from forty six percent and that it is only Federal Income Taxes that aren't being paid. They don't tell us that these people pay sales, excise, property and a host of other taxes, including those payroll taxes, and that these taxes add up to over fifty percent of all taxes collected by the government.
And here is an even more interesting fact that the 'cons don't tell us: it was Reagan and Bush Jr. who took a lot of these people off the tax roles by lowering the tax rates and then increasing deductions and credits, as part of their "Starve the Beast" economic policy. They used the same rhetoric that the Dems are stupidly using, "relieving the burden of taxes on lower incomes". But they left out the part about blowing a hole in the deficit/debt so that they can take away social programs and leave everyone to the tender mercies of the "free market".
Read my pervious post on "Starve The Beast".
Wednesday, December 28, 2011
Wednesday, September 28, 2011
The Job Creators, Part II
Elizabeth Warren has been getting a lot of praise from the left for her remarks concerning the "class warfare" charges being made by conservatives against those who think that the top marginal tax rates should go back up.
It's about time someone on the left finally confronted the conservatives on this issue. Conservatives have been allowed to get away with saying all kinds of crap about the rich and taxes. The "class warfare" charge is a tactic designed to obfuscate the issue and tar Dems and libs as dirty fighters.
However, to my regret, Obama and others do make statements that make it easy to accuse them of using class warfare. By saying things like "the rich don't pay their fair share of taxes", it implies that the wealthy are responsible for writing the tax code. While it's true that some of them use their money to "persuade" politicians to give them all kinds of tax breaks and right wing billionaires like the Koch brothers are doing everything they can to reduce and eliminate taxes on the wealthy, ultimately it is the responsibility of Congress and the President to formulate the tax code. Besides, as we've seen, many wealthy people agree with a progressive tax code and think that in this time of dangerous mounting debt it's only fair and sensible for the wealthy to be paying more taxes. So the problem is tax policy not wealthy people.
So much of what the right says on this topic is truly outrageous but for now I will focus on what Ms. Warren had to say recently and the conservative reaction to it.
It seems as if this is the first time that someone with major media exposure has presented a counter to the right wing argument that the wealthy's money belongs to them, they owe nothing to society and government has no right to steal it from them.
Anyone who has read my blog posts or my emails for the past few years, dare I say, would have come across some pretty good arguments for a more progressive tax code.
And, if I may be so bold, I would suggest that if Ms. Warren had read my last post from August 21, "The Job Creators, Part I", she could have offered a much better response than the one she posed recently.
To tell you the truth, I think it was kinda weak.
Here's what she said:
"I hear all this, you know, 'Well, this is class warfare, this is whatever,'" Warren said. "No. There is nobody in this country who got rich on his own — nobody.
"You built a factory out there? Good for you. But I want to be clear. You moved your goods to market on the roads the rest of us paid for. You hired workers the rest of us paid to educate. You were safe in your factory because of police-forces and fire-forces that the rest of us paid for. You didn't have to worry that marauding bands would come and seize everything at your factory — and hire someone to protect against this — because of the work the rest of us did.
"Now look, you built a factory and it turned into something terrific, or a great idea. God bless — keep a big hunk of it. But part of the underlying social contract is, you take a hunk of that and pay forward for the next kid who comes along."1
The first two sentences are completely, undeniably true.
But then the following sentences are full of all kinds of problems.
(A big problem that we have in this country, when it comes to debating issues, is a lack of precision in our language. Lack of precision in language leads to faulty reasoning and bad decisions. Conservatives take advantage of this imprecision to construct overly-simplistic arguments that seem plausible on the surface but are really seriously flawed.
And if liberals are not careful with their language they can be stumped by these arguments.)
Apparently speaking to some kind of a business-person, entrepreneur or investor, Ms. Warren says "You built a factory out there".
Wait a second Liz, you're falling for the right wing description of reality. The rich guy didn't build the factory. A bunch of other people built it for him.
It may have been an idea he had or gotten from someone else and he might have used his money or borrowed it from someone else or gotten someone else to invest in it for him in order to pay for the building of the factory, but that's a far cry from him actually building a factory himself, which is exactly what Warren's phraseology implies.
This is the kind of reasoning that lets people think that the rich "create jobs" and gives them more credit than they deserve. It also fails to give credit to the rest of us who contribute much more to the "creation of jobs".
And those people who actually, physically built the factory were only able to do so because they were supplied by a bunch of other people. And those people in turn had to rely on another bunch of people. And so on and so on. And let's not forget the contribution of the architects who designed the factory and the people who trained the architects and so on and so on.
The next mistake she makes is that she limits the contribution we all make to the economy, which gives the rich guy the opportunity to invest in various ways, to what we pay for in taxes through the government.
This gave Rush Limbag the opportunity to say "let's get rid of government so then we won't owe them anything".
I'll have more to say on that later.
We all contribute to the economy independently of the government, as well.
Next, after laying out her argument, which is as good as it goes, she mentions the "underlying social contract" and implies redistribution of wealth "for the next kid who comes along". Which is great. But what about the rest of us who created the economy that created that wealth?
Very importantly, I see that she is addressing her argument to the "rich guy", as if he's saying "you can't tax me because I'm a job creator!" Her argument should be addressed to the Republicans and the right wingers who are saying that, not the rich guy. She is falling into the "class warfare" trap, making this a fight between rich people and the rest of us. This can foster resentment towards rich people just for being rich. This is the wrong reason to base your argument on. It also allows the right to obfuscate the real issue and attack people like Ms. Warren.
Which is exactly what they've been been doing. They are actually playing her statements back to their audiences and using them, very effectively, to attack those of us who want to raise taxes.
Read my previous post. Our beef is with the right and tax policy not the rich. This is where the battleground belongs.
It's about time someone on the left finally confronted the conservatives on this issue. Conservatives have been allowed to get away with saying all kinds of crap about the rich and taxes. The "class warfare" charge is a tactic designed to obfuscate the issue and tar Dems and libs as dirty fighters.
However, to my regret, Obama and others do make statements that make it easy to accuse them of using class warfare. By saying things like "the rich don't pay their fair share of taxes", it implies that the wealthy are responsible for writing the tax code. While it's true that some of them use their money to "persuade" politicians to give them all kinds of tax breaks and right wing billionaires like the Koch brothers are doing everything they can to reduce and eliminate taxes on the wealthy, ultimately it is the responsibility of Congress and the President to formulate the tax code. Besides, as we've seen, many wealthy people agree with a progressive tax code and think that in this time of dangerous mounting debt it's only fair and sensible for the wealthy to be paying more taxes. So the problem is tax policy not wealthy people.
So much of what the right says on this topic is truly outrageous but for now I will focus on what Ms. Warren had to say recently and the conservative reaction to it.
It seems as if this is the first time that someone with major media exposure has presented a counter to the right wing argument that the wealthy's money belongs to them, they owe nothing to society and government has no right to steal it from them.
Anyone who has read my blog posts or my emails for the past few years, dare I say, would have come across some pretty good arguments for a more progressive tax code.
And, if I may be so bold, I would suggest that if Ms. Warren had read my last post from August 21, "The Job Creators, Part I", she could have offered a much better response than the one she posed recently.
To tell you the truth, I think it was kinda weak.
Here's what she said:
"I hear all this, you know, 'Well, this is class warfare, this is whatever,'" Warren said. "No. There is nobody in this country who got rich on his own — nobody.
"You built a factory out there? Good for you. But I want to be clear. You moved your goods to market on the roads the rest of us paid for. You hired workers the rest of us paid to educate. You were safe in your factory because of police-forces and fire-forces that the rest of us paid for. You didn't have to worry that marauding bands would come and seize everything at your factory — and hire someone to protect against this — because of the work the rest of us did.
"Now look, you built a factory and it turned into something terrific, or a great idea. God bless — keep a big hunk of it. But part of the underlying social contract is, you take a hunk of that and pay forward for the next kid who comes along."1
The first two sentences are completely, undeniably true.
But then the following sentences are full of all kinds of problems.
(A big problem that we have in this country, when it comes to debating issues, is a lack of precision in our language. Lack of precision in language leads to faulty reasoning and bad decisions. Conservatives take advantage of this imprecision to construct overly-simplistic arguments that seem plausible on the surface but are really seriously flawed.
And if liberals are not careful with their language they can be stumped by these arguments.)
Apparently speaking to some kind of a business-person, entrepreneur or investor, Ms. Warren says "You built a factory out there".
Wait a second Liz, you're falling for the right wing description of reality. The rich guy didn't build the factory. A bunch of other people built it for him.
It may have been an idea he had or gotten from someone else and he might have used his money or borrowed it from someone else or gotten someone else to invest in it for him in order to pay for the building of the factory, but that's a far cry from him actually building a factory himself, which is exactly what Warren's phraseology implies.
This is the kind of reasoning that lets people think that the rich "create jobs" and gives them more credit than they deserve. It also fails to give credit to the rest of us who contribute much more to the "creation of jobs".
And those people who actually, physically built the factory were only able to do so because they were supplied by a bunch of other people. And those people in turn had to rely on another bunch of people. And so on and so on. And let's not forget the contribution of the architects who designed the factory and the people who trained the architects and so on and so on.
The next mistake she makes is that she limits the contribution we all make to the economy, which gives the rich guy the opportunity to invest in various ways, to what we pay for in taxes through the government.
This gave Rush Limbag the opportunity to say "let's get rid of government so then we won't owe them anything".
I'll have more to say on that later.
We all contribute to the economy independently of the government, as well.
Next, after laying out her argument, which is as good as it goes, she mentions the "underlying social contract" and implies redistribution of wealth "for the next kid who comes along". Which is great. But what about the rest of us who created the economy that created that wealth?
Very importantly, I see that she is addressing her argument to the "rich guy", as if he's saying "you can't tax me because I'm a job creator!" Her argument should be addressed to the Republicans and the right wingers who are saying that, not the rich guy. She is falling into the "class warfare" trap, making this a fight between rich people and the rest of us. This can foster resentment towards rich people just for being rich. This is the wrong reason to base your argument on. It also allows the right to obfuscate the real issue and attack people like Ms. Warren.
Which is exactly what they've been been doing. They are actually playing her statements back to their audiences and using them, very effectively, to attack those of us who want to raise taxes.
Read my previous post. Our beef is with the right and tax policy not the rich. This is where the battleground belongs.
Sunday, August 21, 2011
The Job Creators, Part I
Last April I signed a petition telling my representatives to pass "The People's Budget", an alternative budget proposal developed by the Congressional Progressive Caucus. I added the following personal note:
"The words "bold" and "courageous" have been used to describe Representative Ryan and his "Roadmap for America's Future" but the words "unmitigated" and "gall" would be much more accurate. The shameless vehemence with which the Republicans pursue tax cuts for the wealthy, at a time when the country faces an enormous debt/deficit crisis and desperately needs revenue, is repugnant. This audacity is fueled by the libertarian notion that the wealthy deserve everything they get and owe nothing to society because they earned everything they got and society had absolutely nothing to do with it.
Rush Limbag said on his show yesterday that in our society only "5% pull the wagon, the rest get a free ride".
In reality, the wealthy's riches come from the labor and spending of the rest of society. Before wealth trickles down, it gushes up. This is one reason why progressive taxes are both fair and just. Tax reform is needed. The Democrats should counter the Republican's flat tax with the "progressive consumption tax" proposed by economist Robert Frank. It has all of the advantages of the consumption tax while maintaining progressivity.
Even the wealthy should like this tax because only their spending is taxed, not income or investments."
Conservatives and libertarians have a view of how the world works that, while it appeals to their emotional biases, bears little resemblance to reality.
Of course the same thing can be said of liberals, but when it comes to explaining who creates jobs and how they are created, the "conservatarian" view is so warped that it bends reality like a pretzel.
Rush Limbag is the voice of the angry and hateful side of the conservative brain. He gives full vent to the emotions that cause this warped view of reality. That's why he says things like "only 5% pull the wagon, the rest get a free ride".
So who are these "job creators" and how do they do what they do?
Rush implies that it is the top 5% wealthiest in our society.
Believe it or not, the Republicans are even more extreme than Mr. Dimbulb. They say it's the top 2%.
These are the same people who Obama wants the deficit-causing Bush tax cuts to expire on, like it was supposed to at the end of last year.
And how do these fortunate few, as the right would have us believe, single handedly "create" all of the jobs?
Basically, they do it by investing in the economy.
They invest their effort, drive, initiative, knowledge, hard work, talent, ideas, ambition, greed, inherited wealth, swindled wealth, illegally gotten wealth, lawsuit won wealth, lottery won wealth or hard earned capital.
They can do it by performing a service, starting or buying a business, pulling off a scam or just taking advantage of being in a privileged position.
But what exactly is the economy?
That would be the other 98% of us.
It's easy to depict that top 2% as being the only thing responsible for "creating" jobs when you view the economy as something that exists in, of and by itself, without any effort from anyone besides the wealthy.
That's how conservatives and libertarians like to look at it because it's the only way their arguments work.
But the economy is the sum total of the efforts of all of us and all who came before us.
The economy is society itself.
And it is society that creates jobs. By creating demand.
By supplying a workforce and performing all of the jobs that are required to make a vibrant economy, society provides the opportunity for individuals to be or become rich. Society builds and maintains the infrastucture that the economy requires to operate in and provides the fuel that powers the economy.
That fuel is the money earned from labor.
That money is then spent and gushes up to the top 2%.
I call this the "gushes up" theory of economics.
The wealthy are totally dependant on society and government for their wealth.
By forming governments, society protects the rights of individuals that allow them to be or become rich ( the court systems, property rights, patent laws, contract laws, etc.).
The Police and Fire Departments protect their property and businesses.
The Military protects their assests at home and abroad.
The roads and bridges transport their products.
Without government there would be no wealthy individuals.
Without government, society, if you could call it that, would not be able to advance. Those individuals would be living in anarchy, like the rest of us, with every man poor and every man for himself. True, pure libertarianism.
The top 2% don't create jobs because they didn't create society.
It is society that creates the top 2%.
The top 2% are just one part of the machinery that is the economy.
Yes, a very important part. Because they can be crucial to expanding the size of the economy, thus increasing wealth for all of us.
As Reggie Jackson once put it, they are the straw that stirs the drink.
They deserve to be rewarded. But they owe a portion of that wealth, that manages to find its way into their bank accounts, to society because society is, by far, mostly responsible for the creation of that wealth.
That is why progressive taxes are both fair and just.
"The words "bold" and "courageous" have been used to describe Representative Ryan and his "Roadmap for America's Future" but the words "unmitigated" and "gall" would be much more accurate. The shameless vehemence with which the Republicans pursue tax cuts for the wealthy, at a time when the country faces an enormous debt/deficit crisis and desperately needs revenue, is repugnant. This audacity is fueled by the libertarian notion that the wealthy deserve everything they get and owe nothing to society because they earned everything they got and society had absolutely nothing to do with it.
Rush Limbag said on his show yesterday that in our society only "5% pull the wagon, the rest get a free ride".
In reality, the wealthy's riches come from the labor and spending of the rest of society. Before wealth trickles down, it gushes up. This is one reason why progressive taxes are both fair and just. Tax reform is needed. The Democrats should counter the Republican's flat tax with the "progressive consumption tax" proposed by economist Robert Frank. It has all of the advantages of the consumption tax while maintaining progressivity.
Even the wealthy should like this tax because only their spending is taxed, not income or investments."
Conservatives and libertarians have a view of how the world works that, while it appeals to their emotional biases, bears little resemblance to reality.
Of course the same thing can be said of liberals, but when it comes to explaining who creates jobs and how they are created, the "conservatarian" view is so warped that it bends reality like a pretzel.
Rush Limbag is the voice of the angry and hateful side of the conservative brain. He gives full vent to the emotions that cause this warped view of reality. That's why he says things like "only 5% pull the wagon, the rest get a free ride".
So who are these "job creators" and how do they do what they do?
Rush implies that it is the top 5% wealthiest in our society.
Believe it or not, the Republicans are even more extreme than Mr. Dimbulb. They say it's the top 2%.
These are the same people who Obama wants the deficit-causing Bush tax cuts to expire on, like it was supposed to at the end of last year.
And how do these fortunate few, as the right would have us believe, single handedly "create" all of the jobs?
Basically, they do it by investing in the economy.
They invest their effort, drive, initiative, knowledge, hard work, talent, ideas, ambition, greed, inherited wealth, swindled wealth, illegally gotten wealth, lawsuit won wealth, lottery won wealth or hard earned capital.
They can do it by performing a service, starting or buying a business, pulling off a scam or just taking advantage of being in a privileged position.
But what exactly is the economy?
That would be the other 98% of us.
It's easy to depict that top 2% as being the only thing responsible for "creating" jobs when you view the economy as something that exists in, of and by itself, without any effort from anyone besides the wealthy.
That's how conservatives and libertarians like to look at it because it's the only way their arguments work.
But the economy is the sum total of the efforts of all of us and all who came before us.
The economy is society itself.
And it is society that creates jobs. By creating demand.
By supplying a workforce and performing all of the jobs that are required to make a vibrant economy, society provides the opportunity for individuals to be or become rich. Society builds and maintains the infrastucture that the economy requires to operate in and provides the fuel that powers the economy.
That fuel is the money earned from labor.
That money is then spent and gushes up to the top 2%.
I call this the "gushes up" theory of economics.
The wealthy are totally dependant on society and government for their wealth.
By forming governments, society protects the rights of individuals that allow them to be or become rich ( the court systems, property rights, patent laws, contract laws, etc.).
The Police and Fire Departments protect their property and businesses.
The Military protects their assests at home and abroad.
The roads and bridges transport their products.
Without government there would be no wealthy individuals.
Without government, society, if you could call it that, would not be able to advance. Those individuals would be living in anarchy, like the rest of us, with every man poor and every man for himself. True, pure libertarianism.
The top 2% don't create jobs because they didn't create society.
It is society that creates the top 2%.
The top 2% are just one part of the machinery that is the economy.
Yes, a very important part. Because they can be crucial to expanding the size of the economy, thus increasing wealth for all of us.
As Reggie Jackson once put it, they are the straw that stirs the drink.
They deserve to be rewarded. But they owe a portion of that wealth, that manages to find its way into their bank accounts, to society because society is, by far, mostly responsible for the creation of that wealth.
That is why progressive taxes are both fair and just.
Sunday, July 31, 2011
Starve The Beast
From Wikipedia:
"Starving the beast" is a fiscal-political strategy of some American conservatives[1][2] to cut taxes, depriving the government of revenue that enables spending on social programs such as Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid, in an effort to create a fiscal budget crisis that would then force the federal government to reduce spending. "
I don't know what causes me more grief: the dirty, underhanded and deceitful tactics of the right or the pathetic, bungling ineptitude of Democrats and the left.
In a previous post I explained how the right made fools of all of us during the healthcare reform debate.
But for the past thirty years they have been pulling a much bigger scam: the "Starve The Beast" strategy.
Conservatives hate Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid. They opposed those programs from their inception and have been fighting furiously to destroy them ever since.
However, conservatives were unable to convince the American people that insuring themselves against financial and medical ruin was actually an assault on their liberty.
In 1961 "The Great Communicator," Ronald Reagan, produced a ten minute recording: "Ronald Reagan Speaks Out Against Socialized Medicine."
On it he warned that subsidized medicine would curtail Americans' freedom and that "pretty soon your son won't decide when he's in school, where he will go or what he will do for a living. He will wait for the government to tell him."
Time has not only proven these scare tactics to be ridiculous nonsense but has also shown that these programs actually increased Americans' freedom by removing the threats posed by the absence of these programs. (Being unable to retire or pay your medical bills would put a crimp on your freedoms, don't you think?)
These programs also allowed an unprecedented era of prosperity and security with the largest expansion of the middle class in human history.
These programs also became enormously popular.
Except with certain conservatives. Like the number one "Starve The Beast" proponent, activist Grover Norquist who famously said "My goal is to cut government in half in twenty-five years, to get it down to the size where we can drown it in the bathtub."
And Vice-President Dick Cheney.
Then-Treasury Secretary Paul O'Neill warned about the future financial dangers presented by the deficits that the Bush tax cuts were creating.
But Cheney said "Reagan proved deficits don't matter." In other words, just cut taxes, no matter what that might do to the deficit.
You see, because of the enormous popularity of these programs, conservative politicians couldn't tell the voters that they were plotting to destroy them.
Hence the "Starve The Beast" strategy.
Conservatives would launch a campaign to villainize the very concept of taxes and government in order to get the voters to support tax cuts regardless of the consequences.
"the government has no right to take away your money"
"taxes are government theft"
"the government is stealing your money"
"the government taxes your money in order to give it to people who don't work"
The Reagan and Bush II administrations would drastically cut taxes while increasing spending tremendously.
The resulting deficits, which added greatly to the national debt, would then do what the Republicans couldn't do by being politically honest: end Social Security and Medicare.
What really makes me sick is the way the Dems and the left have allowed the right wingers to get away with this. I mean, "Starve The Beast" was an open secret. The right didn't talk much about it, or it wouldn't have worked, but it was known about. The left talked about it even less than conservatives did. Even now, with the budget talks and the Dems about to give the Republicans everything they want, it's hardly mentioned.
To add insult to injury, the Republicons recently defeated the Public Option (despite Democratic control of the Presidency, both houses and huge public support) by, among other false charges, accusing the Dems of wanting to cut Medicare. This is what gave rise to the "Get Your Government Hands Off My Medicare" signs at the anti-government Tea Party rallies.
Now with control of the House, the Republicons are about to use their anti-government hands to tear Medicare to pieces.
Somewhere, bastards like Grover Norquist, Dick Cheney and Rush Limbag must be laughing at how they put one over on the American people. Not only are the scumbag Republicans on the verge of destroying every government program that helps people who aren't rich, but with the help of the disgustingly weak Democrats, they are also about to cut their own top marginal income tax rates down to 24%, lower than it was during Reagan's second term (28%).
And it gets even better! Capital gains and estate taxes will drop down to zero!!
That means that the very richest people in the country will be paying next to nothing in taxes! Isn't that great?
Get ready for more medical rationing at higher cost!
These fucks will be lighting their victory cigars with hundred dollar bills.
"Starving the beast" is a fiscal-political strategy of some American conservatives[1][2] to cut taxes, depriving the government of revenue that enables spending on social programs such as Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid, in an effort to create a fiscal budget crisis that would then force the federal government to reduce spending. "
I don't know what causes me more grief: the dirty, underhanded and deceitful tactics of the right or the pathetic, bungling ineptitude of Democrats and the left.
In a previous post I explained how the right made fools of all of us during the healthcare reform debate.
But for the past thirty years they have been pulling a much bigger scam: the "Starve The Beast" strategy.
Conservatives hate Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid. They opposed those programs from their inception and have been fighting furiously to destroy them ever since.
However, conservatives were unable to convince the American people that insuring themselves against financial and medical ruin was actually an assault on their liberty.
In 1961 "The Great Communicator," Ronald Reagan, produced a ten minute recording: "Ronald Reagan Speaks Out Against Socialized Medicine."
On it he warned that subsidized medicine would curtail Americans' freedom and that "pretty soon your son won't decide when he's in school, where he will go or what he will do for a living. He will wait for the government to tell him."
Time has not only proven these scare tactics to be ridiculous nonsense but has also shown that these programs actually increased Americans' freedom by removing the threats posed by the absence of these programs. (Being unable to retire or pay your medical bills would put a crimp on your freedoms, don't you think?)
These programs also allowed an unprecedented era of prosperity and security with the largest expansion of the middle class in human history.
These programs also became enormously popular.
Except with certain conservatives. Like the number one "Starve The Beast" proponent, activist Grover Norquist who famously said "My goal is to cut government in half in twenty-five years, to get it down to the size where we can drown it in the bathtub."
And Vice-President Dick Cheney.
Then-Treasury Secretary Paul O'Neill warned about the future financial dangers presented by the deficits that the Bush tax cuts were creating.
But Cheney said "Reagan proved deficits don't matter." In other words, just cut taxes, no matter what that might do to the deficit.
You see, because of the enormous popularity of these programs, conservative politicians couldn't tell the voters that they were plotting to destroy them.
Hence the "Starve The Beast" strategy.
Conservatives would launch a campaign to villainize the very concept of taxes and government in order to get the voters to support tax cuts regardless of the consequences.
"the government has no right to take away your money"
"taxes are government theft"
"the government is stealing your money"
"the government taxes your money in order to give it to people who don't work"
The Reagan and Bush II administrations would drastically cut taxes while increasing spending tremendously.
The resulting deficits, which added greatly to the national debt, would then do what the Republicans couldn't do by being politically honest: end Social Security and Medicare.
What really makes me sick is the way the Dems and the left have allowed the right wingers to get away with this. I mean, "Starve The Beast" was an open secret. The right didn't talk much about it, or it wouldn't have worked, but it was known about. The left talked about it even less than conservatives did. Even now, with the budget talks and the Dems about to give the Republicans everything they want, it's hardly mentioned.
To add insult to injury, the Republicons recently defeated the Public Option (despite Democratic control of the Presidency, both houses and huge public support) by, among other false charges, accusing the Dems of wanting to cut Medicare. This is what gave rise to the "Get Your Government Hands Off My Medicare" signs at the anti-government Tea Party rallies.
Now with control of the House, the Republicons are about to use their anti-government hands to tear Medicare to pieces.
Somewhere, bastards like Grover Norquist, Dick Cheney and Rush Limbag must be laughing at how they put one over on the American people. Not only are the scumbag Republicans on the verge of destroying every government program that helps people who aren't rich, but with the help of the disgustingly weak Democrats, they are also about to cut their own top marginal income tax rates down to 24%, lower than it was during Reagan's second term (28%).
And it gets even better! Capital gains and estate taxes will drop down to zero!!
That means that the very richest people in the country will be paying next to nothing in taxes! Isn't that great?
Get ready for more medical rationing at higher cost!
These fucks will be lighting their victory cigars with hundred dollar bills.
Thursday, April 28, 2011
A Yuge Debt Of Gratitude
The American people owe a huuge debt of gratitude to Donald Trump and the Birthers. I mean, before we elected our first African "American" President, we never heard that much about the "natural born" citizenship status, required of presidential candidates by the US Constitution. Now, thanks to D.T. and the birthers, we will all be more careful when we choose our presidents.
Do you realize that if these brave American patriots had not been so expertly versed in the Constitution, that we might have continued to pay almost no attention to some poorly written rule from the 1700's?
Do you realize the peril that these heroes have saved the country from?
Just in case you don't, let me illustrate a scenario that is not only possible but probable.
Say an American citizen happens to be seven or eight months pregnant. Say this citizen decides to take a vacation in, God forbid, some socialist country like Europe. Then, as luck would have it, she gives birth prematurely, while she's still in Europe! And what if this baby grows up and decides to run for President?
I mean, if it wasn't for all the attention this important Constitutional requirement has been given by the Donald and the birthers, the baby being born in Europe might have gone unnoticed.
Why is this so important?
Let me remind you, the baby was born in Europe. Some of that socialism could have rubbed off onto the baby during the most impressionable time of its life. And what if that baby becomes President when it grows up? Thanks to Trump and the birthers, this catastrophe has been averted.
How about that Trump, though?
Did you see his press conference? He was masterful.
After putting that liberal reporter in his place for asking Trump about the "unbelievable" things his investigators were finding out in Hawaii about Obama, he deftly pointed out that it was now time to talk about more important issues; like how did Obama get into Columbia and Harvard.
Because he had "heard" things and "read" things about Obama being a really bad student.
Yeah, he heard and read that from the same people who said Obama was forging legal documents in order to violate the Constitution.
This guy has some set of balls. To quote The Donald himself, "they're huuge"
Can it now be said, unequivocally, that Trump is, by far, the most obnoxious person ever to run for President of the United States of America?
What a fucking jerk.
Speaking of important issues;
do you want to know why it took Obama two and a half years to produce the long form version of his birth certificate? Because it takes that long to manufacture a forgery that can fool the gullible press.
But it's almost impossible to put one past the geniuses in the birther movement. These sharp eyed truth detectors immediately spotted an error in Obama's "birth certificate". In the space that records Obama's father's race, the forger typed in "African"! The birthers have pointed out that "African" is not a race! They said that, in 1961 the term "Negro" would have been used.
Anyone with half a brain would realize that this is proof of forgery.
On the other hand, anyone with a whole brain that worked would realize that it's much more likely that a $1.00 an hour hospital clerk (or whatever they made back then) would make that "mistake" than an expert forger who Obama must have paid millions of dollars to make the forgery, then millions more to keep quite about it afterward.
Here's something interesting that illustrates my point; I came across a copy of my father's birth certificate and it said he was born in Aberdeen, Maryland. That was a mistake. He was born in Aberdeen, Washington.
An odd mistake but should I suspect perfidy?
I was listening to WABC radio (the New York station that carries all of the right wing heavyweights) yesterday morning and the host was talking with another weekend host. The weekend host has long been peddling a different disqualification story than the "Obama and others have been conspiring to hide the truth about his place of birth by producing forged documents and lying to the American people" theory.
This guy is not a "nut" like the birthers, though. He never pushed the "Obama wasn't born in the U.S." story. He has legal arguments that Obama and his Muslim-socialist co-conspirators can't lie their way out of.
He says that the actual legal definition of "natural born" American requires that both parents themselves be born in the United States!
Ah ha! We got him!
This host must be overjoyed about the recent revelations because now everyone can focus in on him and his much better technicality for overturning the will of the American people, which was decided by an open and fair election in 2008.
There are only two things that I've been wondering about.
In order to qualify to be President, do the parents of the President have to be "natural born" too?
In other words do their parents have to be "natural born", which means born to parents born in the U.S.?
How far back do we have to go?
Because this might mean that the only people who would be allowed to be President are full blooded American Indians! Wouldn't that be a kick in the ass?
The other thing I wonder about is, does this guy and the birthers realize that the guy they owe this great victory to, their hero, the guy who is leading the Republican field, the only contender with the courage to tell the truth about Obama -- I'm talking about "The Donald", Mr. Trump -- do they know that his mother was born in Scotland?
Now that's a real kick in the ass...hole, Trump.
Wednesday, April 27, 2011
Donald Trump: YUGE Asshole, YUGE
My wife told me that my last post on the natural born Birther Trump seemed to concede that Obama wasn't born in the U.S.. Not so. I was merely assuming the Birthers' position in order to critique their rationale.
Now that Obama has released the original long form version of his Birth Certificate, is this issue finally over?
Of course not. We're dealing with Birthers here. Trump actually thinks that the release of the Certificate is a reason for suspicion.
From Huffpost Aol news;
"Speaking at a press conference in New Hampshire, the potential presidential contender said ... "it is rather amazing that all of the sudden" the document surfaces. He suggested it should be inspected to ensure its authenticity."
Trump is like, "Release the Birth Certificate! Release the Birth Certificate! Release the Birth Certificate!" "Why won't he release the Birth Certificate?" Then after he does so, "Why did Obama release it so suddenly? How strange." Now he hopes "Obama's birth certificate checks out to be real." Sure he does.
Like the other Birthers, Trump wants to know why Obama didn't release the certificate a long time ago.
What Obama did do a long time ago was exactly what Trump did recently when he wanted to demonstrate how easy it is to produce a birth certificate. Trump said he would produce his own birth certificate, so he asked the hospital he was born in to release his birth certificate.
And Trump's hospital did exactly what Obama's did; it produced a "Certificate of Live Birth", not the long form which Trump was demanding from Obama.
The Certificate of Live Birth says:
"This copy serves as prima facie evidence of the fact of birth in any court proceeding ."
This might be legal proof in any court proceeding but it doesn't mean shit to a Birther.
So because Trump has been saying that a Certificate of Live Birth isn't any sort of proof whatsoever, he had to go back and get the "long form", which is exactly what Obama just did.
Now the problem is; he didn't do it sooner -- and he did it all of a sudden.
You see, when a discredited bunch of deranged lunatics demand that you provide more proof on top of the mountain of proof you have already provided, you must do it immediately so that they can then declare it to be fraudulent like all the other proof you've provided.
When hospital officials (at least one of whom is Republican) and FactCheck.org say the following about the "Certificate of Live Birth"...
"It's a valid Hawaii state birth certificate," stated Hawaii Department of Health spokesperson Janice Okubo when queried by the St. Petersburg Times' PolitiFact.com website in June 2008. In addition, the actual physical document was scrutinized and photographed by researchers at FactCheck.org (see hi-res images), who determined that it was in fact duly signed, sealed, and certified by the Hawaii state registrar, and "meets all of the requirements from the State Department for proving U.S. citizenship."
...they are not to be believed because they are in cahoots with Obama.
But when leading Birther nutbag and Fox News favorite Orly Taitz says...(Wikipedia)
"*A number of homosexuals from Obama's former church have died mysteriously.
*Obama has dozens of Social Security numbers, and his passport is inaccurate. Taitz claims that a person who was cooperating with the FBI in connection with Obama's passport died mysteriously, "shot in the head".
*A Kenyan birth certificate with the name "Barack Obama" is authentic.
*Obama's first act as President was to donate money to Hamas, which she claims will be used to build Qassam rockets.
*Obama, or someone connected to him, has made threats to Taitz's life and vandalized her car.[19]
*Obama is having the Federal Emergency Management Agency build internment camps for "Anti-Obama dissidents".[14]"
...you can believe that as sure as Obama is the Anti-Christ.
Trump says he is proud of what he has done.
By presenting, as certain fact, rumors that have been proven false by numerous sources, and making a slew of wild accusations without a shred of evidence, he has finally forced Obama -- who desperately didn't want to show the proof that he was indeed born in the U.S. -- to bend to his will.
Yes, that's right, according to Trump and the Birthers, Obama spent 2 million dollars to hide the documents that proved that everything Trump and the Birthers said about him was complete nonsense.
I would like to take this opportunity to nominate Trump as
"Dickhole of the Decade".
You know, when Trump said that his investigators in Hawaii "couldn't believe what they were finding", he must have been talking about proof that Obama was born in Hawaii, because what red-blooded birther would ever believe that?
Thursday, April 21, 2011
Message to Representative Ryan: Keep Your Anti-Government Hands Off My Medicare!
The following is a message that I sent to my Senators Schumer and Gillibrand, and my Representative Meeks along with a petition to preserve Medicare:
"Message to House Republicans: Keep your anti-government hands off my Medicare! Medicare is much more efficient than private insurer corporations. If we expanded Medicare to cover ALL Americans we could reduce our medical spending to nearly half of what it is now, just like it is in all the other countries that have universal coverage."
"Message to House Republicans: Keep your anti-government hands off my Medicare! Medicare is much more efficient than private insurer corporations. If we expanded Medicare to cover ALL Americans we could reduce our medical spending to nearly half of what it is now, just like it is in all the other countries that have universal coverage."
Wednesday, April 13, 2011
Donald Trump: Natural Born Birther/Part Two
The Birthers have a particular personality type, some liberals have it too, that is very eager and willing to believe anything bad about the other side. As a matter of fact, the more preposterously evil, the stronger their belief.
"Bill Clinton killed Vince Foster," "Obama wants to destroy America," "he is the Anti Christ," "the Dems are trying to create Death Panels so that they can euthanize Republicans and old people."
This is the one that gets me the most about liberals; "George Bush approved a plot by the U.S. government to take down the Twin Towers in order to blame it on Saddam Hussein and justify the invasion of Iraq."
For crying out loud.
Occasionally, I'll get emails that circulate the internet, from conservative friends or family members, that make all sorts of allegations against liberals. Many are absurd on their face, others seem like they might be plausible. Every time I've fact checked them they turn out to be flat out wrong.
Like one that I got from my sister-in-law that said that there were more troop deaths under Clinton than there were under Bush's post Iraq invasion years. This one actually came with a citation from a U.S. Government web site, which made me think that it might be correct, but I went through the trouble of checking it out and it was totally false. The email got the numbers completely wrong. I informed my sis-in-law about this "mistake" and told her that I was certain that she would send out a correction to all of the people who she sent the email to, because she wouldn't want anyone to be operating with false information. She said "thanks" but nothing about sending out a correction.
Then there was this one about Jane Fonda stabbing our POW boys in the back;
"This was sent to me by a Vietnam vet. Have you heard the story about Jane Fonda handing the pieces of paper to the prison commander?
'She took them all without missing a beat.. At the
End of the line and once the camera stopped
Rolling, to the shocked disbelief of the POWs,
She turned to the officer in charge and handed
Him all the little pieces of paper.'"
I looked into it and found this on Wikipedia;
"The POW camp visits also led to persistent stories—decades later circulated widely on the Internet and via email—that the POWs she met had spat on her, or attempted to sneak notes to her which she had then reported to the North Vietnamese, leading to further abuse. However, interviews with two of the alleged victims specifically named in the emails, found these allegations to be false as they had never met Fonda.[25]"
Wiki's citation is from Snopes, a very reliable fact checking site.
When I first heard the allegation about Obama not being born in the U.S., it came along with many other wild charges, all designed to make Obama look really awful. Compared to the other charges, I figured that conservatives should find the foreign birth story the most trivial.
I recalled the time when Arnold Schwarzenegger announced that he was going to run as a Republican for Gov. of California.
Even though conservatives always denounced Hollywood liberals whenever they offered their opinion on political matters, saying that being an actor was no qualification for politicking and that they should just "shut up and act", they just couldn't hide their excitement about Schwarzenegger.
Fantasizing that they had just found their next Ronald Reagan (former actor-turn-California governor), they immediately began talking about getting rid of the Constitutional requirement of "natural born" citizenship so that Arnold could run for President. So how important could this rule be to them?
Well, just like the double standard regarding Hollywood actors, it all depends on which way your political views tilt. Now that it was Obama running, this became the most important issue imaginable.
This is from the Birther's web site;
"Returning to the phrase “a natural born citizen,” you can now see that the Founding Fathers made a conscience effort to insure that the office of the President of the United States of America would have been held by only those men who were loyal to the cause of the United States of America. They selected as criteria for themselves loyalty above all else. The President of the United States must be above all else loyal to this Nation, and the principles that it was established upon. ...they knew that they could only trust the power of the office of President to a group of citizens who would have the best chance of being loyal to the country, those who only know America and only knew what it was like to be American."
Wow. That's powerful stuff. Especially the part after the ellipsis. The Birthers are telling us that the Founding Fathers are telling us that we can only trust Presidential power to citizens who only know America and only know what it is like to be American. So just knowing about other countries or what it's like to live in another country is reason to be barred from office! It's like the F.F.s knew, when they wrote the Constitution, that 220 years later someone like Obama would come along!
This is why the Birthers are "a bunch of fucking retards".
The "natural born citizen" requirement has to be the most antiquated rule in the entire Constitution. Even the conservatives were ready to chuck it when it suited them.
Whenever I would hear this requirement mentioned in the past, way before anyone even heard of Obama, it would always be pointed out that when the Founders wrote it, it was the Brits they had in mind because we had just ended the war with England.
They knew that our country needed immigrants, they just didn't like the idea of a hated Brit becoming president. Even the birthers seem to acknowledge this on their web site.
The way you can tell that the real reason they wrote that requirement was the circumstances of the war and the Brits, is that the idea that a citizen must be born on American soil, even if that person's parents are American citizens, just doesn't make any sense at all.
And even the concern about the Brits no longer makes sense being that they are now our most loyal and trusted allies.
The Birthers want us to believe that the Founders' intentions were perfectly in line with their own bullshit argument, "that we can't trust anyone who was exposed to any other culture," because this describes Obama.
But we are a country of immigrants, many of whom have been trusted with the most vital secrets imaginable. Henry Kissinger. Zbigniew Brzezinski.
The Manhattan Project would not have been possible if we had not trusted the foreign born scientists who built the Bomb.
Leo Szilard is responsible for giving us a head start by being the first scientist to see that atomic bombs were possible and convincing Einstein, another immigrant, to warn the President.
We wisely trusted foreign born scientists, who later became American citizens, like Enrico Fermi, Hans Bethe, John Von Neumann, Stanislaw Ulam, to name a few. And let's not forget about Edward Teller, who testified against the "natural born" American citizen, Oppenheimer, in order to get his security clearance revoked.
Teller was born in Hungary but became a trusted hero to the right wingers for his tireless efforts to build thermonuclear weapons and advance the arms race.
Most of the spies passing nuclear secrets to the Soviets were "natural born" citizens.
The Birthers act like they've exposed some sort of treachery that is being perpetrated by Obama against the American people.
After failing to destroy his character and reputation during a long campaign season and losing an open and fair election, they now are trying to overturn the will of the American people on the most trivial and insignificant grounds imaginable.
Let's take a closer look at the case of Obama.
His mother was an American with a pedigree of "natural born" citizenship that goes back many generations. She was actually related to Dick Cheney, a loyaler American anyone would be hard pressed to point to. She was married in Hawaii within 9 months before Obama's birth, meaning that he was conceived on American soil.
Her home address, as printed in the Hawaii newspaper announcing his birth, was in Hawaii. If, for some reason, by chance, she happened to be out of the country when he happened to come out of her womb, what fucking difference does that make? How does that violate the intent of the "law" in any significant way? It's a stupid technicality that the Birthers are using only because they hate Obama. If it was Sarah Palin or Michele Backmann they'd be making the same arguments I am.
I mean, how cheap can your ethics be if that's what stirs your righteous indignation?
"Bill Clinton killed Vince Foster," "Obama wants to destroy America," "he is the Anti Christ," "the Dems are trying to create Death Panels so that they can euthanize Republicans and old people."
This is the one that gets me the most about liberals; "George Bush approved a plot by the U.S. government to take down the Twin Towers in order to blame it on Saddam Hussein and justify the invasion of Iraq."
For crying out loud.
Occasionally, I'll get emails that circulate the internet, from conservative friends or family members, that make all sorts of allegations against liberals. Many are absurd on their face, others seem like they might be plausible. Every time I've fact checked them they turn out to be flat out wrong.
Like one that I got from my sister-in-law that said that there were more troop deaths under Clinton than there were under Bush's post Iraq invasion years. This one actually came with a citation from a U.S. Government web site, which made me think that it might be correct, but I went through the trouble of checking it out and it was totally false. The email got the numbers completely wrong. I informed my sis-in-law about this "mistake" and told her that I was certain that she would send out a correction to all of the people who she sent the email to, because she wouldn't want anyone to be operating with false information. She said "thanks" but nothing about sending out a correction.
Then there was this one about Jane Fonda stabbing our POW boys in the back;
"This was sent to me by a Vietnam vet. Have you heard the story about Jane Fonda handing the pieces of paper to the prison commander?
'She took them all without missing a beat.. At the
End of the line and once the camera stopped
Rolling, to the shocked disbelief of the POWs,
She turned to the officer in charge and handed
Him all the little pieces of paper.'"
I looked into it and found this on Wikipedia;
"The POW camp visits also led to persistent stories—decades later circulated widely on the Internet and via email—that the POWs she met had spat on her, or attempted to sneak notes to her which she had then reported to the North Vietnamese, leading to further abuse. However, interviews with two of the alleged victims specifically named in the emails, found these allegations to be false as they had never met Fonda.[25]"
Wiki's citation is from Snopes, a very reliable fact checking site.
When I first heard the allegation about Obama not being born in the U.S., it came along with many other wild charges, all designed to make Obama look really awful. Compared to the other charges, I figured that conservatives should find the foreign birth story the most trivial.
I recalled the time when Arnold Schwarzenegger announced that he was going to run as a Republican for Gov. of California.
Even though conservatives always denounced Hollywood liberals whenever they offered their opinion on political matters, saying that being an actor was no qualification for politicking and that they should just "shut up and act", they just couldn't hide their excitement about Schwarzenegger.
Fantasizing that they had just found their next Ronald Reagan (former actor-turn-California governor), they immediately began talking about getting rid of the Constitutional requirement of "natural born" citizenship so that Arnold could run for President. So how important could this rule be to them?
Well, just like the double standard regarding Hollywood actors, it all depends on which way your political views tilt. Now that it was Obama running, this became the most important issue imaginable.
This is from the Birther's web site;
"Returning to the phrase “a natural born citizen,” you can now see that the Founding Fathers made a conscience effort to insure that the office of the President of the United States of America would have been held by only those men who were loyal to the cause of the United States of America. They selected as criteria for themselves loyalty above all else. The President of the United States must be above all else loyal to this Nation, and the principles that it was established upon. ...they knew that they could only trust the power of the office of President to a group of citizens who would have the best chance of being loyal to the country, those who only know America and only knew what it was like to be American."
Wow. That's powerful stuff. Especially the part after the ellipsis. The Birthers are telling us that the Founding Fathers are telling us that we can only trust Presidential power to citizens who only know America and only know what it is like to be American. So just knowing about other countries or what it's like to live in another country is reason to be barred from office! It's like the F.F.s knew, when they wrote the Constitution, that 220 years later someone like Obama would come along!
This is why the Birthers are "a bunch of fucking retards".
The "natural born citizen" requirement has to be the most antiquated rule in the entire Constitution. Even the conservatives were ready to chuck it when it suited them.
Whenever I would hear this requirement mentioned in the past, way before anyone even heard of Obama, it would always be pointed out that when the Founders wrote it, it was the Brits they had in mind because we had just ended the war with England.
They knew that our country needed immigrants, they just didn't like the idea of a hated Brit becoming president. Even the birthers seem to acknowledge this on their web site.
The way you can tell that the real reason they wrote that requirement was the circumstances of the war and the Brits, is that the idea that a citizen must be born on American soil, even if that person's parents are American citizens, just doesn't make any sense at all.
And even the concern about the Brits no longer makes sense being that they are now our most loyal and trusted allies.
The Birthers want us to believe that the Founders' intentions were perfectly in line with their own bullshit argument, "that we can't trust anyone who was exposed to any other culture," because this describes Obama.
But we are a country of immigrants, many of whom have been trusted with the most vital secrets imaginable. Henry Kissinger. Zbigniew Brzezinski.
The Manhattan Project would not have been possible if we had not trusted the foreign born scientists who built the Bomb.
Leo Szilard is responsible for giving us a head start by being the first scientist to see that atomic bombs were possible and convincing Einstein, another immigrant, to warn the President.
We wisely trusted foreign born scientists, who later became American citizens, like Enrico Fermi, Hans Bethe, John Von Neumann, Stanislaw Ulam, to name a few. And let's not forget about Edward Teller, who testified against the "natural born" American citizen, Oppenheimer, in order to get his security clearance revoked.
Teller was born in Hungary but became a trusted hero to the right wingers for his tireless efforts to build thermonuclear weapons and advance the arms race.
Most of the spies passing nuclear secrets to the Soviets were "natural born" citizens.
The Birthers act like they've exposed some sort of treachery that is being perpetrated by Obama against the American people.
After failing to destroy his character and reputation during a long campaign season and losing an open and fair election, they now are trying to overturn the will of the American people on the most trivial and insignificant grounds imaginable.
Let's take a closer look at the case of Obama.
His mother was an American with a pedigree of "natural born" citizenship that goes back many generations. She was actually related to Dick Cheney, a loyaler American anyone would be hard pressed to point to. She was married in Hawaii within 9 months before Obama's birth, meaning that he was conceived on American soil.
Her home address, as printed in the Hawaii newspaper announcing his birth, was in Hawaii. If, for some reason, by chance, she happened to be out of the country when he happened to come out of her womb, what fucking difference does that make? How does that violate the intent of the "law" in any significant way? It's a stupid technicality that the Birthers are using only because they hate Obama. If it was Sarah Palin or Michele Backmann they'd be making the same arguments I am.
I mean, how cheap can your ethics be if that's what stirs your righteous indignation?
Sunday, April 10, 2011
Donald Trump: Natural Born Birther/ Part One
Donald Trump possesses many of the characteristics that are required in order to be a full-fledged, raving Birther.
The primary characteristics include the following:
* A hypersensitive "us vs them" mentality
* A fanatical, religious-like fervor in the belief that you and the people who think like you (the us) are the only people with the courage to call America "the greatest, best," most noble "country God has ever given man on the face of the Earth." This courage, in turn, confers to all Americans who recognize this fact (and only Americans who recognize this fact) that very same greatness and nobility.
* The belief that people who don't agree with you (the them) are, conversely, the worst, most ignoble people in the world.
In this belief system there is a direct line of goodness which starts from God, who bestows His own goodness to Jesus and the other heroes of the Bible, then to the early Christians who promoted Christianity, then to the Founding Fathers and the Constitution, then to the present day "patriots" who declare themselves the inheritors of this Godly goodness.
All of this leads to a situation where reality must often times be "shaped" in order to make it conform to the belief system.
This is why "patriots" like Michele Bachmann feel that they must "shape" certain facts in order to convince their army of "us" that, rather than merely paying lip service to the notion that slavery was wrong (they didn't even bother to free their OWN slaves), the Founding Fathers "worked tirelessly until slavery was no more", and that "men like John Quincy Adams ... would not rest until slavery was extinguished in the country."
Certain other facts must be ignored. Like the fact that John Quincy Adams was "resting" in his grave for nearly two decades before "slavery was extinguished".
Or the fact that the real credit for ending slavery should go to the abolitionists, who really did work tirelessly with activist slaves and former slaves, until slavery was no more.
These abolitionists were the radical liberals of their day who were opposed tooth and nail by the conservatives of the time.
Here are some other things that must not be pondered;
Why did the bible condone slavery?
Why did slavery flourish in these Christian societies?
Why did it take America (the last Christian country to end slavery) until well past the middle of the 1800's to do so?
And why was the pious Christian South willing to fight a bloody civil war in order to hang on to it?
Donald Trump said that he couldn't understand why the Birthers were so ridiculed and maligned. All they want is to see the long form version of Barack Hussein's original birth certificate.
Either Trump had not been following the long sordid history of the Birther Movement or he possesses yet another trait of Birthers; the ability to forget the recent past whenever it proves your beliefs to be wrong.
The Birthers have circulated and promoted a host of cockamamie rumors, every one of which has been thoroughly debunked by numerous sources. (Google it, it's actually very entertaining reading)
Every time a charge has been proven false, they move on to a new one. Then, after a period of time, they revive the old disproven charge.
It's hard to give up a false accusation when repeating it over and over again makes you feel so good.
This is exactly what Trump has been doing, repeating stuff that was disproven a long time ago. Like the one about his Kenyan grandmother saying that she was present when he was born in Kenya. Please look that one up, it's a hoot.
Not only has Trump been repeating old disproven charges, he has added some new ones. Like,
* Obama's own family members don't even know what hospital he was born in.
* Not a single person remembers him growing up in Hawaii.
* He spent 2 million dollars trying to hide his birth certificate.
It's endless. And it becomes very tedious to go through every single stupid fucking charge. But let me go through these last three because they are not mentioned on Snopes, FactCheck.org, PolitiFact.com or Wikipedia.
The first one; being that Obama's mother and grandparents are all dead why would any other family member know what hospital he was born in? Other than my mother, no one in my family knows what hospital I was born in. I don't even know what hospital I was born in (more on that later).
The second one; there is not much on the net about this other than countless allegations. On Hardball, Chris Matthews showed a picture of Obama posing with his high school basketball team and I found an article about Obama visiting a childhood friend in Hawaii after becoming President.
But I'm sure the photo was doctored, the visit was staged and the "friend" was paid to lie.
The third; again nothing much on the net other than countless allegations. I googled "proof Obama spent 2 million to hide birth certificate". Guess what? Nothing came up offering proof despite 387,000 results. One site explained that this rumor probably morphed from an allegation that he spent 1 million in total legal fees, for every reason, since he started running for president. And even this amount was said to be wildly exaggerated.
Now we all know that Trump is "a really smart guy", right? So how can he sit in front of a camera and spout this ridiculous nonsense and risk looking like a complete asshole? Well, I guess when over 50% of Republicans believe the same things, he's got some cover.
But shouldn't he have looked into this stuff before he started flapping his gums? I mean, he claims to have hired investigators to go to Hawaii to look into the birth certificate. So couldn't he have done a simple google search to make sure he wasn't presenting falsehoods as certain facts? Or at least ordered someone to do it for him?
So what's the explanation?
I guess he's just a natural born Birther.
The primary characteristics include the following:
* A hypersensitive "us vs them" mentality
* A fanatical, religious-like fervor in the belief that you and the people who think like you (the us) are the only people with the courage to call America "the greatest, best," most noble "country God has ever given man on the face of the Earth." This courage, in turn, confers to all Americans who recognize this fact (and only Americans who recognize this fact) that very same greatness and nobility.
* The belief that people who don't agree with you (the them) are, conversely, the worst, most ignoble people in the world.
In this belief system there is a direct line of goodness which starts from God, who bestows His own goodness to Jesus and the other heroes of the Bible, then to the early Christians who promoted Christianity, then to the Founding Fathers and the Constitution, then to the present day "patriots" who declare themselves the inheritors of this Godly goodness.
All of this leads to a situation where reality must often times be "shaped" in order to make it conform to the belief system.
This is why "patriots" like Michele Bachmann feel that they must "shape" certain facts in order to convince their army of "us" that, rather than merely paying lip service to the notion that slavery was wrong (they didn't even bother to free their OWN slaves), the Founding Fathers "worked tirelessly until slavery was no more", and that "men like John Quincy Adams ... would not rest until slavery was extinguished in the country."
Certain other facts must be ignored. Like the fact that John Quincy Adams was "resting" in his grave for nearly two decades before "slavery was extinguished".
Or the fact that the real credit for ending slavery should go to the abolitionists, who really did work tirelessly with activist slaves and former slaves, until slavery was no more.
These abolitionists were the radical liberals of their day who were opposed tooth and nail by the conservatives of the time.
Here are some other things that must not be pondered;
Why did the bible condone slavery?
Why did slavery flourish in these Christian societies?
Why did it take America (the last Christian country to end slavery) until well past the middle of the 1800's to do so?
And why was the pious Christian South willing to fight a bloody civil war in order to hang on to it?
Donald Trump said that he couldn't understand why the Birthers were so ridiculed and maligned. All they want is to see the long form version of Barack Hussein's original birth certificate.
Either Trump had not been following the long sordid history of the Birther Movement or he possesses yet another trait of Birthers; the ability to forget the recent past whenever it proves your beliefs to be wrong.
The Birthers have circulated and promoted a host of cockamamie rumors, every one of which has been thoroughly debunked by numerous sources. (Google it, it's actually very entertaining reading)
Every time a charge has been proven false, they move on to a new one. Then, after a period of time, they revive the old disproven charge.
It's hard to give up a false accusation when repeating it over and over again makes you feel so good.
This is exactly what Trump has been doing, repeating stuff that was disproven a long time ago. Like the one about his Kenyan grandmother saying that she was present when he was born in Kenya. Please look that one up, it's a hoot.
Not only has Trump been repeating old disproven charges, he has added some new ones. Like,
* Obama's own family members don't even know what hospital he was born in.
* Not a single person remembers him growing up in Hawaii.
* He spent 2 million dollars trying to hide his birth certificate.
It's endless. And it becomes very tedious to go through every single stupid fucking charge. But let me go through these last three because they are not mentioned on Snopes, FactCheck.org, PolitiFact.com or Wikipedia.
The first one; being that Obama's mother and grandparents are all dead why would any other family member know what hospital he was born in? Other than my mother, no one in my family knows what hospital I was born in. I don't even know what hospital I was born in (more on that later).
The second one; there is not much on the net about this other than countless allegations. On Hardball, Chris Matthews showed a picture of Obama posing with his high school basketball team and I found an article about Obama visiting a childhood friend in Hawaii after becoming President.
But I'm sure the photo was doctored, the visit was staged and the "friend" was paid to lie.
The third; again nothing much on the net other than countless allegations. I googled "proof Obama spent 2 million to hide birth certificate". Guess what? Nothing came up offering proof despite 387,000 results. One site explained that this rumor probably morphed from an allegation that he spent 1 million in total legal fees, for every reason, since he started running for president. And even this amount was said to be wildly exaggerated.
Now we all know that Trump is "a really smart guy", right? So how can he sit in front of a camera and spout this ridiculous nonsense and risk looking like a complete asshole? Well, I guess when over 50% of Republicans believe the same things, he's got some cover.
But shouldn't he have looked into this stuff before he started flapping his gums? I mean, he claims to have hired investigators to go to Hawaii to look into the birth certificate. So couldn't he have done a simple google search to make sure he wasn't presenting falsehoods as certain facts? Or at least ordered someone to do it for him?
So what's the explanation?
I guess he's just a natural born Birther.
Friday, April 1, 2011
A Recent Email Correspondence
The following is a recent correspondence with a fellow MoveOn member.
Joe,
Yes, I missed you at the council meeting.
I am fed up with the lack of will of our government. They can't say no to spending
and they can't simply tell the people that we need to make huge cutbacks, including
drastic cuts to Medicare and National defense.
Bill
Bill, I'm glad to see that you're fed up. But don't doubt the will of the Republican side. They have been unswerving and relentless in their determination to dismantle any and every "socialistic" government-run program that helps the non-rich but might take money away from the wealthy. Except for the military, of course. That, they want to increase.
But don't worry, when they get their way and eliminate capital gains taxes, the super wealthy won't have to pay anything for that either.
And don't doubt that the Democrats will eventually cave in to every Republican demand, just like they have done in every instance in the past. We can already see the signs.
And Bill, don't buy the bullshit that we need to make drastic cuts in Medicare. The Republicans are making fools out of all of us with that load of crap, just like they did during the healthcare reform debate.
Do you realize that they defeated the "public option" despite the fact that the Democrats had the Presidency plus majorities in both Houses, and every poll had the majority of Americans in favor of it?
And they did that by arguing against universal health coverage even though that wasn't ever on the table.
They said that it would cost too much, lead to rationing and death panels and that the Dems were going to use their government hands to cut our Medicare.
What we have NOW costs too much and leaves millions of Americans with zero coverage and THOUSANDS of preventable deaths every year.
Then, after the Dems caved in and settled for Bob Dole's Republican reform proposal from the nineties, which is a wasteful subsidy to private insurance companies, they're branded as socialist tyrants who want to destroy capitalism and take away our liberty.
Then as soon as the election was over, without a shred of fear or embarrassment over their blatant, hypocritical double talk, the Republicons immediately called for severe rationing cuts in Medicare, using the huge deficits (which THEY created with their "Starve the Beast" strategy) as the excuse.
And this is the part that really kills me. A universal-government-run health insurance system is the only way to cut medical costs WITHOUT more rationing. If we switched to this system we could cut costs, save Medicare AND COVER EVEYONE, just like they do in every single country that has it.
But what about the terrible rationing that they have over there?
Their rationing isn't worse than ours, it's just distributed differently.
What's really terrible is the way conservatives distort and exaggerate the truth.
The Republicans bamboozle all of us with their arguments against universal coverage.
This is how they do it;
First they use the word "socialism" as often as possible.
Then they tell some "horror story" about "socialized" medicine in those "socialist" countries.
Then they tell us that's what's in store for us if we become "socialists" and adopt "socialized" medicine like the "socialists" in those "socialist" countries.
Then they convince us that we can't afford "socialized" medicine by making believe that all of this "socialized" rationing will cost us more than we are already spending.
The deception that the conservatives perpetrate occurs mostly from what they omit.
First of all they don't tell us that we have as many, if not more, horror stories that are as bad, if not worse (millions with no coverage, thousands of preventable deaths) than the other countries'.
The difference is that their problems get solved because their governments can move resources to where they are more needed and cut them where they are not. This is one of the reasons why their "socialized" medicine is more efficient and able to cover all of their citizens at half the cost.
Our problems don't get fixed because Republicans do everything they possibly can to prevent government from interfering with the insurance company's God given right to make a killing over our healthcare. But that's OK with Republicans because at least you can't call it "socialism".
Now about the cost. Republicans take advantage of the fact that most Americans don't realize how much they pay for health insurance because the costs are hidden. They think that the insurance they get from their employer is free. It's not, it's part of their total compensation, in other words, it comes out of their salary.
When I had family coverage, my and my employer's contributions came to over $12,000.
So instead of SUBTRACTING this cost from a government run system, they ADD it to it. This is how they get us to think that we can't afford it. Pretty slick, huh?
Still not happy with the level of rationing they have in the other countries even though it would cut your costs in half? After all, they do have to wait longer for appointments and procedures.
Well think about this; if we switched, we could set our budget to 75% of what we are already spending. This would give us 50% more coverage than the other countries and STILL save us 25%!
Now they are pulling the same trick with Medicare.
This is how the Republicons are making fools out of us again; they want to cut spending on Medicare by turning it into a voucher system. Then we're supposed to use this money to buy private insurance. How much money do you think a private company would charge in order to cover a senior citizen?
Let me make an educated guess; a hell of a lot more than you would get from a voucher system. So we are just going to have to make up the difference by paying more out of our pockets.
What, then, is the fucking point of cutting Medicare if it's going to cost us EVEN MORE MONEY?
The answer, according to Repblicons, is that we will then be able to say "at least you can't call it socialism".
Are you as disgusted as I am?
But like I said, we don't have to cut Medicare.
Joe
Joe,
Yes, I missed you at the council meeting.
I am fed up with the lack of will of our government. They can't say no to spending
and they can't simply tell the people that we need to make huge cutbacks, including
drastic cuts to Medicare and National defense.
Bill
Bill, I'm glad to see that you're fed up. But don't doubt the will of the Republican side. They have been unswerving and relentless in their determination to dismantle any and every "socialistic" government-run program that helps the non-rich but might take money away from the wealthy. Except for the military, of course. That, they want to increase.
But don't worry, when they get their way and eliminate capital gains taxes, the super wealthy won't have to pay anything for that either.
And don't doubt that the Democrats will eventually cave in to every Republican demand, just like they have done in every instance in the past. We can already see the signs.
And Bill, don't buy the bullshit that we need to make drastic cuts in Medicare. The Republicans are making fools out of all of us with that load of crap, just like they did during the healthcare reform debate.
Do you realize that they defeated the "public option" despite the fact that the Democrats had the Presidency plus majorities in both Houses, and every poll had the majority of Americans in favor of it?
And they did that by arguing against universal health coverage even though that wasn't ever on the table.
They said that it would cost too much, lead to rationing and death panels and that the Dems were going to use their government hands to cut our Medicare.
What we have NOW costs too much and leaves millions of Americans with zero coverage and THOUSANDS of preventable deaths every year.
Then, after the Dems caved in and settled for Bob Dole's Republican reform proposal from the nineties, which is a wasteful subsidy to private insurance companies, they're branded as socialist tyrants who want to destroy capitalism and take away our liberty.
Then as soon as the election was over, without a shred of fear or embarrassment over their blatant, hypocritical double talk, the Republicons immediately called for severe rationing cuts in Medicare, using the huge deficits (which THEY created with their "Starve the Beast" strategy) as the excuse.
And this is the part that really kills me. A universal-government-run health insurance system is the only way to cut medical costs WITHOUT more rationing. If we switched to this system we could cut costs, save Medicare AND COVER EVEYONE, just like they do in every single country that has it.
But what about the terrible rationing that they have over there?
Their rationing isn't worse than ours, it's just distributed differently.
What's really terrible is the way conservatives distort and exaggerate the truth.
The Republicans bamboozle all of us with their arguments against universal coverage.
This is how they do it;
First they use the word "socialism" as often as possible.
Then they tell some "horror story" about "socialized" medicine in those "socialist" countries.
Then they tell us that's what's in store for us if we become "socialists" and adopt "socialized" medicine like the "socialists" in those "socialist" countries.
Then they convince us that we can't afford "socialized" medicine by making believe that all of this "socialized" rationing will cost us more than we are already spending.
The deception that the conservatives perpetrate occurs mostly from what they omit.
First of all they don't tell us that we have as many, if not more, horror stories that are as bad, if not worse (millions with no coverage, thousands of preventable deaths) than the other countries'.
The difference is that their problems get solved because their governments can move resources to where they are more needed and cut them where they are not. This is one of the reasons why their "socialized" medicine is more efficient and able to cover all of their citizens at half the cost.
Our problems don't get fixed because Republicans do everything they possibly can to prevent government from interfering with the insurance company's God given right to make a killing over our healthcare. But that's OK with Republicans because at least you can't call it "socialism".
Now about the cost. Republicans take advantage of the fact that most Americans don't realize how much they pay for health insurance because the costs are hidden. They think that the insurance they get from their employer is free. It's not, it's part of their total compensation, in other words, it comes out of their salary.
When I had family coverage, my and my employer's contributions came to over $12,000.
So instead of SUBTRACTING this cost from a government run system, they ADD it to it. This is how they get us to think that we can't afford it. Pretty slick, huh?
Still not happy with the level of rationing they have in the other countries even though it would cut your costs in half? After all, they do have to wait longer for appointments and procedures.
Well think about this; if we switched, we could set our budget to 75% of what we are already spending. This would give us 50% more coverage than the other countries and STILL save us 25%!
Now they are pulling the same trick with Medicare.
This is how the Republicons are making fools out of us again; they want to cut spending on Medicare by turning it into a voucher system. Then we're supposed to use this money to buy private insurance. How much money do you think a private company would charge in order to cover a senior citizen?
Let me make an educated guess; a hell of a lot more than you would get from a voucher system. So we are just going to have to make up the difference by paying more out of our pockets.
What, then, is the fucking point of cutting Medicare if it's going to cost us EVEN MORE MONEY?
The answer, according to Repblicons, is that we will then be able to say "at least you can't call it socialism".
Are you as disgusted as I am?
But like I said, we don't have to cut Medicare.
Joe
Thursday, March 24, 2011
RIP Owsley Stanley
On
December 9, 1970, three days after my 15th birthday and one day after the
Catholic Holy Day of Obligation celebrating the Feast of the Immaculate
Conception, I received for the first time, a Holy Sacrament.
Like the consecrated bread of the Eucharist, this Sacrament was pure white.
Like the consecrated bread of the Eucharist, this Sacrament was pure white.
Unlike
the Eucharist, rather than being round, flat and thin, this Sacrament was tiny
and barrel shaped.
Like
the consecrated bread of the Eucharist, this Sacrament held within it a part of Christ.
Unlike the Eucharist, rather
than the body of Christ, this Sacrament contained the Mind of
God.
I was told by the high school classmate who offered me this substance that it was called "White Owsley Acid".
I had heard of the cultural icon who was credited with producing this eponymous chemical compound.
But it wasn't until that December day in 1970, after the veil had been lifted, that I fully understood the reasons for his saint like status.
Inspired by his dignity, wisdom, dedication, and talent,
I was compelled to give Augustus Owsley Stanley III the veneration he deserved.
Rest in peace, our friend.
March 13, 2011
Psychedelic icon Owsley Stanley dies in Australia
I was told by the high school classmate who offered me this substance that it was called "White Owsley Acid".
I had heard of the cultural icon who was credited with producing this eponymous chemical compound.
But it wasn't until that December day in 1970, after the veil had been lifted, that I fully understood the reasons for his saint like status.
Inspired by his dignity, wisdom, dedication, and talent,
I was compelled to give Augustus Owsley Stanley III the veneration he deserved.
Rest in peace, our friend.
March 13, 2011
Psychedelic icon Owsley Stanley dies in Australia
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