The WAWG Blog

Republicans Insult Democratic Women – The home web page for Minnesota’s Republican District 56 has a video comparing Republican and Democratic women. A musical score of “She’s a Lady” plays, while a parade of young, pretty Republican women (or at least, women wearing American Flag apparel, if they can’t be visibly identified as a GOP star) scroll past, many in smiles, bikinis, and an occasional gun.

Next, the music switches over to a rousing “Who Let the Dogs Out?” while images of mostly known progressive women, largely overweight, old, growling, and many of them photo -shopped, flash across the screen. A few of them are identified as men, because telling women they look like men is apparently either funny or a meant to be belittling.

The video itself is silly, useless flame-fanning, meant to be passed around via stupid political forwards or as blog fodder for Hot Air and the like. But when a local political unit goes as far as to put it on their home page, that’s something a little more serious.

Republicans Out-of-Touch with Wishes of Manhattan Citizens – A poll of New York City Registered Voters shows that support for the proposed Muslim Community Center in Manhattan is lowest among Republicans (only 19% for, 74% against), but is highest in Manhattan (53% for, 31% against), where the community center will be located.

The Muslim Community Center Controversy Was Deliberately Manufactured – On Dec. 8, 2009, the New York Times published a lengthy front-page story on the Muslim Community Center project. No one was bothered by it until May of 2010, when the controversy was sparked from a campaign launched by Pamela Geller, a right-wing, anti-Muslim blogger and founder of the Stop Islamisation of America group, which is an outgrowth of the Stop Islamisation of Europe group. Their motto is (and I am not joking): “Racism is the lowest form of human stupidity, but Islamophobia is the height of common sense”. The group calls on its followers to avoid Fisher Price, Asda, Kentucky Fried Chicken and The Radisson Hotel chain for apparently pandering to the Muslim community. Geller once suggested that Malcolm X was Obama’s real father. (Seriously).

Geller’s sinister portrayal of the project was embraced and amplified by Rupert Murdoch’s (also owner of Fox News) New York Post. The Post quotes Geller at length and promotes the anti-mosque protest of Stop Islamization of America, which Post reporter Peyser describes as a “human-rights group.” The Post also reported — falsely — that the opening date will be Sept. 11, 2011.

Smelling blood, the Post assigned news reporters to cover the ins and outs of the development daily. Fox News, the Post’s television sibling, then went all out.

“How the “ground zero mosque” fear mongering began”

“The pens of anti-Muslim conservatives impact N.Y.C. mosque debate mightily”

“AFP: Riot police quell clashes at anti-Islam demo in London”

Karl Rove and Newt Gingrich Make False Comparison of Muslims to Nazis – Equating the building of a community center with a racist demonstration is wrong because it equates intended good with intended evil. Equating racist skinheads or Neo-Nazis to all Muslims is wrong (Nazis are to Germans as Al-Qaida is to Muslims [as Christianists are to Christianity]). It is also extremely insensitive to ordinary Muslims like those building Park 51. Unlike Nazis or skinheads, the founders of Park 51 are Sufis with no history of advocating hate or taking part in violence. In fact, the founder of the institution, Imam Abdul Rauf, has even advised the FBI and been a diplomatic envoy for the U.S. State Department as a part of the U.S. struggle against terrorism.

Will We Learn From the Past? –

In 1984, in Poland, Catholic nuns and bishops were determined to open a Carmelite convent on land proper to what had been the infamous Auschwitz death camp where Jews by the thousands had gone to the ovens at the hands of a gentile army, most of whom were ostensibly Christian (New York Times, May 30, 1989).

To the Jews, the very thought of a Catholic institution on that territory was blasphemy, a sacrilege. After all, they argued, Christianity and its long-standing position that the Jews — as a people — had killed Jesus, was of itself a preeminent and underlying cause of the Holocaust.

Jews were insulted at the very thought of a cross on those holy grounds. Christians were flabbergasted at the reaction. In the first place, the purpose of putting a cloistered community of Carmelites in that place was exactly to hallow that ground, to pray for those who had died there, to be a sign of peace and reconciliation.

And, after all, half the people who died in the camps, they said, were Christians: Poles, Gypsies, and gays.

Jews were infuriated by the move. Catholics were enraged by the reaction to what they thought was a good thing to do for both groups.

It took years to resolve the issue. In the end historians determined that only 80,000 of those who died in Auschwitz were non-Jews. The other 1.2 million deaths were Jewish deaths. It was, indeed, a Jewish burial ground. And Catholics, led by the pope himself, agreed in 1993 to relocate the convent to a less offensive position in order to provide an education center meant to educate us all on the ways of peace and unity, on the issues in Christian-Jewish relations.

It was a case of Christians wanting to make what they considered a gesture of reconciliation that was seen from the other side of the issue as just one more sign of domination or aggression or assault.

The point is that we, of all people, should know what it means to be rebuffed by those who perceived our attempt to make peace as just another kind of wound. Radicals on any side may be well-meaning, perhaps, but miserably inhuman in their tactics. Sincere, perhaps, but just as surely dealing in sin as are their oppressors.

…

From where I stand, there has to be another way to deal with this that is sensitive to both sides, accepting of both positions, healing of both wounds and a monument to real peace. In that case, it will surely be a monument that will shine a strong Islamic light in the very face of that small part of Islam that wants, it seems, to shatter that glow.

The Liberation of Iraq – Yes, there was a “liberation” of sorts. More than one million Iraqis have been permanently liberated from their obligation to breathe.

The original code name for the unprovoked invasion of Iraq was “Operation Iraqi Liberation” until some smart guy in the Pentagon realized that the acronym for the invasion was “OIL.” Then they renamed it Operation Iraqi Freedom.

Fox News Is Part-Owned By a Saudi Prince Whose Family Rules By Sharia Law – News Corp.’s second-largest shareholder, after the Murdoch family, is Prince Alwaleed bin Talal the nephew of Saudi Arabian King Abdullah, and one of the world’s richest men. Saudi Arabia, which is ruled by Alwaleed’s uncle King Abdullah, is, of course, an authoritarian petro-monarchy that actually is governed by Sharia law and is known as one of the top global sponsors of terrorism.

Republicans Have Been Lying About the Federal Government’s Inaction on Immigration – In 2009, a total of “393,000 foreign nationals were removed from the United States, the seventh consecutive record high,” the Department of Homeland Security said in a statement. Most of the undocumented immigrants were from neighboring Mexico.

For-Profit Schools Lie to Potential Students – The Government Accountability Office sent investigators to for-profit [(privateering)] schools across the country and found that all of them were misleading potential students. The schools make false claims to potential students about guaranteed jobs and encourage potential students to go deeply in debt to pay tuition.

Regards,

Jim

Rupert Murdoch’s Hypocrisy – Monday, NewsCorp, parent of Fox News, gave $1,000,000 to the Republican Governors Association, making them the organization’s largest single contributor. Rupert Murdoch was singing a different tune back in April when he was confronted at the National Press Club about Fox News’ support of the Tea Parties. At that time, he said, “I don’t think we should be supporting the tea party or any other party”

Now it is clear Rupert Murdoch lied.

Of course, this money is just a drop in the bucket when compared to the tens of millions of dollars Fox News’ contributors have raised for Republicans. Furthermore, “at least twenty Fox News personalities have endorsed, raised money, or campaigned for Republican candidates or causes, or against Democratic candidates or causes, in more than 300 instances and in at least 49 states. Republican parties and officials have routinely touted these personalities’ affiliations with Fox News to sell and promote their events.”

Now no one can ever doubt that Fox is not a news network — they are simply part of the Republican machine.

Irresponsible Republican Statements on New York Community Center Endanger American Security – It is obvious to many Americans who believe strongly in our Constitutional values that the Republican attempt to use the New York Muslim Community Center as an electoral issue is a direct assault on the constitutional protection for freedom of religion — one of the most fundamental principles that lie at the foundation of our country.

Every time a Republican “leader” attacks the notion that a Muslim mosque should be built two blocks from Ground Zero, they are endangering Americans’ national security. Perhaps they haven’t noticed that America is still involved — at one level or the other — in two ground wars in Muslim countries that General Petraeus has correctly defined as battles for the hearts and minds of their Muslim citizens. Perhaps they forget the long struggle to prevent young Muslim men and women from becoming suicide bombers and fundamentalist extremists that endanger our country. Every time one of them attacks mainstream Islam in the United States by saying that it would defile “sacred ground” for Muslims to build a community center near Ground Zero, they legitimize the claims of Osama Bin Laden to young, impressionable Muslims across the world. What do they think Muslims around the world hear when they say it would “defile sacred ground” for them to worship within two blocks of a sacred American site? They hear contempt and disrespect.

It’s Al Qaeda that wants Muslims around the world to believe that the United States is at war with all of Islam. These Republicans might as well sign up to work for the Bin Laden propaganda ministry. Their outrageous pandering to put fear in voters does direct damage to the national security of the United States. Who’s helping Bin Laden?

Terrorist Attack in McKinney, Texas – A man apparently bent on destroying the police headquarters in McKinney was shot and killed this morning after spraying the building with bullets.

Police say 29-year-old Patrick Gray Sharp drove a Ford F150 pickup pulling a trailer to the station and set it on fire in an apparent attempt to draw people out of the building. Inside the trailer, police said, were wood chips, roadside flares, gasoline, and ammonium nitrate fertilizer, the type used in the bombing of the federal building in Oklahoma City.

A Patrick Sharp of Anna had a MySpace page that showed a man holding a number of firearms. One caption read, “I love guns more than toothpaste.” Another photo showed a steel plate that had been shot up. The caption read, “What if that was your face?” A third image showed a target with a photo of Osama bin Laden.

Cheap Labor ConservativesNote: The following was written in 2006 and it’s even more true today.

At bottom, conservatives believe in a social hierarchy of “haves” and “have nots” that I call “corporate feudalism”. They have taken this corrosive social vision and dressed it up with a “respectable” sounding ideology. That ideology is pure hogwash, and you can prove it.

When you cut right through it, right-wing ideology is just “dime-store economics” – intended to dress their ideology up and make it look respectable. You don’t really need to know much about economics to understand it. They certainly don’t. It all gets down to two simple words.

“Cheap labor”. That’s their whole philosophy in a nutshell – which gives you a short and pithy “catch phrase” that describes them perfectly. You’ve heard of “big-government liberals”. Well they’re “cheap-labor conservatives”.

You see, cheap-labor conservatives are defenders of corporate America – whose fortunes depend on labor. The larger the labor supply, the cheaper it is. The more desperately you need a job, the cheaper you’ll work, and the more power those “corporate lords” have over you. If you are a wealthy elite – or a “wannabe” like most dittoheads – your wealth, power and privilege is enhanced by a labor pool, forced to work cheap.

Don’t believe me? Well, let’s apply this principle, and see how many right-wing positions become instantly understandable.

• Cheap-labor conservatives don’t like social spending or our “safety net”. Why. Because when you’re unemployed and desperate, corporations can pay you whatever they feel like – which is inevitably next to nothing. You see, they want you “over a barrel” and in a position to “work cheap or starve”.
• Cheap-labor conservatives don’t like the minimum wage, or other improvements in wages and working conditions. Why. These reforms undo all of their efforts to keep you “over a barrel”.
• Cheap-labor conservatives like “free trade”, NAFTA, GATT, etc. Why. Because there is a huge supply of desperately poor people in the third world, who are “over a barrel”, and will work cheap.
• Cheap-labor conservatives oppose a woman’s right to choose. Why. Unwanted children are an economic burden that put poor women “over a barrel”, forcing them to work cheap.
• Cheap-labor conservatives don’t like unions. Why. Because when labor “sticks together”, wages go up. That’s why workers unionize. Seems workers don’t like being “over a barrel”.
• Cheap-labor conservatives constantly bray about “morality”, “virtue”, “respect for authority”, “hard work” and other “values”. Why. So they can blame your being “over a barrel” on your own “immorality”, lack of “values” and “poor choices”.
• Cheap-labor conservatives encourage racism, misogyny, homophobia and other forms of bigotry. Why? Bigotry among wage earners distracts them, and keeps them from recognizing their common interests as wage earners.
• Cheap-labor conservatives have a long and sorry history of opposing virtually every advancement in this country’s development going right back to the American revolution.
• Cheap-labor conservatives have hated Social Security and Medicare since their inception.

The ugly truth is that cheap-labor conservatives just don’t like working people. Click on the link at the start of this section for more.

Regards,

Jim

Anti-tax, Anti-Spending Republican Takes Tax Money for Himself – A Republican north Texas state representative who rails against the evils of runaway government spending admitted Monday that he has pocketed thousands of dollars in taxpayer money for travel expenses that his campaign had already funded.

Rep. Joe Driver, R-Garland, faced with findings from an investigation by The Associated Press, acknowledged in an interview that for years he has been submitting the same receipts – for luxury hotels, airline tickets, meals, fees and incidentals – to both his campaign and to the Texas House of Representatives. He has also been collecting thousands of dollars in state mileage reimbursements for travel in vehicles for which his campaign has shelled out more than $100,000 since 2000.

Driver, an anti-tax conservative on the powerful House Appropriations Committee – which oversee how state dollars are spent – said he thought it was OK to bill two entities for the same expenses. He said he routinely pays hotels and airlines with donated political funds and then submits the same expenses to the state – taking the taxpayer money for himself.

Conservatives Using Bad-Faith Accounting in Social Security Tactics – Social Security’s attackers claim that they’re concerned about the program’s financial future. But their math doesn’t add up, and their hostility isn’t really about dollars and cents. Instead, it’s about ideology and posturing. And underneath it all is ignorance of or indifference to the realities of life for many Americans.

Social Security has been running surpluses for the last quarter-century, banking those surpluses in a special account, the so-called trust fund. The program won’t have to turn to Congress for help or cut benefits until or unless the trust fund is exhausted, which the program’s actuaries don’t expect to happen until 2037 – and there’s a significant chance, according to their estimates, that that day will never come.
So where do claims of crisis come from? To a large extent they rely on bad-faith accounting. In particular, they rely on an exercise in three-card monte in which the surpluses Social Security has been running for a quarter-century don’t count – because hey, the program doesn’t have any independent existence; it’s just part of the general federal budget – while future Social Security deficits are unacceptable – because hey, the program has to stand on its own.

It would be easy to dismiss this bait-and-switch as obvious nonsense, except for one thing: many influential people – including Alan Simpson, co-chairman of the president’s deficit commission – are peddling this nonsense. Conservatives hate Social Security for ideological reasons: its success undermines their claim that government is always the problem, never the solution.

Republicans Have Been Lying About Public vs. Private Workers’ Compensation – In contrast to what you have been hearing from Republicans, a study by economists Keith Bender and John Heywood concluded that compensation for local and state workers was, on average, 6.8 to 7.4 percent lower than compensation for comparable private sector workers. Also, as Dean Baker of the Center for Economic and Policy Research points out, many public employees don’t get Social Security. Overall, he says, “most public sector pensions do not provide retirees with an especially high standard of living.” Exceptions to this rule frequently include firefighters and police, particularly in New York. Then again, they risk their lives to protect the rest of us from lethal threats, which is more than you can say for CEOs like the former telecom executive who in 2007 retired with a $159 million benefit package.

Republicans are asking: To what extent is the problem that the retirement benefits for unionized public sector workers have become too generous? The question you should be asking is: To what extent is the problem that retirement benefits for everybody else have become too stingy?

I would suggest it’s more the latter than the former. The promise of stable retirement–one not overly dependent on the ups and downs of the stock market–used to be part of the social contract. If you got an education and worked a steady job, then you got to live out the rest of your life comfortably. You might not be rich, but you wouldn’t be poor, either.

Unions, whatever their flaws, have delivered on that for their members. (In theory, retirement was supposed to rest on a “three-legged stool” of Social Security, pensions, and private benefits.) But unions have not been able to secure similar benefits for everybody else. In the long term, though, it seems like we should be looking for ways make sure that all workers have a decent living and a stable retirement, rather than taking away the security that some, albeit too few, have already.

The Moral Cowardice of Harry Reid – Democratic Senate Leader Harry Reid says, via his spokesman Jim Manley, that he respects religious rights. Then came the “but.” But the Muslim Community Center in New York City should be built “someplace else.”

Reid’s cringing performance, too cowardly even to make the statement personally, leaving it instead to a flack, is particularly shameful coming hard on the heels of Newt Gingrich’s likening of building a mosque to the Holocaust. But his actions do provide a kind of crystallization of what’s gone wrong with the Democratic party, or, to put it more precisely, has been wrong with it for decades. Republicans seize upon an issue, whip up a firestorm of indignation, and, rather than seek to douse it, or, heaven forbid, turn it around, Democrats, more often than not, cower abjectly. This has pretty much been the Obama strategy over the past year, as the GOP has, by and large, set the terms of debate.

So Much for Unbiased News – Fox News and Wall Street Journal parent company News Corp donated $1 million to the Republican Governors Association in June. The media conglomerate, controlled by Chairman and CEO Rupert Murdoch, took advantage of the unlimited donations corporations can give to governors’ associations.

Regards,

Jim

Senator Reid,

Have you been punked by the Republicans – like so many Democrats have been?

Their right-wing authoritarian minions have been controlling the media with their week-after-week of fear mongering and Democrats just line up with the hysterical right and repeat their ridiculous arguments. So many fearful people doing so many stupid things. It’s past time for standing up for Democratic principles.

This week the fear mongering is what might be done in the top two floors of the legal conversion of a little used building, in a run down part of NY City, into a community center, where these floors will be used as Islamic prayer rooms. Howver, one of our founding principles is innocent until proven guilty. Why, in this case, are Muslims guilty until proven innocent? Why should they be prevented from completing what they started – because a bunch of old, white, fearful, RWAs say so? NO!!!!

You should be ashamed of agreeing with your opposition and opposing a constitutionally lawful activity. You have violated your oath of office and have joined your fear driven opponent in the gutter of revenge.

Please reconsider your opposition to the completion of the civic center at its current location in NY. It’s none of Nevada’s business!!!!

Rick Perry Afraid to Interview With Texas Newspaper Editorial Boards – In not-so-shocking news, Rick Perry’s campaign declared that the governor won’t be bothering with newspaper editorial boards before the November election. This was Perry’s modus operandi in the March primary, so it’s more of an ongoing disappointment than a surprise. I’d just like to see the governor answer some tough questions about his record.

The governor’s spokesman said that Perry’s time is better spent talking directly to Texans. Translation: It’s a lot easier to give canned stump speeches to partisan crowds than to sit down for an hour and answers questions about your record.

Perry still hasn’t consented to debate Democrat Bill White. So, voters might not get the chance to hear important issues discussed in that format, either. What does that leave voters? So far, it sounds like they could be hearing a whole lot of Perry’s stump speech and not much else.

Rick Perry’s Brazen Abuse of Power – From the San Antonio Express-News Editorial Board:

When the going was about to get tough for Gov. Rick Perry at the Texas Forensic Science Commission last fall, Perry sacked three commission members, including its chairman. The commission — created by the Legislature in 2005 to set standards for forensic analysis and investigate allegations of negligence or misconduct — was at long last about to consider the case of Todd Willingham.

Willingham was put to death in 2004 after being convicted of murdering his three daughters by arson. Substantial doubt exists about the forensic evidence used to obtain that conviction.

Just as the commission was set to hear expert testimony about the Willingham case, Perry’s new appointee — Williamson County District Attorney John Bradley — abruptly canceled the hearing. The move benefited Perry politically by delaying an official examination that could prove to be detrimental to his re-election effort.

Perry’s brazen manipulation of the commission represents an abuse of the gubernatorial power of appointment. Bradley’s political hatchet work on the governor’s behalf and lack of respect for open government render him unfit to serve as its chairman.

Rick Perry Using Political Smokescreens According to KPRC Channel 2 – Houston TV station KPRC (Click 2 Houston) Vice President and General Manager Larry Blackerby voiced an on-air editorial calling on Rick Perry to debate Bill White. Here is a partial transcript of the on-air editorial:

In a democracy, public debates are a must. It is one of the most direct ways voters can compare and contrast their choices for public office. It’s time for Governor Rick Perry to drop the political smokescreens and make himself available to debate Bill White.

Bill White has said yes; Rick Perry is using a political maneuver to avoid it.

Shame on you, Governor Perry, putting politics first over the people you say you want to represent.

You can watch the editorial here:

Republican Plan to Extend Tax Cuts for Rich Will Add $36 Billion to Deficit – A Republican plan to extend tax cuts for the rich would add more than $36 billion to the federal deficit next year — and transfer the bulk of that cash into the pockets of the nation’s millionaires, according to a congressional analysis released Wednesday.

New data from the nonpartisan Joint Committee on Taxation show that households earning more than $1 million a year would reap nearly $31 billion in tax breaks under the GOP plan in 2011, for an average tax cut per household of about $100,000.

The Democratic vs. the Republican Tax Cut Plan in One Chart

Republican Candidate Stumps for South American Military Dictator-Style Retirement Program in U.S. – To those who’ve actually studied recent history, former Chilean military dictator Augusto José Ramón Pinochet Ugarte was a cruel tyrant. But to Sharron Angle, the tea parties’ favorite U.S. Senate candidate from Nevada, he had at least one good idea: replacing the country’s Social Security-like program with compulsory private retirement savings accounts.

José Piñera, Pinochet’s former labor minister, has since become one of the world’s leading advocates of privatizing pension accounts. After demolishing the nation’s political stronghold, he went to work for the conservative-leaning Cato Institute to advocate around the world for private retirement accounts. He’s even credited as the man who convinced former U.S. President George W. Bush to pursue an agenda of privatizing Social Security.

Another Republican Candidate Wants to Cut Social Security – A Republican House candidate in Florida named Daniel Webster wants take back the Cost of Living Adjustments (COLAs) for Social Security recipients since 2007. Sorry senior citizens, just suck it up!

Right-Wing Christians Scream “Jesus Hates” – About a dozen right-wing Christians, carrying placards and yelling “Islam is a lie,” angrily confronted worshippers outside a Fairfield Avenue mosque Friday.

“Jesus hates Muslims,” they screamed at worshippers arriving at the Masjid An-Noor mosque to prepare for the holy month of Ramadan. One protester shoved a placard at a group of young children leaving the mosque. “Murderers,” he shouted.

Muslim Community Center Protests Are Hateful, Illogical, and Un-American – It’s alarming and disheartening to see the angry, hate-filled rhetoric by some in response to the building of the Muslim Community Center in New York City, two blocks from the former World Trade Center. Some people truly appear to hate Muslims more than they love the ideals of our country.

Using the protesters’ twisted arguments, we should not allow a sushi restaurant to open near Pearl Harbor. It is like saying that because a handful of Catholic priests molested young boys, Catholic Churches should not be allowed to be built near elementary schools. Or because Bernie Madoff and several others in the recent Wall Street scandals were Jewish, no synagogues can be built near Wall Street.

Maybe we should look at what else is located near “ground zero” that could be considered offensive? How about the two falafel stands that serve Middle-Eastern foods, or the two strip clubs, or the trashy lingerie store? You remember that the 9/11 terrorists ate falafels and visited strip clubs before their attack. Or how about Fox News host Greg Gutfeld’s proposed gay bar that caters not only to the west, but also Islamic gay men, to be built next door to the proposed Muslim Community Center? Gutfeld says he is not joking about this. Or should we ban anyone that looks Muslim from walking or driving within two blocks of “ground zero?” Maybe the right-wingers could pass a law based on the show-me-your-papers law in Arizona?

And is it really about the location? We now have the “Christian” Pastor from Florida who is threatening to burn Korans on September 11 – the way the Nazis burned Torahs. And we have those who are protesting mosques being built in other parts of the country hundreds of miles from Ground Zero and threatening to release pigs on the property to keep the Muslims away.

Allowing the Muslim Community Center to be built where it is being proposed represents the best of America -the idea that the United States is a special place in the world, a beacon of fairness that welcomes and protects the rights of all its people. Too many have sacrificed their lives for these sacred rights to say that certain Americans should not enjoy them simply because of their religion.

 

Some Sensible Comments on the Above Story – The reactionary right wing’s response [to the proposed NYC Muslim Community Center] opposes the very nature of our nation’s values: liberty and tolerance. In this country, the fact that we still have this type of hate is disheartening, to say the least. It is like we are living in a twilight zone. As the conservatives and the right continue to preach that they are the ones who are on god’s side, I am dismayed to see them behave in quite the opposite manner.

As a nation that was founded by men and women who were being persecuted for their particular faith, we should know that the best path to finding freedom is finding freedom for others. We were formed as a pluralistic society and this means we welcome all religions. Islam did not attack the World Trade Center on September 11, 2001, sick and twisted men did, who not only hijacked four airplanes but also hijacked a religion. Let us not stereotype the over one billion Muslims around the world because of the evil acts of a few. A decision like this one, to support or not support the construction of this center, defines who we are as a nation. It’s at the essence of our values, our freedom of expression, freedom of religion and religious tolerance.

There are moments that define our nation. There are moments that test the strength of our character. There are moments that test the essence of our freedoms. Let this be that moment and let us pass this test with grace and dignity.

Republican Candidate Urges Building Internment Camps – A Republican state house candidate from northern Florida is standing by her proposal to build internment camps. Now doesn’t that sound like the America we all love? Not!

Republican Congressman from Texas Makes it into the Urban Dictionary – From the Urban Dictionary:

Gohmert – verb: to say something that is obviously and patently untrue to the point of stupidity, then when called upon to provide concrete evidence of the assertion, to flounder about angrily while shouting about the integrity of the questioner.

Example: The Congressman Gohmerted for 5 minutes when called upon by Anderson Cooper to provide evidence that terror babies are being sneaked across the border.

Republican Hypocrisy on Spending – House Republican leaders have fought to maintain partisan unity in their effort to kill the stimulus. Every single Republican in the House and every single Republican in the Senate — with the exception of three, voted against it. They failed to defeat it, but they did weaken it. Then, they cast the stimulus that they weakened as a failure in order to win elections in 2010. In a coordinated effort, Republicans have used every opportunity to attack the stimulus. However, even the conservative American Enterprise Institute found that the stimulus had boosted the U.S. economy by 4 percent. Then, many of the same Republican lawmakers who tried to kill the legislation have been returning to their home states to claim credit for popular stimulus programs, including Congressman Pete Olson (R-TX) who requested $3 billion In stimulus funds. A research report finds that over half of the GOP caucus, 110 lawmakers — from the House and Senate — are guilty of stimulus hypocrisy. Now, as the election draws near, Republicans are attacking the program again, including Congressman Pete Olson (R-TX) who sent out an expensive four-page, glossy, heavy-paper mailer to everyone in his district to attack the stimulus as wasteful. How much did he spend on that mailer?

Now, the conservative Americans for Prosperity Foundation will kick off a $4.1-million ad campaign (talk about spending!) in 11 states and two dozen of the most competitive congressional races, slamming “wasteful federal spending.” Last week, President Obama cited the organization at an Austin, Texas, fundraiser. He said “groups with harmless-sounding names like Americans for Prosperity” could dump millions into an election without voters knowing who was behind the effort.

“And they don’t have to say who exactly the Americans for Prosperity are,” Obama said in Austin. “You don’t know if it’s a foreign-controlled corporation. You don’t know if it’s a big oil company or a big bank. You don’t know if it’s an insurance company that wants to see some of the provisions in health reform repealed because it’s good for their bottom line. …

“A Supreme Court decision allowed this to happen,” Obama added. “And we tried to fix it, just by saying disclose what’s going on, and making sure that foreign companies can’t influence our elections.”

Air Pollution Kills and Must be Dealt With – Elbert Jovante Woods, the son of the former Cincinnati Bengals fullback Ickey Woods, died this Saturday. He was only 16. His doctors blamed extreme heat and poor air quality for the teen’s death. ‘We’ve actually had a lot of patients in the last week come in with exacerbation of asthma,’ said Dr. David Bernstein, a University of Cincinnati researcher. ‘We think it’s probably related to air quality.’

Power plants are the largest source of fine particle pollution, which is formed when sulfur dioxide and other pollutants react in the atmosphere.

Here in the Cincinnati area, power plant emissions have increased dramatically over the last several years. Between 1996 and 2003, emissions increased 83% at the Miami Fort plant in Hamilton County and 54% at the Walter C Beckjord plant in Clermont County.

Because of their small size, fine particles can bypass the body’s natural defenses, such as coughing and sneezing, and lodge deep in the lungs or even pass into the bloodstream, causing serious respiratory and cardiovascular problems, such as asthma attacks, heart attacks, and lung cancer. Fine particle pollution cuts short the lives of tens of thousands of Americans each year, according to EPA.

Regards,

Jim

For Newt Gingrich, “Family Values” is Just a Phrase He Likes to Use – According to Newt’s second wife Marianne Gingrich:

“He asked me to marry him way too early,” she revealed. “And he wasn’t divorced yet [from his first wife Jackie Battley]. I should have known there was a problem.”

Marianne Gingrich suggested that the former House Speaker found himself in the same relationship pattern eighteen years later when he sought to marry his current wife, then-congressional aide Callista Bisek.

“I know,” she explained. “I asked him. He’d already asked her to marry him before he asked me for a divorce. Before he even asked.”

“There’s somebody else, isn’t there?”

She kind of guessed it, of course. Women usually do. But did she know the woman was in her apartment, eating off her plates, sleeping in her bed?

She called a minister they both trusted. He came over to the house the next day and worked with them the whole weekend, but Gingrich just kept saying she was a Jaguar and all he wanted was a Chevrolet. “‘I can’t handle a Jaguar right now.’ He said that many times. ‘All I want is a Chevrolet.'”

He asked her to just tolerate the affair, an offer she refused.

He’d just returned from Erie, Pennsylvania, where he’d given a speech full of high sentiments about compassion and family values.

The next night, they sat talking out on their back patio in Georgia. She said, “How do you give that speech and do what you’re doing?”

“It doesn’t matter what I do,” he answered. “People need to hear what I have to say. There’s no one else who can say what I can say. It doesn’t matter what I live.”
Government by the Party, for the Party, and of the Party – Part 1a, The House that Newt Built

NH Democrat Makes Deplorable Comment on Facebook – Leaders from both political parties called on a Democratic candidate for New Hampshire’s House to apologize Wednesday for posting a death wish for Sarah Palin on Facebook. Republican state Rep. D.J. Bettencourt said Democrat Keith Halloran of Rindge was responding to Bettencourt’s post Tuesday about the plane crash that killed former Alaska Sen. Ted Stevens. Bettencourt said Halloran wrote: “Just wish Sarah and Levy were on board,” an apparent reference to the former Alaska governor and her daughter’s ex-boyfriend, Levi Johnston. Mike Brunnelle, director of the state Democratic Party, said Democrats do not condone such rhetoric.

Article About How to Spot Lying Contains a LieIn Pamela Meyer’s article in the Washington Post she states, “Al Gore’s “I invented the Internet” is as risible as Clinton’s “I didn’t inhale,” and for the same reasons.” However, Al Gore never said “I invented the Internet” or anything that could reasonably be interpreted that way. So her article about lying contains a lie. Another lie spotting technique is to know or find the facts.

Hate of Muslims at Ground Zero Highlights the Lying Liars of the Xenophobic Right Wing – The conservative media lied about the location of the New York City Muslim community center project, they lied about Rauf’s background, they lied about the project’s funding, they lied about when the project would be built, and they lied about Rauf’s political beliefs. And it would have been one thing if it had just been a small group of people lying, but they had an entire cable news station to lie for them, and politicians who were willing to amplify their smears. This controversy isn’t about the “political climate.” It’s the fruit of a conscious, deliberate, and sustained effort.

The reason this became a national controversy is because Republicans see a political advantage in harnessing anti-Muslim sentiment, particularly if that forces Democrats to defend an unpopular minority group. Rauf and Khan are merely collateral damage in a larger political battle in which the rights of Muslims are forfeit as long as Republicans see some political interest in curtailing them or forcing their opponents to defend them.

This isn’t just a setback for religious tolerance and individual freedom; it’s a setback for the fight against terrorism, which demands that the United States marginalize violent extremists, not embrace their narrative and worldview.

Republican Candidates Across the Country are Running on the Same Platform This Year — Destroying Social Security as We Know It – Kentucky’s Rand Paul called Social Security a “Ponzi scheme.” Chuck Grassley, Richard Burr — these guys led George Bush’s campaign to hand over Social Security to Wall Street back in 2005 and they’re ready to lead it again.

Pn a November 8, 1954 letter Eisenhower sent to his brother:

“Should any political party attempt to abolish social security, unemployment insurance, and eliminate labor laws and farm programs, you would not hear of that party again in our political history. There is a tiny splinter group, of course, that believes you can do these things. Among them are H. L. Hunt (you possibly know his background), a few other Texas oil millionaires, and an occasional politician or business man from other areas. Their number is negligible and they are stupid.”

Sadly, the “negligible” number of the “stupid” includes all of the current leadership of the Republican Party and most of their candidates for the US Senate this year and our very own Ron Paul.

Social Security is the most successful, popular social program in the history of the United States and Republicans[, who are rich and don’t need SS,] will stop at nothing to kill it. Cutting benefits, raising the retirement age — these are just first steps they want to take to destroy Social Security altogether.

Regards,

Jim

Republicans Destroyed U.S. Economy According to Ronald Reagan’s Director of the Office of Management and Budget – David Stockman was director of the Office of Management and Budget under President Ronald Reagan. Following are excerpts from an opinion piece he wrote in the NY Times.

If there were such a thing as Chapter 11 for politicians, the Republican push to extend the unaffordable Bush tax cuts would amount to a bankruptcy filing.

It is therefore unseemly for the Senate minority leader, Mitch McConnell, to insist that the nation’s wealthiest taxpayers be spared even a three-percentage-point rate increase.

More fundamentally, Mr. McConnell’s stand puts the lie to the Republican pretense that its new monetarist and supply-side doctrines are rooted in its traditional financial philosophy. This approach has not simply made a mockery of traditional party ideals. It has also led to the serial financial bubbles and Wall Street depredations that have crippled our economy. More specifically, the new policy doctrines have caused four great deformations of the national economy, and modern Republicans have turned a blind eye to each one.

In the end it was a new cadre of ideological tax-cutters who killed the Republicans’ fiscal religion. By fiscal year 2009, the tax-cutters had reduced federal revenues to 15 percent of gross domestic product, lower than they had been since the 1940s. Then, after rarely vetoing a budget bill and engaging in two unfinanced foreign military adventures, George W. Bush surrendered on domestic spending cuts, too — signing into law $420 billion in non-defense appropriations, a 65 percent gain from the $260 billion he had inherited eight years earlier.

The third ominous change in the American economy has been the vast, unproductive expansion of our financial sector. Here, Republicans have been oblivious to the grave danger of flooding financial markets with freely printed money and, at the same time, removing traditional restrictions on leverage and speculation. As a result, the combined assets of conventional banks and the so-called shadow banking system (including investment banks and finance companies) grew from a mere $500 billion in 1970 to $30 trillion by September 2008.

It is not surprising, then, that during the last bubble (from 2002 to 2006) the top 1 percent of Americans — paid mainly from the Wall Street casino — received two-thirds of the gain in national income, while the bottom 90 percent — mainly dependent on Main Street’s shrinking economy — got only 12 percent. This growing wealth gap is not the market’s fault. It’s the decaying fruit of bad economic policy.

The Fiscal Crisis Was Predicted and Planned – The following are excerpts from a piece originally published in the New York Times on 9/14/2003 (during G. W. Bush’s first term):

So what were the Bush tax cuts really about? The best answer seems to be that they were about securing a key part of the Republican base. Wealthy campaign contributors have a lot to gain from lower taxes, and since they aren’t very likely to depend on Medicare, Social Security or Medicaid, they won’t suffer if the beast gets starved. Equally important was the support of the party’s intelligentsia, nurtured by policy centers like Heritage and professionally committed to the tax-cut crusade. The original Bush tax-cut proposal was devised in late 1999 not to win votes in the national election but to fend off a primary challenge from the supply-sider Steve Forbes, the presumptive favorite of that part of the base.
This brings us to the next question: how have these cuts been sold?

At this point, one must be blunt: the selling of the tax cuts has depended heavily on chicanery. The [Bush] administration has used accounting trickery to hide the true budget impact of its proposals, and it has used misleading presentations to conceal the extent to which its tax cuts are tilted toward families with very high income.

David Stockman famously admitted that Reagan’s middle-class tax cuts were a ”Trojan horse” that allowed him to smuggle in what he really wanted, a cut in the top marginal rate. The Bush administration similarly follows a Trojan horse strategy, but an even cleverer one. The core measures in Bush’s tax cuts benefit only the wealthy, but there are additional features that provide significant benefits to some — but only some — middle-class families.

The astonishing political success of the antitax crusade has, more or less deliberately, set the United States up for a fiscal crisis. How we respond to that crisis will determine what kind of country we become.

If Grover Norquist is right — and he has been right about a lot — the coming crisis will allow conservatives to move the nation a long way back toward the kind of limited government we had before Franklin Roosevelt. Lack of revenue, he says, will make it possible for conservative politicians — in the name of fiscal necessity — to dismantle immensely popular government programs that would otherwise have been untouchable.

The tax-cut crusade has created a situation in which something must give. But what gives — whether we decide that the New Deal and the Great Society must go or that taxes aren’t such a bad thing after all — is up to us. The American people must decide what kind of a country we want to be.

Even if Bush Tax Cuts for the Rich Expire, the Rich Still Get Richer – Taxpayers with income of more than $1 million for 2011 would still receive on average a tax cut of about $6,300 compared with what they would have paid under rates in effect until 2001, according to an analysis prepared by the Joint Committee on Taxation.

That compares, however, with the roughly $100,000 average tax cut that households with more than $1 million in income receive under current rates.

Sizable differences don’t emerge until you hit the top 1 percent of taxpayers

Republicans Out-of Touch with Citizens on Social Security – While Republican leaders continue to push for reduction or elimination of Social Security, the latest assessment of Social Security by the American public continues to reflect strong support. On the 75th anniversary of Social Security, public support for the program remains exceedingly high. Consistent with previous anniversary surveys in 2005, 1995, and 1985, a majority of adults age 18 and older believe Social Security is one of the most important government programs and that it provides financial security to older Americans and helps them remain independent. Moreover, the public is inclined to pay more to get the same benefits as today than to see benefits reduced. Given the importance Americans place on Social Security, it is not surprising that they overwhelmingly oppose cutting it to help reduce the federal deficit.

Regards,

Jim

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.

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 RWA in November.

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

Vote Republican? – Vote Ponzi.

Conservative Says Einstein’s Theory of Relativity is a Liberal Plot – The Theory of Relativity was Albert Einstein’s formulation in the early 20th century that gave rise to the famous theorem that E=mc2. But if you’re a conservative, like Conservapedia founder and Eagle Forum University instructor Andy Schlafly — Phyllis Schlafly’s son – you may think it’s all a liberal plot.

The Conservapedia entry, “Counterexamples to Relativity” states, “The theory of relativity is a mathematical system that allows no exceptions. It is heavily promoted by liberals who like its encouragement of relativism and its tendency to mislead people in how they view the world. [1]” Note 1 states in part, “Virtually no one who is taught and believes relativity continues to read the Bible.”

Republicans Attempting to Redistribute the Wealth – The Republican Party record of the last ten years demonstrates that, in reality, the election in November will pose a choice between Democrats who support a free market capitalist economy, but with protections to prevent against its excesses (thus protecting lower, working and middle class Americans), and Republicans at war with the middle class, advocating policies that further their suffering while benefiting Wall Street, corporations and the wealthiest Americans.

On issue after issue, the Republicans have sided against the middle class, whether it was opposing financial regulation (even after Republican-touted deregulation resulted in the near financial collapse that plunged the country into deep recession), pushing for an extension of the Bush tax cuts for the wealthy, opposing any kind of job-creating stimulus (that didn’t involve more tax cuts for the rich), opposing and delaying the extension of unemployment benefits to those out of work (and painting the unemployed as lazy), opposing state aid that would preserve the jobs of teachers, police officers and firefighters (even though it would decrease the deficit), opposing health care reform (except to protect private insurance companies), and even opposing aid to workers sickened by the toxic fumes at Ground Zero after the 9/11 attacks.

The smoking gun of the Republican Party’s dedication to the wealthy at the expense of the middle class (and the revelation that the party’s supposed fanatical opposition to deficits is a facade) came when one Republican after another lined up to back Sen. John Kyl’s position that it was okay to add to the deficit for tax cuts for high earners (something even conservative stalwart Alan Greenspan could not support).

Far-Right ‘Doctors Tea Party’ Event Attended By Fake Doctors – “The National Doctors Tea Party” drew several hundred protesters to a park in San Diego this Saturday, where activists clad in white lab coats protested the Affordable Care Act. Craig Brown, a psychiatrist who lives in Del Mar, donned a white lab coat and wore a stethoscope around his neck as U.S. Senate candidate Sharron Angle of Nevada spoke against the health-care bill signed into law earlier this year. Brown said he borrowed the white coat from a nearby lab because a website suggested people wear lab coats to the event. In fact, as the OB Rag noted, “there are actually only two local San Diego medical doctors that belong to the sponsoring group.”

Republicans Try to Fool Us by Using Fringe Medical Group – Republicans love to quote The Association of American Physicians and Surgeons (AAPS) on medical issues. However, the AAPS is generally recognized as a politically conservative group. According to Mother Jones, “despite the lab coats and the official-sounding name, the docs of the AAPS are hardly part of mainstream medical society. Think Glenn Beck with an MD.”

The AAPS has characterized the effects of the Social Security Act of 1965, which established Medicare and Medicaid, as “evil” and “immoral”, and encouraged member physicians to boycott Medicare and Medicaid. AAPS argues that individuals should purchase medical care directly from doctors, and that there is no right to medical care. The organization requires its members to sign a “declaration of independence” pledging that they will not work with Medicare, Medicaid, or even private insurance companies. On Oct 25 2008, the AAPS website published an editorial implying that Barack Obama was using Neuro-linguistic Programming, “a covert form of hypnosis”, in his presidential campaign.

The Journal of American Physicians and Surgeons (JpandS) is not listed in the major literature databases of MEDLINE/PubMed nor the Web of Science. Articles and commentaries published in the journal have argued that HIV does not cause AIDS.

Quackwatch lists JPandS as an untrustworthy, non-recommended periodical. An editorial in Chemical & Engineering News by editor-in-chief Rudy Baum described JPandS as a “purveyor of utter nonsense.” Investigative journalist Brian Deer wrote that the journal is the “house magazine of a right-wing American fringe group [AAPS]” and “is barely credible as an independent forum.

Regards,

Jim

Republican Jobs Plan: Bigger Tax [Breaks] For The Rich – After opposing, stalling, stonewalling and filibustering almost every recession-related bill for the past year, Republican lawmakers have finally proposed a jobs plan of their own: a bigger, more expensive version of George W. Bush’s tax cuts for the rich.

A bill introduced by Reps. Jim Jordan (R-Ohio) and Jason Chaffetz (R-Utah) proposes deep tax [breaks] favoring the wealthiest in America, a reduction in regulatory oversight and the elimination of a federal tax on the estates of millionaires, which will allow wealthy investors to escape taxes entirely on a significant portion of their [estate assets]. Here’s the (un)funny part: Republicans have named this bill “The Economic Freedom Act of 2010.” Like freedom of the rich to do whatever they want to the rest of us.

The Republican Party’s Agenda To [Mutilate] The Constitution – Since President Obama took office, Republicans have shrouded their agenda of opposition by wrapping it in the flag and the Constitution. Yet, for all of their constitutional pabulum, the Republican Party’s agenda is nothing less than a direct assault on America’s founding document. Time and time again, Republicans have called for basic constitutional freedoms and fundamental aspects of our constitutional government to be repealed either by amendment or by their activist judges:

REPEALING CITIZENSHIP: Numerous GOP lawmakers, including their Senate leader and the most-recent Republican candidate for president, are lining up behind a “review” of the 14th Amendment’s grant of citizenship to virtually all persons born within the United States. Such a proposal literally revives the vision of citizenship articulated by the Supreme Court’s infamous pro-slavery decision in Dred Scott v. Sanford. It has no place in the twenty-first century.

REPEALING THE CONSTITUTION’S COMMERCE CLAUSE: The Constitution’s “Commerce Clause” gives national leaders broad authority to regulate the national economy, but much of the GOP has embraced “tentherism,” the belief that this power is small enough to be drowned in a bathtub. The most famous example of tentherism is the ubiquitous frivolous lawsuits claiming that health reform is unconstitutional, but these lawsuits are part of a much greater effort. In his brief challenging health reform, Virginia Attorney General Ken Cuccinelli claims that Congress is allowed to regulate “commerce on one hand” but not “manufacturing or agriculture.” Cuccinelli’s discredited vision of the Constitution was actually implemented in the late 19th and early 20th century, and it would strike down everything from child labor laws to the federal ban on whites-only lunch counters.

REPEALING THE ABILITY TO PROVIDE FOR THE COMMON GOOD: The Constitution also gives Congress power to “provide for the common defense and general welfare,” a broad grant of authority to create federal [beneficial] programs such as Social Security. Sen. Tom Coburn (R-OK), however, recently called upon the Supreme Court to rewrite the Constitution’s clear language and repeal parts of the budget he doesn’t like. A Texas GOP official even went so far as to claim that the federal highway system is unconstitutional. Should this GOP vision of the Constitution ever be adopted, it could eliminate not just Social Security, but also Medicare, Medicaid, federal education spending and countless other cherished programs[ and result in more privateering].

REPEALING THE ABILITY TO RAISE MONEY: The Constitution also gives Congress broad authority to decide how to distribute the tax burden. Thus, for example, Congress is allowed to create a tax incentive for people to buy houses by giving a tax break to people with mortgages, and it is allowed to create a similar incentive for people to buy health insurance by taxing people who have health insurance slightly less than people who do not. Nevertheless, the frivolous assaults on health reform would eliminate this Constitutional power. Many Tea Party Republicans go even further, calling for a full repeal of the 16th Amendment, the amendment which enables the income tax. Paying taxes is never popular, but it would be impossible to function as a nation if America lacked the power to raise the money it needs to [protect and empower citizens equally].

REPEALING EQUALITY: The Constitution entitles all persons to “equal protection of the laws,” a provision that formed the basis of Judge Vaughn Walker’s decision yesterday that California cannot treat gay couples as if they are somehow inferior. Immediately after this decision was announced, former House Speaker Newt Gingrich (R-GA) called upon Congress to “act immediately” to overturn it — something that it could only do through a constitutional amendment. Of course, Newt’s proposal does nothing more than revive President Bush’s call for a constitutional amendment repealing the parts of the Constitution that protect marriage equality.

REPEALING FUNDAMENTAL RIGHTS: As Judge Walker also held, marriage is a fundamental right protected by the Constitution’s Due Process Clause. The GOP’s anti-gay amendment would repeal this constitutional protection as well.

REPEALING ELECTION OF SENATORS: Finally, a number of GOP candidates have come out in favor of repealing the 17th Amendment, the provision of the Constitution which requires direct election of senators, although many of these candidates also backed off their “Seventeenther” stand after it proved embarrassing. It is simply baffling how anyone could take one look at the U.S. Senate, and decide that what it really needs is even less democracy.

Regards,

Jim