The WAWG Blog

Randy Weber shows that he thinks that rules don’t apply to him, again
and again.

Weber did not pay his property taxes, and was charged thousands in
late taxes, interest and penalties.

Weber kept taxpayer money intended expense reimbursement, after
special interests had already paid for his expenses.

Weber accepted donations far in excess of what is allowed by campaign
finance law. Now he’s trying to move the money around to make it legal.

And the latest:
Galveston County has a rule against putting up political signs
mounted on metal T-posts on County property because they can damage
the sprinkler system, requiring taxpayer money to repair. Weber put
up two large signs mounted on metal T-posts on the Galveston County
North County Annex on Calder Road in League City. Weber doesn’t care
about taxpayer money.

He cheats at home, cheats at his business, cheats as a state
legislator, and cheats on his campaign. He thinks rules just don’t
apply to him.

Regards,

Jim

The excerpts below are from a recent article by Henry Giroux, titled “Why Don’t Americans Care About Democracy at Home?”

The basic answer is “economic Darwinism,” which “promotes a politics of cruelty,” “undermines all forms of solidarity capable of challenging market-driven values and social relations,” while it also “promotes the virtues of an unbridled individualism that is almost pathological in its disdain for community, social responsibility, public values and the public good.” In other words, it’s all about me and to hell with those who are not like me.

Social Darwinism, as promoted by conservatives without conscience like authoritarians Mitt Romney and Paul Ryan, has had harsh effects on America’s social conscience:

… social problems are increasingly criminalized, while social protections are either eliminated or fatally weakened. … it thrives on a kind of social amnesia that erases critical thought, historical analyses and any understanding of broader systemic relations. … [it] unleashes a mode of thinking in which social problems are reduced to individual flaws and political considerations collapse into the injurious and self-indicting discourse of character. … the anti-public philosophy of economic Darwinism makes a parody of democracy by defining freedom as “the liberty to seek one’s own interests and well-being, without being responsible for the interests or well-being of anyone else. It’s a morality of personal, but not social, responsibility. The only freedom you should have is what you can provide for yourself, not what the Public provides for you to start out.”

…

… Economic Darwinism has produced a legitimating ideology in which the conditions for critical inquiry, moral responsibility and social and economic justice disappear.

…

Economic Darwinism leaves no room for compassion or ethical considerations, which makes it[s] use of power much worse than more liberal models of a market-based society.

…

The not-so-hidden order of politics underlying the second Gilded Age and its heartless version of economic Darwinism is that some populations, primarily the elderly, young people, the unemployed, immigrants and poor whites and minorities of color, now constitute a form of human waste or excess. … Left unchecked, economic Darwinism will not only destroy the social fabric and undermine democracy; it will also ensure the marginalization and eventual elimination of those intellectuals willing to fight for public values, rights, spaces and institutions not wedded to the logic of privatization, commodification, deregulation, militarization, hyper-masculinity and a ruthless “competitive struggle in which only the fittest could survive.”[39] Clearly, this new politics of disposability and culture of cruelty will wreak destruction in ways not yet imaginable, despite the horrific outcomes of the economic and financial crisis brought on by economic Darwinism.

And so, the ONE%, Romney/Ryan, promote social Darwinism at the expense of everyone else.

How is it that economic Darwinism has become so significant in America?

Part of the answer is the tools of the far right (hate radio and Fox News), and the lack of confrontation from mainstream media. Henry Giroux points out the authoritarianism that is behind the use of these tools.

Unfortunately, the American public has remained largely silent, if not also complicitous with the rise of a neoliberal version of authoritarianism. …

…

… Critical learning is now reduced to mastering test-taking, memorizing facts, and learning how not to question knowledge and authority. …

…

… the financialization of the economy and culture has resulted in the poisonous growth of monopoly power, predatory lending, abusive credit card practices and misuses of CEO pay. The false but central neoliberal tenet that markets can solve all of society’s problems has no way of limiting the power of money and has given rise to “a politics in which policies that favor the rich … have allowed the financial sector to amass vast economic and political power.”[24] As Joseph Stiglitz points out, there is more at work in this form of [corporate] governance than a pandering to the wealthy and powerful: There is also the specter of an authoritarian society “where people live in gated communities,” large segments of the population are impoverished or locked up in prison and Americans live in a state of constant fear as they face growing “economic insecurity, health care insecurity [and] a sense of physical insecurity.”[25] In other words, the authoritarian nature of neoliberal political governance and economic power is also visible in the rise of a national security state in which civil liberties are being drastically abridged and violated.

…

The anti-democratic practices at work … also include the US government’s use of state secrecy to provide a cover or prevent being embarrassed by practices that range from the illegal use of torture to the abduction of innocent foreign nationals. Under the rubric of national security, a shadow state has emerged that eschews transparency and commits unlawful acts. Given the power of the government to engage in a range of illegalities and to make them disappear through an appeal to state secrecy, it should come as no surprise that warrantless wiretapping, justified in the name of national security, is on the rise at both the federal and state levels. For instance, the New York City Police Department “implemented surveillance programs that violate the civil liberties of that city’s Muslim-American citizens [by infiltrating] mosques and universities [and] collecting information on individuals suspected of no crimes.”[29] And the American public barely acknowledged this shocking abuse of power. Such anti-democratic policies and practices have become the new norm in American society and reveal a frightening and dangerous move toward a 21st century version of authoritarianism.

…

… What is particularly disturbing is how little opposition … there is among the American public to this view of particular social groups as disposable – this, perhaps more than anything else, signals the presence of a rising authoritarianism in the United States. …

…

… Hannah Arendt’s warning that “it was not stupidity but a curious, quite authentic inability to think” at the heart of authoritarian regimes is now embraced as a fundamental tenet of Republican Party politics.

Right-wing, strict father, authoritarian, promoters-of-punishment-as-a-teaching-tool, or conservatives without conscience, have been pushing social Darwinism for decades and are succeeding in converting critical thinking citizens into obedient consumers, who care more about their consumption and less about those who weren’t as lucky.

Randy Weber is a member of ALEC and the Koch brothers are supporting ALEC. This says a lot about Randy Weber.

ALEC, the American Legislative Exchange Council, with the help of many corporations, has written hundreds of model legislative bills and many have become state laws in the last two years thanks to the Tea Party and other conservatives without conscience. Some of those laws, like the Texas Voter ID law, have recently been blocked by the courts, but many are still law.

Of all the Kochs’ investments in right-wing organizations, ALEC provides some of the best returns: it gives the Kochs a way to make their brand of free-market fundamentalism legally binding. — The Nation, Aug, 2011

Randy Weber, ALEC, and the Koch brothers want a right-wing, authoritarian, plutocracy. Here is a summary of the model bills they are creating to make that happen:

Reducing Democracy, Voter Rights, and Federal Power:

“ALEC bills or resolutions would disenfranchise Americans and give corporations even more power to use their vast financial resources to influence elections in our democracy. These ‘model bills’ include the infamous Voter ID bills pushed through this year by new governors, many of whom have ties to ALEC.”

Limiting Health care for women and children:

“ALEC’s model legislation harms women and families in numerous ways, including proposals that would roll back no fault divorce laws, limit the regulation of day care centers, make it more difficult for impoverished children to receive the benefits of welfare, limit regulation of toxic and hazardous substances that adversely affect children’s health even more so than adults, bar lawsuits for injuries due to recalled drugs despite the spate of recalls of medicine used by children and young adults, and, among other things, outsource to for-profit companies the collection of child support.”

Promoting ‘Stand Your Ground’, Filling Privatized Prisons, and Selling Guns:

” … bills pushed by ALEC corporations result in taxpayers subsidizing the profits of the private prison industry by putting more people in for-profit prisons and keeping them in jail for longer. The bills also would put more guns on streets and interfere with local law enforcement decisions about how best to interact with immigrant communities.”

Killing Unions and Sending Jobs Overseas:

“Bills {to} limit workers rights and drain labor unions of resources for protecting employees, undermine consumer protections, favor the Wall Street financial agenda, limit the ability to cap exorbitant interest rates on credit cards and big bank fees. {These} bills and resolutions … also attempt to funnel tax dollars to for-profit corporations through privatization schemes and push the “free trade” agenda that has shipped good-paying American jobs overseas.”

Limiting Corporate Liability and the Rights of Injured Americans:

“These [bills] erode the rights of an injured person, or that person’s family, who files a complaint alleging that a corporation caused injury or death and should be held responsible for all the damages its actions caused.”

Privatizing Public Education, Undermining Teachers, and Promoting “Conservatives” on Campus, More:

“Among other things, these bills make education a private commodity rather than a public good, and reverse America’s modern innovation of promoting learning and civic virtue through public schools staffed with professional teachers for children from all backgrounds.”

Limiting Patient Rights and Undermining Safety Net Programs for Older Americans and Others:

“These anti-patient ‘model bills’ advance the interests of global drug companies and the health insurance industry, while eroding the rights and health of Americans.”

Promoting Dirty Energy and Corporate Agriculture over the Environment:

“These ‘model bills’ and resolutions thwart efforts to address climate change, streamline siting of nuclear power plants, and oppose efforts to address hazardous coal waste.”

Reshaping the Tax Code to Benefit Big Business and the ONE%:

“These ‘model bills’ and resolutions also push for extending the Bush tax cuts and attempt to use temporary legislative majorities to tie the hands of future majorities to raise taxes to meet citizens’ needs.”

===============================

A vote for Randy Weber is a vote for replacing our Public with Private – replacing representative governance that is accountable to We the People with corporate governance that is accountable only to major stock holders.

A vote for Randy Weber will increase national gridlock and further protect and empower the ONE%.

I had stopped publishing the Bad Deeds during election season because I need to spend all my time knocking on doors and making phone calls to voters, and you don’t need to be distracted from the task at hand either.

But tonight, I saw all six of the following stories on the front page of RawStory.com, and it was just too easy. So read, enjoy, then go knock on doors and make phone calls to voters.

Arkansas Republican endorses death penalty for disobedient children – A man running as a Republican for State Representative in Arkansas published a book in which he endorses the death penalty for rebellious children and much, much more.

In his book “God’s Law: The Only Political Solution,” published in April, former Arkansas Department of Human Services attorney Charlie Fuqua explains that he supports killing wayward kids because that’s what a Bronze Age tribe did in his favorite religious text.

“The maintenance of civil order in society rests on the foundation of family discipline,” he wrote, according to an excerpt published by The Arkansas Times. “Therefore, a child who disrespects his parents must be permanently removed from society in a way that gives an example to all other children of the importance of respect for parents. The death penalty for rebellioius children is not something to be taken lightly. The guidelines for administering the death penalty to rebellious children are given in Deut 21:18-21.”

Romney refuses to face kids on Nickelodeon after vow to defund Big Bird – Republican presidential nominee Mitt Romney is now refusing to take questions from children on a Nickelodeon special, Kids Pick the President. However, President Obama has agreed to participate in the program.

Republican Rep. on science committee believes in Creationism, not science –

Romney pretends Obama’s free trade agreements simply don’t exist – In a key foreign policy speech Monday morning, Republican presidential nominee Mitt Romney claimed President Barack Obama “has not signed one new free trade agreement in the past four years,” and promised to “reverse that failure.”

However, Congress passed and Obama signed three major trade deals in 2011, giving American companies access to new markets in South Korea, Panama and Colombia. The Associated Press said the arrangements “could be worth billions to American exporters and create tens of thousands of jobs.”

Pro-Romney energy company accused of extorting contributions from workers – Murray Energy has been accused of forcing its employees to make political contributions to Republican candidates.

Wisc. Republican Senate candidate forgets how many homes he owns – The Thompson campaign was forced to admit he also had a $1.3 million condo near Lake Wisconsin.

Regards,

Jim

Robert Reich made the following statement last June, ” … the richest 400 Americans {own} as much as the bottom 150 million put together.” Let me try to put this in perspective with a little “arithmetic.”

Imagine 400 small towns across America with an average of 28,000 homes each. That’s 11,200,000 homes. If each home is worth an average $150,000, the total real estate value is the same as the total worth of the Forbes 400, $1,680,000,000,000 or $4.2 billion per billionaire.

Now imagine leveling each of those 400 towns and replacing its 28,000 homes with a single large mansion on the land left vacant by those demolished homes. If each home sheltered an average of 2.5 citizens, then 70,000 people are also displaced for each billionaire.

That’s truely excessive and unreasonable redistribution of wealth from the lowest 150,000,000 to the top 400.

The extreme right-wing, strict father, authoritarian family model, which is represented in many ways by the Romney/Ryan twosome, includes the principle of the self-made individual – each person is totally responsible for their success. This is what George Lakoff calls “individual responsibility and direct action.” The strict father has taught his children that their success is solely dependent on their moral and fiscal self-discipline.

What makes this principle extreme is that it excludes systemic causation – the many external factors we all have no control over. These external factors include who our parents are and their level of wealth and education, who our parents know and who those friends know, siblings and other relatives, preferential experience – the 10,000 hour rule, when you were born – The Matthew Effect, what county, state, city, and neighborhood you were born into, the early education you were given and how well that education was funded, the quality of your teachers and their choices as to where they wanted to teach, other neighborhood members, etc.

Forbes magazine recently published their 2012 list of the Forbes 400 richest Americans. In their article, Forbes initially stated that 70 percent of this individuals “made their fortunes entirely from scratch.” Now, this 70 percent is referred to as “self-made.”

This same basic observation was made by Forbes for last years 400. Since the 2011 list was published, however, researchers at United for a Fair Economy, took a closer look at it and concluded that most of the Forbes 400 benefited from a level of privilege only dreamed of by most Americans. Using some baseball analogies, here is what they found:

• 12, or 3%, of the Forbes 400 left no paper trail for their path to wealth
• 140, or 35%, made it to the top while starting in the batter’s box, where 95% of us live
• 88, or 22%, were born on first base – inheritances up to $1 million
• 44, or 11%, were born on second base – family business provided inheritance of between $1 and $50 million
• 28, or 7%, were born on third base – over $50 million in inheritance
• 88, or 22%, were born on home base – inheritance alone put them on the Forbes 400 list

None of these billionaires had a choice for what family they were born into, but that was obviously a major factor in the success for at least 248 of them who were already ‘on-base.’ Their family membership, and other factors these billionaires could not choose for themselves probably out weighed their innate talent, which was affected by the genes from their parents, in determining their success.

No one is self-made.

——————————————–
“I personally think that society is responsible for a very significant percentage of what I’ve earned. If you stick me down in the middle of Bangladesh or Peru or someplace, you find out how much this talent is going to produce in the wrong kind of soil … I work in a market system that happens to reward what I do very well – disproportionately well. ” — Warren Buffet, #2 on the 2012 Forbes 400 Richest Americans

Via: NerdWallet

Notice that the ‘industry’ with the most billionaires is Financial Services and Hedge Funds. This group does not manufacture anything and creates few if any jobs for the middle class – just makes money with other people’s money. So many billions of dollars and so few employees to spread it between.

• The blue line – total number of employees in private industry in the U.S.
• The red line – number of employees in the “financial services” industry, which includes Wall Street
• The green line – number of employees in the securities industry, just Wall Street.

(The following is a reposting of an entry from August of 2010 with minor updates.)

This posting was inspired by an article at Rational Revolution. It takes another look at the disproportionate shift in income to the mega and ultra rich, the disproportionate tax breaks for the mega and ultra rich, and the creation of national and personal debt not seen since the Great Depression.

The similarities of the Great Depression of the last century to this century’s Great Recession on certain key measurements are critical to our future. Come the midterm elections and beyond, we can continue the destruction of the American middle class or continue the hard changes that have only just begun to rebuild the middle class.

Remember the trickle down theory of supply side economics that was supposed to result from tax breaks for the rich? Well, here’s a recent example of how trickle down works decades after it was started and has since been amplified: LeBron is promised $125,000,000.00 while 30 of the teams’ support employees are fired.

No matter how much LeBron makes or how little he pays in income taxes, those 30 former employees are screwed. This is exactly what has happened to many more Americans since the right-wing authoritarians (RWA) have been running our economy and giving disproportionate and extreme advantages to the really rich. There are now more mega and ultra rich people in this nation, but there are many, many more middle class households that have gone into debt with easy credit, lost their jobs, lost their homes, and declared bankruptcy. Middle class America is being replaced by a plutocracy. I’d call this a legalized Ponzi Scheme, which is trickle-up economics.

Didn’t the course change started in November 2008 mean stop and fix what’s wrong!

Let’s review the situation created by the RWAs. Instead of continuing to grow the income of everyone, as was done after WWII, we are now only helping the rich become the mega and ultra rich. While most of us, the Bottom 90 Percent, have seen our income gains drop more than 50 percent, the Top 1 Percent have seen their income gains grow by more than 50 percent. Notice in the chart below how today’s share of income growth for the mega rich is just as high as it was before the Great Depression.

(Note the slight recovery in income gains for the middle class
during the Clinton years.)

In terms of income growth by income group for before and after the RWAs took over, this shift is even more dramatic for the mega rich vs everyone else. Prior to Voodoo Economics, 1947 to 1979, income growth was fairly even – then the legalized trickle-up Ponzi Scheme started.

The Trickle Up Truth

As shown in an earlier posting and to highlight the current effect of trickle-up, the average income of the top 1 percent in 2005, as reported to the the IRS, was $1,200,000.00 and the average for the bottom 99 percent was $45,000.00.

Let’s take a closer look at some of those in that top 1 percent. The chart below compares the income growth of corporate executives. These mega rich are rich, not because they produce something, but because they are mostly accountable to fund managers who, as share holders, vote for excessive salaries to get the ‘best’ CEOs money can buy who will then protect the fund’s value. Notice the only metric doing worse than the average worker is the minimum wage.

Then there are the ultra rich hedge fund managers, who, unlike the middle class, have mostly investment income which is taxed at rates far less than the marginal income tax rate for earned income. Can you imagine making billions of dollars and only paying 15 percent to the government? And they still want more tax breaks? To be clear, the top salary for 2007 was $3,700,000,000.00. That’s 177 times more income than Lebron James 6 year contract. That must correlate to thousands of more unemployed middle class Americans?

Now add to these lopsided gains in income growth the increased tax breaks for major corporations and you see another reason for this shift in wealth to the rich. Their METRs have dropped by more than 30 percent while their contribution to our federal revenue has been cut in half:

This chart only applies to corporations
who have stayed in America for tax purposes.

(And now thanks to our “activist” Supreme Court,
more corporate profits can go to PACs for controlling our government.)

Then, as shown below, there are the increased tax breaks on earned income. They have also been disproportionately reduced for the wealthy who are still mostly ‘earning’ their income. (Without this reduction it’s harder for the wealthy to become mega rich and move to unearned income.) The second chart below shows the marginal tax for any earned income and the growth in income for the ultra rich, the top 0.1 percent.

60 Years of Republican Tax Breaks for the Wealthy

The above earned income tax rates for the wealthy do not account for the even greater advantages that the mega and ultra rich have with even lower capital gains taxes for unearned income. For the top 400 taxpayers, less than 10 percent of their income is “earned” and subject to the marginal tax rates. Most of their income is taxed at the lower capital gains tax rate.

As the charts above show, the mega and ultra rich are getting disproportionately richer – their income growth is far outpacing that of the middle class – and their tax breaks are much more favorable! Most of us were fooled into believing there was trickle down – that’s what the RWA have told us. In reality, we have trickle-up and there is only the perception of income growth for the middle class from households with two incomes and going into debt up to our collective eyeballs. There is no trickle down when income growth and tax breaks have become so lopsided. Millions have lost their jobs as a few hundred have made billions without producing anything. These mega and ultra rich are sitting at the top of our legalized Ponzi Scheme and the middle class is disappearing.

Unlike the situation in WWII where everyone helped pay the nation’s bills, the RWA have reduced taxes, especially for the rich, and borrowed from other nations to pay for our wars and other expenses. The result of decades of tax breaks for the rich, the rich keeping too much of their excessive income, and enormous expenses for our military on top of our other federal expenditures, our national deficit has grown over 55 percent under the rule of RWAs and their Great Recession.

Not only has the nation’s debt escalated for decades, so has our personal debt. Citizens have borrowed like never before and we feel richer and believe that it’s trickling down from the rich that were given all those tax breaks. In addition, the government encouraged borrowing, corporations took advantage of lower rates, and the mega rich investors created innovative methods to maximize their unearned, under-taxed, income by encouraging the middle class to go into debt.

Household debt:
Credit card debt, car loans, personal loans and home mortgages

How unfair is all this? Under the rule of the RWAs, most citizen’s personal debt has more than doubled and is near the levels that preceded the Great Depression, while at the same time income for the mega rich is as high as it was prior to the Great Depression.

I say again. This has to stop!!!

But if you don’t agree and if you want more disproportionate tax breaks for the mega and ultra rich, and for the corporations that make unlimited political contributions. If you want more national and personal debt, and if you want others to pay our debt so we can continue shopping, vote for The Devil’s Budget in November.

Remember, RWA are also known as “Conservatives without Conscience” and they are mostly common to the Republican and Libertarian party. A few also exist in the Democratic party.

Vote Republican??? – Vote Gozzle-up.

Part of President Obama’s 2012 nomination acceptance speech made reference to the different visions and choices for our future.

“And on every issue, the choice you face won’t just be between two candidates or two parties. It will be a choice between two different paths for America, a choice between two fundamentally different visions for the future. Ours is a fight to restore the values that built the largest middle class and the strongest economy the world has ever known …” — President Obama, September 6, 2012

One of the major choices we face is between representation by an efficient, properly funded, and properly manned government that is accountable to its citizens, or corporate governance, via privatization or our government, that is accountable to a small subset of citizens: major shareholders. It’s a choice between a representative government with a primary goal to protect and empower its citizens thus promoting equal opportunity for all, or corporate governance with a primary goal to make a profit with no regard for citizens rights thus promoting opportunity only for the wealthy. It’s a choice between a representative government which regulates corporations to protect citizens from the unfettered excesses of the free market, or corporate governance to protect profit from citizenship dues and the costs related to protecting citizens from harmful corporate byproducts. It’s a choice between a representative government bound to empower and maximize the freedom of its citizens through the resources of the Public, or corporate governance bound to destroy the Public and enslave the citizens.

George Lakoff writes about the governance choice as a balancing act:

” … The issue is the proper balance between the Public and the Corporate [Private]. Both need each other. Corporations should create goods and services that people need at a reasonable profit, without any harm. Government regulation exists to achieve this. Honest business has been the American way for a long time, supported by the Public, regulated by the government, and producing goods, services and well-paying jobs. All in balance. We need to get back to that.” – George Lakoff, The Little Blue Book, page 69.

Here are some of the elements of this balancing act from President Obama:

“This is the choice we now face. This is what the election comes down to. Over and over, we’ve been told by our opponents that bigger tax cuts and fewer regulations are the only way, that since government can’t do everything, it should do almost nothing. If you can’t afford health insurance, hope that you don’t get sick. If a company releases toxic pollution into the air your children breathe, well, that’s the price of progress. If you can’t afford to start a business or go to college, take my opponent’s advice and borrow money from your parents. ” — President Obama, September 6, 2012

Without rich parents, most citizens need representative government to protect and empower them, and ensure equal opportunity for success. With corporate governance only ONE% of America’s parents will succeed. Then, they can protect and empower just their children while most citizens are left on their own.

Care to guess which form of governance Romney and Ryan prefer or how long it will take them to complete our transition to it, if elected?

Recent political ads lie about President Obama and his suggestions to the states on the national welfare program. As stated in a recent Truthout article, the producers of these ads are targeting “white working class voters” who harbor “deep resentment towards welfare recipients.” Welfare recipients like the ones President Reagan created who never existed — a lie that worked.

These producers expect the ads to work on the targeted individuals because they are based on deep conservative moral principles. One of those moral principles taught by the “strict father family” is respect for a certain hierarchy of authority. First in the hierarchy is God – the ultimate authority, then white men – who teach God’s truths to the masses, then comes the masses with poor women and poor minorities at the bottom. (As Governor Christy said at the REP convention, “choose respect over love.” In other words, if you want my ‘love,’ respect my authority as a white male, or suffer my wrath.)

Another conservative moral principle is fiscal self-discipline. The strict father uses severe physical punishment to teach moral discipline to his children. This leads to a belief that fiscal discipline is morally right and will lead to prosperity. This self-discipline also supports the belief that individuals are solely in control of their own success.

So, if someone, solely due to luck, ranks lower in the conservative hierarchy of authority and appears to lack moral self-discipline, then they deserve their unfortunate situation and don’t deserve government aid funded by those who are successful.

A lie that activates these conservative moral principles, as does the ad mentioned earlier, will cause the targeted audience to accept that lie without question or critical thought. Also, if belief in these principles is strong, conservatives will even sacrifice their own government aid to keep public funds from those whom they believe are morally, fiscally, and hierarchically inferior.

So, what should progressives do about this? Resist denying these conservative lies by repeating them, and discuss the following democratic/progressive moral principles:

• Democracy depends on citizens who care about and take responsibility for themselves AND others. It is immoral to allow others to suffer from circumstances beyond their control.
• The mission of a democratic society is to protect and empower all citizens equally through the family and our representative government. This will ensure equal opportunity for success for all citizens by minimizing the luck of unfortunate circumstances beyond our control.
• The Public enables equal opportunity and ensures our freedoms. Citizenship dues provide revenue to fund The Public and are fair when collected in proportion to a citizen’s use of public resources. The citizen financed Public includes: public education, public libraries, public roads, courts, patent protection, basic research, health care, parks, clean water and safe sewer processing, police and military, internet, safe food, clean air, air traffic control, communication satellites, etc. With out adequate citizenship dues, the Public withers and the private loses it’s foundation.
• Without The Public, freedoms and liberties are in peril. You could lose your home or die if you have cancer and no insurance. Without knowledgeable employees, businesses can’t survive. The lack of safe food, and clean air and water threatens our freedom to live. The lack of public roads and public transportation threatens our freedom to travel or get to work, and our right to vote. The extremely wealthy want to destroy The Public so that it can’t protect the freedoms and rights of others.

Nurturant parents teach these progressive moral principles and teach us that many factors – not just individual talents – determine one’s success. We are all in this together. These principles teach us that maybe the rest of us can do something to help others succeed. We learn that proper funding of The Public is critical for all to have a chance at success. We know that lack of sufficient citizenship dues from those citizens who prosper the most from The Public diminishes the possible success of others. We know that diminishing The Public gives more power to the private and threatens our freedoms.

It’s time to start repeating loudly these progressive moral principles and how they protect our freedoms and liberties. It’s time to stop denying and talking about conservative lies by repeating them, sometimes with a negative prefix. This only reinforces their lie.

Make the lie big, make it simple, keep saying it, and eventually they will believe it. -― Adolf Hitler

For more on talking progressive without conservative language: The Little Blue Book by George Lakoff:

The Lies in Paul Ryan’s Speech – Paul Ryan’s acceptance speech at the Republican convention contained several false claims and misleading statements. Delegates cheered as the vice presidential nominee:

• Accused President Obama’s health care law of funneling money away from Medicare “at the expense of the elderly.” In fact, Medicare’s chief actuary says the law “substantially improves” the system’s finances, and Ryan himself has embraced the same savings.
• Accused Obama of doing “exactly nothing” about recommendations of a bipartisan deficit commission — which Ryan himself helped scuttle.
• Claimed the American people were “cut out” of stimulus spending. Actually, more than a quarter of all stimulus dollars went for tax relief for workers.
• Faulted Obama for failing to deliver a 2008 campaign promise to keep a Wisconsin plant open. It closed less than a month before Obama took office.
• Blamed Obama for the loss of a AAA credit rating for the U.S. Actually, Standard & Poor’s blamed the downgrade on the uncompromising stands of both Republicans and Democrats.
• And when he wasn’t attacking Obama, Ryan was falsely puffing up the record of his running mate, Mitt Romney, on taxes and unemployment.

Lying Scott Walker Blames Obama Policies for GM Plant Closing That Occurred a Full Month Before Obama Took Office – At the Republican Convention, Governor Scott Walker blamed Obama policies for the closure of the GM plant in Paul Ryan’s hometown of Janesville, Wisconsin. However, the plant was closed in December 2008, a full month before Obama took office:

In June 2008, Ryan sent a letter along with his Wisconsin colleagues Senators Russ Feingold (D) and Herb Kohl (D) protesting the closure of General Motors plant in Janesville, Wisconsin. “We ask that you reconsider the decision to close the Janesville GM plant and request a meeting with you as soon as possible to discuss OM’s plans for the Janesville plant, including the possibility of retooling the plant for different production lines,” said the letter from the three lawmakers to GM CEO Rick Wagoner. As Talking Points Memo’s Benjy Sarlin notes, Ryan actually voted for a Bush-era effort to expand government loans to GM, a plan that failed to save the Janesville plant.

Christie’s Fact-Free Keynote – New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie largely avoided factual claims in a Republican convention keynote address that was heavy on generalities, opinion and platitudes. The pugnacious former prosecutor exaggerated a bit, though, when he bragged about his accomplishments as governor, and he repeated the common but false claim that the president’s health care law interferes with the doctor-patient relationship.

Christie said he delivered “three balanced budgets with lower taxes.” Actually, he cut the state Earned Income Tax Credit for low-income residents and the popular property-tax rebate program for renters and homeowners. It’s a matter of interpretation whether those are tax hikes or spending reductions. A proposed 10 percent income tax cut hasn’t been enacted.

He said he took on public-sector unions to reform a pension system “headed to bankruptcy” and “saved retirees their pension.” But the state is not fully funding the revamped system, and the pension liabilities gap will begin to grow again.

Christie also repeated a false claim about the health care law interfering with doctor-patient relationships.

Christie: “Romney will tell us the hard truths we need to hear to end the debacle of putting the world’s greatest health care system in the hands of federal bureaucrats and putting those bureaucrats between an American citizen and her doctor.”

As we just said in our first item on the convention, the Affordable Care Act doesn’t create a government-run system, like that of Britain or Canada, nor does it regulate the work of doctors. Republicans often call the Independent Payment Advisory Board, which would recommend ways to slow the growth of Medicare spending, “bureaucrats” that would ration care. But the IPAB, made up of health care professionals, economists and others, wouldn’t have the power to do that, according to the law.

More Republican Lies on Just the First Day of Their Convention – On the first day of the Republican convention — marked by a delegate vote making former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney the party’s official nominee for president — we’re already hearing a lot of exaggerated, misleading or downright false claims that we’ve heard before.

The theme of the day centered on repeated misrepresentations of a quote from President Obama. From the various speakers we also heard:

• A misleading statistic about women’s job losses that has grown so stale it is now wholly false.
• More bogus claims about “raiding” Medicare and the doctor-patient relationship under Obama’s Affordable Care Act.
• A completely false claim that more than half of the younger generation is unemployed. (Actually, 86 percent who want work have it.)
• More false claims that Obama blocked the Keystone XL Pipeline. Construction has already begun on the southern leg of the project, and the company says it expects approval for the Canada-to-U.S. leg early next year.

Republican Convention Attendee Threw Nuts At Black CNN Camerawoman, Said ‘This Is How We Feed Animals’ – Two people were removed from the Republican National Convention Tuesday after they threw nuts at an African-American CNN camera operator and said, “This is how we feed animals.” Multiple witnesses observed the exchange and RNC security and police immediately removed the two people from the Tampa Bay Times Forum.

Paul Ryan’s Plan for America is Not Credible, Says Financial Times Magazine – This is what David Stockman, director of the Office of Management and Budget under Ronald Reagan and a true conservative, wrote in The New York Times on August 13: “Mr Ryan’s plan is devoid of credible math or hard policy choices.” This is right, with one exception: Medicare. On that, Mr Ryan does offer a hard choice. But the maths are incredible.

The Ryan plan is the latest example of a consistent line of Republican fiscal policy since movement conservatism displaced traditional balanced-budget Republicanism some three decades ago. The priorities have been clear: first, tax cuts benefiting rich “wealth-creators”; second, cuts in spending, predominantly on the poor; and, last and least, reducing deficits.

Indeed, the “starve the beast” theory explicitly aims at cutting taxes, in order to increase deficits and so justify cuts in spending. From this point of view, the financial crisis has been a boon. The crisis, which occurred on George W. Bush’s watch, is far and away the most important explanation for today’s huge deficits. But it came after unfunded tax cuts, unfunded wars and the unfunded prescription drug benefit (Medicare D). The fiscal mess the Republicans bequeathed made it difficult – indeed, given Republican opposition, impossible – for the Obama administration to implement a stimulus plan on the scale needed, as Bruce Bartlett, a former official in the Reagan administration, notes in a blog post for Economix. Not that Republicans have anything against stimulus, provided it takes the form of unfunded tax cuts.

In all, the idea that Republicans care about the deficit does not pass the laugh test.

As Heidi Przybyla notes in a report for Bloomberg, Mr Ryan was pivotal in killing the Bowles-Simpson agreement, which, for all its faults, was (and is) the only politically realistic long-term fiscal solution. Moreover, the Congressional Budget Office’s meticulous analysis of the initial Ryan plan demonstrated that it is smoke and mirrors.

Romney Wants Tax Cuts For the Rich Paid By Higher Middle-Class Taxes – Romney’s tenure as Massachusetts governor showed he had no aversion to raising taxes or fees, according to a report by John McCain’s 2008 presidential campaign—including raising the state fee assessed to families before cremating the dead, which the state’s media called creepy. So it is not surprising that independent analyses find Romney’s 2012 tax proposals would hit other vulnerable people.

The proposals, in an analysis cited by the Washington Post and others, would cut taxes for the wealthiest 5 percent but raise taxes on everyone else. Extreme Liberal’s blog posted a graphic that shows exactly how it would work, saying, “You may notice that everyone pays more in taxes right up until you get to the top 5 percent of the population. According to the analysis, those who make $3 million dollars a year would get a TAX CUT of $250,000.”

Regards,

Jim