GOP Raids Job-Growing Advanced Technology Vehicle Manufacturing Program for Disaster Relief Money
Drunk from their succession of hostage-taking victories, smug in their certainty that every dollar in America should end up in their grasping manicured hands, the GOP Tea Party kicked plundering America into an even more unconscionable high gear.
During Monday's CNN/Tea Party Republican presidential grandstanding, Tea Partisans hooted and cheered when Wolf Blitzer asked Rep. Ron Paul (R-TX) if an uninsured person needed intensive care, whether society should "just let him die."
Two days later, Tea Party hero House Majority Leader Eric Cantor (R-VA), standard-bearer for the push to offset hurricane and earthquake spending by plundering other programs, moved to ax $1.5 billion in so-called Section 136 loans from a successful Bush-era program that funded new plants and retooling to build energy-efficient cars so he could hand the money to his wealthy home-state cronies.
Cantor figured the best thing for America was to dismantle a program that had already created more than 40,000 American manufacturing and construction jobs so his hooting, cat-calling Tea Party constituents could add lavish extensions to their Virginia McMansions.
"By introducing a plan to gut Section 136 loans, House Republicans have shown that they don't care about manufacturing jobs in places like the Greater Detroit Area," said Rep. Gary Peters (D-MI). "We should fund recovery efforts in Eric Cantor's district, but not at the expense of programs designed to address the economic disaster that hit Michigan and other manufacturing states."
Obviously, a Tea Party movement eager to plunder Medicare, Medicaid and Social Security and abandon millions to misery and death outside the locked doors of hospital emergency rooms wouldn't bat an eye to plunder a successful jobs program that put food on the tables and roofs over the heads of those same millions they'd already condemned to misery and death.
And, as though that were not outrage enough, Cantor and his Tea Party minions sought to cancel out $1.5 billion in loans to the auto industry to fund permanent giveaways to themselves.
"It's outrageous that House Republicans are pushing a plan that would drive advanced technology jobs overseas, and that they are trying to ram it through by attaching it to disaster relief," Sen. Debbie Stabenow (D-MI) told the Detroit News.
The $1.5 billion Cantor and his cronies would devour was nearly half of the $4.1 billion remaining out of $25 billion originally slated in 2008 to rebuild the American auto industry so it could manufacture the fuel-efficient cars and trucks competitive in the 21st century. The money, among other successes, moved production of the Ford Focus from Mexico to Michigan, the Nissan Leaf from Japan to Tennessee, and helped launch Tesla.
And, on top of creating tens of thousands of jobs, rebuilding an American component supply chain industry, and revitalizing a moribund manufacturing base, the auto industry was paying back the loans with interest.
When Cantor and his Tea Party cronies got through with the ten-million-dollar makeovers stacking extra stories and stables and tennis courts onto the Virginia McMansions of 1,500 of their closet friends and contributors, Cantor and his Tea Party cronies weren't about to repay American taxpayers for their largess. Cantor and his Tea Party cronies weren't going to return the Carrera marble counter tops or the gold bathroom fixtures or the solid Tanzanian Mpingo-wood decks.
Cantor and his Tea Party cronies were going to deport the Spanish-speaking wage-theft victims who rebuilt their McMansions, close the gates, and sic the dogs on any uninvited Americans who might venture near their wrought-iron fences.
Behind those wrought-iron barriers, Cantor and his Tea Party cronies were going to sip champagne from their Baccarat crystal flutes and revel in the unprecedented opulence bought at the expense of tens of thousands of American jobs. In a double win-win, Cantor and his Tea Party cronies were going to shriek and howl that President Barack Obama had yet again failed to create jobs. In a double win-win, Cantor and his Tea Party cronies, having killed a government program that had been creating tens of thousands of jobs, were going to scream and shout that there was no such thing as a government program that created jobs.
And, Cantor and his Tea Party cronies were, once again, going to tell Americans the only way America was going to revive its moribund economy was by electing more Tea Party cronies and lavishing them with more tax breaks, subsidies, giveaways, McMansion expansions, Carrera marble and gold fixtures, solid Tanzanian Mpingo-wood adornments, and Baccarat crystal amenities.
And Americans, poor, stupid, gullable and unwaveringly dedicated to the hypnotically-implanted conditioning applied by so many GOP-trained evangelical brainwashers that square-jawed, blow-dried, botoxed, collagen-injected right-wing populists flashing empty capped-tooth smiles were their saviors, and that scruffy, long-haired, nerdy, tie-dyed, city-dwelling, Nobel Prize-winning, often non-white progressives were evil godless witches and trolls, would robotically vote Republican and march lockstep to their collective doom as Cantor and his Tea Party cronies laughed and jeered them on.
Cantor and his wealthy, indolent Virginia Tea Party cronies shouldn't get a single thin, red cent to pile extra bathrooms and tennis courts and swimming pools onto their lavish estates. The Tea Party zealots that incessantly, obsessively espoused Ayn Randian Objectivist self-sufficiency seemed to always be the ones incessantly, obsessively, plundering taxpayers to fund their opulent lifestyles.
The Eric Cantors pillaging job-creation funds for McMansion expansions and the Michele Bachmanns (R-MN) pillaging Medicaid and farm subsidies to fund facelifts and tummy tucks seemed incapable of making money in any way except by stealing it from taxpayers or bilking brainwashed sycophants who shelled out for their mind-numbing books and DVDs and t-shirts and bumper stickers.
Such was the nature of Tea Party denizens who would destroy American jobs and the American economy for personal gain. Such was the nature of Tea Party zealots who would condemn millions to sickness, misery and death to plunder Social Security and Medicare.
Such was the nature of evil.
Showing posts with label Labor. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Labor. Show all posts
Saturday, September 17, 2011
Wednesday, August 3, 2011
FAA, Flying Public Are GOP's New Hostages
Having successfully extorted $2.8 trillion out of the American people and handed it to their plutocrat cronies with their unconscionable hostage-taking of the federal debt ceiling, Republicans have taken yet another hostage: the American flying public.
With their latest kidnapping, Republicans have returned to another of their favorite rackets: union-busting. Well, of course, they'd never really given up union-busting, as it was, along with extorting ever larger tax breaks, tax cuts and tax subsidies for themselves and their ultra-wealthy cronies, one of the pillars of their party mission.
Republicans were keen to abolish a rule that allowed workers to vote on forming unions, and replace it with a system that counts all non-votes as "no" votes. Of course, as there're billions of people on Earth, such as yak herders in Outer Mongolia, who might not bother to vote in any particular airline union election, pretty much the nays would have it every time.
Naturally, Democrats, workers, and anyone else interested in democracy and goodness triumphing over Satanic Republican evil, didn't want that, so, naturally, Republicans resorted to holding FAA reauthorization hostage until they got their way. Thus, Republicans have forced a partial shutdown of the agency that administers the nation's air transport system, and tossed 4,000 FAA employees onto unpaid furloughs.
"This is a made-up crisis," said Sen. Barbara Boxer (D-CA) for the benefit of those who hadn't been keeping up with the situation. "This is government by hostage taking."
"The fact is, when you look back at their threats to shut down the entire government - remember that? - unless they got tax breaks for the rich, followed by holding the full faith and credit of this government hostage to their desires to cut government spending," Boxer reviewed for an electorate that admittedly had the attention span of a bacterium. "And now, here we are a third time."
One had to wonder where Attorney General Eric Holder and the FBI had been while all this was going on. At one time, extortion had been illegal. They must have changed that during the Bush Administration.
Perhaps, Holder was too busy helping Rupert Murdoch shred incriminating documents.
Most lawmakers had gone home for Congress' summer recess, although both the Senate and the House remained open with skeleton crews of legislators on watch in "pro forma" sessions.
"They could send us a bill or we could send them a bill and they could pass it because we are in pro forma session," complained Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-NV). Congress can pass measures by unanimous consent while in pro forma session.
House Speaker John Boehner (R-OH), however, would have nothing to do with consenting, unanimously or otherwise. "All it would take to end this crisis is for the Senate to pass the House-approved FAA extension," he said. 'House-approved' meant a Republican measure that basically included pointing the Death Star at the Earth and pulling the trigger, abolishing unions and all other life on the planet.
Meanwhile, 767s were criss-crossing the skies with bleary-eyed air traffic controllers nodding off in front of their radar screens, as all their support staff were forced to sit at home wondering how long they can stretch a can of baked beans and a pack of hot dogs.
The brouhaha this time was over a National Mediation Board rule that required any vote to organize into a union be approved by the majority of the people voting. In English, that's called an election. Republicans wanted to do away with that rule, and replace it with one that required a majority of all effected employees. Furthermore, any effected employees who didn't cast votes would be counted as "no" votes. It was not immediately known whether airline officials were signing up yak herders wandering around outside Ulan Bator International as temps to stuff the ballot box.
No one seems to have asked Republicans why they didn't push for counting all non-votes as "yes" votes. That would be because, of course, they were gumming up the works on behalf of their corporate patrons, in this case Delta Air Lines.
It was not immediately known whether Republicans, if they got their way, planned on demanding that everyone not voting in the 2012 Presidential election be counted as votes for Michele Bachmann (R-MN).
Since no one except Republicans and their corporate and Tea Party patrons want to redefine the nature of voting in a democracy, Republicans naturally took the normally pro-forma reauthorization of the FAA's operating authority hostage until they got their way.
Since July 23, when Republicans shoved a .357 Magnum against Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood's head and demanded he change the definition of the word "election" in the Oxford English Dictionary, about 75,000 have been thrown off their jobs. Aside from the 4,000 FAA employees furloughed, more than 70,000 construction workers on projects at airports around the country requiring FAA supervision have been idled.
Furthermore, the US government was missing out on about $30 million a day worth of airline ticket taxes it couldn't collect so long as the FAA was out of business.
"No safety issues will be compromised," LaHood said in his proof-of-life statement. "Air traffic controllers are guiding airplanes. Safety Inspectors are on duty and are doing their job."
Air traffic controllers were still on the job and hopefully not nodding off in front of their flickering radar displays, because they and aircraft inspectors were paid out of a separate fund, presumably set aside at some point by someone who realised there were Republicans afoot in the bushes, and knew there was no telling the depths of their perfidy. Unfortunately, there wasn't anyone else around who might go fetch them a cup of coffee.
Airport safety inspectors were also on the job, albeit without pay. They oversee airport construction, runway inspections, and fix safety problems.
"The reason they're out on the job is because of the risk to operational safety of life and property," explained FAA administrator Randy Babbitt. Hopefully, if an old refrigerator got tossed away on a runway, someone would be around to drag it off before Flight 214 from Duluth piled into it.
LaHood was incensed at his fellow Republicans, and Wednesday blamed "one or two people who wouldn't compromise" for the threat to the nation's airways. He chided Republican lawmakers for going away on "their vacation" without settling the issue.
Hopefully, by the time lawmakers got back from their summer recess in September, the runways at Dulles and Reagan National won't be strewn with abandoned sofas and rusted car chassis. Or not.
With their latest kidnapping, Republicans have returned to another of their favorite rackets: union-busting. Well, of course, they'd never really given up union-busting, as it was, along with extorting ever larger tax breaks, tax cuts and tax subsidies for themselves and their ultra-wealthy cronies, one of the pillars of their party mission.
Republicans were keen to abolish a rule that allowed workers to vote on forming unions, and replace it with a system that counts all non-votes as "no" votes. Of course, as there're billions of people on Earth, such as yak herders in Outer Mongolia, who might not bother to vote in any particular airline union election, pretty much the nays would have it every time.
Naturally, Democrats, workers, and anyone else interested in democracy and goodness triumphing over Satanic Republican evil, didn't want that, so, naturally, Republicans resorted to holding FAA reauthorization hostage until they got their way. Thus, Republicans have forced a partial shutdown of the agency that administers the nation's air transport system, and tossed 4,000 FAA employees onto unpaid furloughs.
"This is a made-up crisis," said Sen. Barbara Boxer (D-CA) for the benefit of those who hadn't been keeping up with the situation. "This is government by hostage taking."
"The fact is, when you look back at their threats to shut down the entire government - remember that? - unless they got tax breaks for the rich, followed by holding the full faith and credit of this government hostage to their desires to cut government spending," Boxer reviewed for an electorate that admittedly had the attention span of a bacterium. "And now, here we are a third time."
One had to wonder where Attorney General Eric Holder and the FBI had been while all this was going on. At one time, extortion had been illegal. They must have changed that during the Bush Administration.
Perhaps, Holder was too busy helping Rupert Murdoch shred incriminating documents.
Most lawmakers had gone home for Congress' summer recess, although both the Senate and the House remained open with skeleton crews of legislators on watch in "pro forma" sessions.
"They could send us a bill or we could send them a bill and they could pass it because we are in pro forma session," complained Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-NV). Congress can pass measures by unanimous consent while in pro forma session.
House Speaker John Boehner (R-OH), however, would have nothing to do with consenting, unanimously or otherwise. "All it would take to end this crisis is for the Senate to pass the House-approved FAA extension," he said. 'House-approved' meant a Republican measure that basically included pointing the Death Star at the Earth and pulling the trigger, abolishing unions and all other life on the planet.
Meanwhile, 767s were criss-crossing the skies with bleary-eyed air traffic controllers nodding off in front of their radar screens, as all their support staff were forced to sit at home wondering how long they can stretch a can of baked beans and a pack of hot dogs.
The brouhaha this time was over a National Mediation Board rule that required any vote to organize into a union be approved by the majority of the people voting. In English, that's called an election. Republicans wanted to do away with that rule, and replace it with one that required a majority of all effected employees. Furthermore, any effected employees who didn't cast votes would be counted as "no" votes. It was not immediately known whether airline officials were signing up yak herders wandering around outside Ulan Bator International as temps to stuff the ballot box.
No one seems to have asked Republicans why they didn't push for counting all non-votes as "yes" votes. That would be because, of course, they were gumming up the works on behalf of their corporate patrons, in this case Delta Air Lines.
It was not immediately known whether Republicans, if they got their way, planned on demanding that everyone not voting in the 2012 Presidential election be counted as votes for Michele Bachmann (R-MN).
Since no one except Republicans and their corporate and Tea Party patrons want to redefine the nature of voting in a democracy, Republicans naturally took the normally pro-forma reauthorization of the FAA's operating authority hostage until they got their way.
Since July 23, when Republicans shoved a .357 Magnum against Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood's head and demanded he change the definition of the word "election" in the Oxford English Dictionary, about 75,000 have been thrown off their jobs. Aside from the 4,000 FAA employees furloughed, more than 70,000 construction workers on projects at airports around the country requiring FAA supervision have been idled.
Furthermore, the US government was missing out on about $30 million a day worth of airline ticket taxes it couldn't collect so long as the FAA was out of business.
"No safety issues will be compromised," LaHood said in his proof-of-life statement. "Air traffic controllers are guiding airplanes. Safety Inspectors are on duty and are doing their job."
Air traffic controllers were still on the job and hopefully not nodding off in front of their flickering radar displays, because they and aircraft inspectors were paid out of a separate fund, presumably set aside at some point by someone who realised there were Republicans afoot in the bushes, and knew there was no telling the depths of their perfidy. Unfortunately, there wasn't anyone else around who might go fetch them a cup of coffee.
Airport safety inspectors were also on the job, albeit without pay. They oversee airport construction, runway inspections, and fix safety problems.
"The reason they're out on the job is because of the risk to operational safety of life and property," explained FAA administrator Randy Babbitt. Hopefully, if an old refrigerator got tossed away on a runway, someone would be around to drag it off before Flight 214 from Duluth piled into it.
LaHood was incensed at his fellow Republicans, and Wednesday blamed "one or two people who wouldn't compromise" for the threat to the nation's airways. He chided Republican lawmakers for going away on "their vacation" without settling the issue.
Hopefully, by the time lawmakers got back from their summer recess in September, the runways at Dulles and Reagan National won't be strewn with abandoned sofas and rusted car chassis. Or not.
Wednesday, June 15, 2011
Georgia Immigrant Crackdown Begets Prison Labor Pitstop On Road to Slavery
With Georgia's Arizona-style white supremacy law weeks away from going into effect, Republican Gov. Nathan Deal announced criminal probationers would be a great solution for planters facing the looming peach harvest with scant immigrant labor.
The impending crackdown on immigrant labor has intimidated many workers, and the state's planters have complained HB 87, Georgia's new white supremacy law going into effect July 1, has already caused a labor shortage. A state survey revealed 11,000 farm jobs have gone begging, as the state's white population has disdained tough agricultural labor despite white supremacist claims their law would be a boon for job-seekers.
The Georgia Fruit and Vegetable Growers Association reported planters were only getting 30%-50% of the laborers they needed. Georgia has a $1.1 billion fruit and vegetable industry.
Georgia's impending white supremacy law exposes persons of color to repeated and continuous harassment, questioning and detention based on the color of their skin. As in Arizona, Georgia law enforcement may detain and demand citizenship documents at will. As in Arizona, all persons of color are suspect, including Asian-American business owners, Latino-American scientists and President Barack Obama, while all whites, including German neo-Nazi skinheads, British soccer hooligans, Russian mobsters, and IRA terrorists on the lam from Scotland Yard, not to mention home-grown murderers and child molesters, are considered to be valued all-American members of the superior white race.
Workers convicted of possessing non-compliant identity papers face 15 years in prison and fines up to $250,000.
Now, according to Deal's deal, such undocumented workers could presumably be incarcerated, fined, then made to work the fields anyway to pay off their fines. Presumably, President Obama would be picking peas for failing to produce his long-form birth certificate. As the President knows, white supremacists ultimately won't accept any documentation a person of color might produce. White supremacists consider "American" to be a synonym for the white race.
Tapping probationers and prisoners would open a vast pool of non-white laborers. According to the Georgia Department of Corrections, the state has 55,252 inmates, 62% of whom are African-American. Many may have a future of labor in the fields beneath the overseers' lash. Deal claimed there were as many as 100,000 people on probation in Georgia.
In contrast to its prison population, which is 62% black and 34% white, the state of Georgia is 59.7% white, 30.5% black, and 8.8% Latino.
Georgia is a stronghold of the neo-Confederacy movement and other white separatist and evangelical supremacist covens, many of which covet a return to a hazy antebellum vision of leisured white slave holders exploiting and brutalizing subjugated non-whites.
Deal Tuesday said he had directed state corrections and agriculture commissioners to get probationers out to the farms.
"I believe this would be a great partial solution to our current status as we continue to move towards sustainable results with the legal options available," Deal said, apparently bemoaning the overbearing federal burden imposed by the Thirteenth Amendment.
Grower Roscoe Hutcheson was not convinced. He blamed HB 87 when no one showed up to pick blackberries at his Baxley, GA farm. He told reporters he had three small children, and didn't want probationers on his spread.
"I don't want bad people around my young 'uns," he said.
Alabama is set to join Georgia with its own, even more restrictive, white supremacy law September 1. In Mississippi, Gov. Haley Barbour is still considering signing into law his state's version of the white supremacy measures, but, to the chagrin of fellow Republicans and Tea Party activists, has balked at categorically criminalizing tens of thousands who gave his state a leg up during its darkest hour.
Immigrant labor was critical to getting Mississippi back on its feet after Hurricane Katrina devastated the state in 2005, according to Barbour.
"I don't know where we would have been in Mississippi after Katrina if it hadn't been for the Spanish speakers that came in to help rebuild, and there's no doubt in my mind that some of them weren't here legally," Barbour acknowledged. "If they hadn't come and stayed...we would be way, way, way behind where we are now."
Many in Mississippi don't share Barbour's reticence. White supremacists believe non-whites are subhumans to be exploited, abused and discarded at will.
Should Barbour sign his state's new white supremacy bill into law, it would create a 600-mile wide white separatist bastion through the heart of the Deep South. Barbour has walked a fine line between extremism and propriety, at first refusing to denounce, then vowing to veto, license plates commemorating Confederate General and Ku Klux Klan founder Nathan Bedford Forrest, who many considered to have been a terrorist. American Democracy is certainly in critical condition if Haley Barbour represents its last hope against white racist dominion.
The impending crackdown on immigrant labor has intimidated many workers, and the state's planters have complained HB 87, Georgia's new white supremacy law going into effect July 1, has already caused a labor shortage. A state survey revealed 11,000 farm jobs have gone begging, as the state's white population has disdained tough agricultural labor despite white supremacist claims their law would be a boon for job-seekers.
The Georgia Fruit and Vegetable Growers Association reported planters were only getting 30%-50% of the laborers they needed. Georgia has a $1.1 billion fruit and vegetable industry.
Georgia's impending white supremacy law exposes persons of color to repeated and continuous harassment, questioning and detention based on the color of their skin. As in Arizona, Georgia law enforcement may detain and demand citizenship documents at will. As in Arizona, all persons of color are suspect, including Asian-American business owners, Latino-American scientists and President Barack Obama, while all whites, including German neo-Nazi skinheads, British soccer hooligans, Russian mobsters, and IRA terrorists on the lam from Scotland Yard, not to mention home-grown murderers and child molesters, are considered to be valued all-American members of the superior white race.
Workers convicted of possessing non-compliant identity papers face 15 years in prison and fines up to $250,000.
Now, according to Deal's deal, such undocumented workers could presumably be incarcerated, fined, then made to work the fields anyway to pay off their fines. Presumably, President Obama would be picking peas for failing to produce his long-form birth certificate. As the President knows, white supremacists ultimately won't accept any documentation a person of color might produce. White supremacists consider "American" to be a synonym for the white race.
Tapping probationers and prisoners would open a vast pool of non-white laborers. According to the Georgia Department of Corrections, the state has 55,252 inmates, 62% of whom are African-American. Many may have a future of labor in the fields beneath the overseers' lash. Deal claimed there were as many as 100,000 people on probation in Georgia.
In contrast to its prison population, which is 62% black and 34% white, the state of Georgia is 59.7% white, 30.5% black, and 8.8% Latino.
Georgia is a stronghold of the neo-Confederacy movement and other white separatist and evangelical supremacist covens, many of which covet a return to a hazy antebellum vision of leisured white slave holders exploiting and brutalizing subjugated non-whites.
Deal Tuesday said he had directed state corrections and agriculture commissioners to get probationers out to the farms.
"I believe this would be a great partial solution to our current status as we continue to move towards sustainable results with the legal options available," Deal said, apparently bemoaning the overbearing federal burden imposed by the Thirteenth Amendment.
Grower Roscoe Hutcheson was not convinced. He blamed HB 87 when no one showed up to pick blackberries at his Baxley, GA farm. He told reporters he had three small children, and didn't want probationers on his spread.
"I don't want bad people around my young 'uns," he said.
Alabama is set to join Georgia with its own, even more restrictive, white supremacy law September 1. In Mississippi, Gov. Haley Barbour is still considering signing into law his state's version of the white supremacy measures, but, to the chagrin of fellow Republicans and Tea Party activists, has balked at categorically criminalizing tens of thousands who gave his state a leg up during its darkest hour.
Immigrant labor was critical to getting Mississippi back on its feet after Hurricane Katrina devastated the state in 2005, according to Barbour.
"I don't know where we would have been in Mississippi after Katrina if it hadn't been for the Spanish speakers that came in to help rebuild, and there's no doubt in my mind that some of them weren't here legally," Barbour acknowledged. "If they hadn't come and stayed...we would be way, way, way behind where we are now."
Many in Mississippi don't share Barbour's reticence. White supremacists believe non-whites are subhumans to be exploited, abused and discarded at will.
Should Barbour sign his state's new white supremacy bill into law, it would create a 600-mile wide white separatist bastion through the heart of the Deep South. Barbour has walked a fine line between extremism and propriety, at first refusing to denounce, then vowing to veto, license plates commemorating Confederate General and Ku Klux Klan founder Nathan Bedford Forrest, who many considered to have been a terrorist. American Democracy is certainly in critical condition if Haley Barbour represents its last hope against white racist dominion.
Thursday, March 31, 2011
As Jobless Suffer, Missouri Republican Extremists Block Federal Benefits
In a stunning display of brutality that shocked even fellow Republican state legislators, a Gang of Four renegade Republican senators in Missouri's state house used a parliamentary procedure to block their states' jobless from receiving $105 million worth of unemployment benefits starting as early as Sunday.
The four, led by known evangelical supremacist Jim Lembke of Missouri's1st District, filibustered what should have been a mere procedural vote to continue participation in a federal program to extend unemployment benefits for those who still can't find jobs after they've exhausted 79 weeks of benefits authorized by previous federal laws.
Republicans Brian Nieves, Will Kraus and Rob Schaaf joined Lembke's anti-worker coup.
Proving over and over again that Republicans are nothing more than vicious thugs vying for the favor of their plutocrat overlords, Lembke and his gang stunned even their GOP cohort with a depth of depravity the others had not countenanced. With their action, Missouri would become the first state to actually quit participating in a federal program that offered extended unemployment benefits. State unemployment benefits normally run out after 26 weeks, but since the Bush-era mortgage meltdown and the mass job-offshoring spree, the federal government has enacted a series of benefit extensions for states hit by high unemployment.
Republicans control both chambers of Missouri's state government, but even the Republican-led state legislature had approved the benefit extension bill by a 123-14 margin. Republican state senate leaders had reportedly favored the bill, and Democratic Governor Jay Nixon had anticipated signing the law assuring continued benefits for tens of thousands of Missouri's unemployed.
But avowed evangelical extremist Lembke, who matriculated at the right-wing Covenant Theological Seminary and was a business manager and board member of the Providence Christian Academy, wielded his sword of self-righteous vengeance, and struck at the most vulnerable members of his state's community. Because of Lembke and his minions' vicious cruelty, tens of thousands barely hanging on by the fragile thread of their weekly unemployment checks will be plunged into destitution. Homes, hearths and shelter will be lost. Children will cry themselves to sleep in hunger and misery. More than one will no doubt succumb to despair and hopelessness.
Lembke would no doubt tell his starving multitudes to pray. Unfortunately, Lembke himself appears incapable of feeding those multitudes with a few fish and a couple of loaves. More to the point, Lembke appears completely disinterested in doing so, which is a principal difference between Christ and the smug Republican poseurs who repeatedly claim His mantle.
Lembke's narcissistic posturing disgusted fellow Republicans not noted for showing empathy to ordinary Americans. Representative Barney Fisher called Lembke's grandstanding "inappropriate," and said that philosophical standpoints might be "interesting," they "didn't put food on the table."
Lembke's infamy outstriped the America-hating antics of Republican politicos in Michigan, who merely cut future benefits from 26 to 20 weeks beginning next year. Michigan's Republican Governor Rick Snyder and his GOP cabal slipped that little ditty into a bill that accepted the same extension of current federal unemployment benefits that Missouri has now disdained. Lembke and his gang proved they were the most barbaric of the ax-wielding Gothic proselytizers by sacrificed tens of thousands of Americans' well being in their lust for national headlines and TV exposure.
While Republicans universally hate all living things and Americans in particular, Lembke's shameless toadying to corporate overlords who relish reducing their unemployment insurance premiums reveals a black abyss of pure evil and hatred rarely parallelled in recorded history. No smug protestation that a budget strapped by Republican tax giveaways to the rich forced the abuse of their people could mask the depravity Lembke displayed in brutalizing people whose welfare he was supposedly elected to champion.
Republican pols continually snivel about the well-being of the "American people," but to Republicans, there are only a handful of such people: the multi-billionaire Koch brothers, Rupert Murdoch (an Australian), Donald Trump, and a few Texas oil moguls. It is apparent that no other Americans exist to them. When Republican pols crow about "securing the future for our children," they literally mean their own offspring, who will enjoy extravagant trust-fund reigns thanks to their progenitors' perfidy.
While the world condemns Libyan dictator Moammar Khadafy for killing his own people, Lembke and his co-conspirators would likewise plunge his own people into hunger, despair and homelessness, and force anguished Missouri parents to watch their babies condemned to the life-long misery of mind- and body-stilting childhood deprivation.
The four, led by known evangelical supremacist Jim Lembke of Missouri's1st District, filibustered what should have been a mere procedural vote to continue participation in a federal program to extend unemployment benefits for those who still can't find jobs after they've exhausted 79 weeks of benefits authorized by previous federal laws.
Republicans Brian Nieves, Will Kraus and Rob Schaaf joined Lembke's anti-worker coup.
Proving over and over again that Republicans are nothing more than vicious thugs vying for the favor of their plutocrat overlords, Lembke and his gang stunned even their GOP cohort with a depth of depravity the others had not countenanced. With their action, Missouri would become the first state to actually quit participating in a federal program that offered extended unemployment benefits. State unemployment benefits normally run out after 26 weeks, but since the Bush-era mortgage meltdown and the mass job-offshoring spree, the federal government has enacted a series of benefit extensions for states hit by high unemployment.
Republicans control both chambers of Missouri's state government, but even the Republican-led state legislature had approved the benefit extension bill by a 123-14 margin. Republican state senate leaders had reportedly favored the bill, and Democratic Governor Jay Nixon had anticipated signing the law assuring continued benefits for tens of thousands of Missouri's unemployed.
But avowed evangelical extremist Lembke, who matriculated at the right-wing Covenant Theological Seminary and was a business manager and board member of the Providence Christian Academy, wielded his sword of self-righteous vengeance, and struck at the most vulnerable members of his state's community. Because of Lembke and his minions' vicious cruelty, tens of thousands barely hanging on by the fragile thread of their weekly unemployment checks will be plunged into destitution. Homes, hearths and shelter will be lost. Children will cry themselves to sleep in hunger and misery. More than one will no doubt succumb to despair and hopelessness.
Lembke would no doubt tell his starving multitudes to pray. Unfortunately, Lembke himself appears incapable of feeding those multitudes with a few fish and a couple of loaves. More to the point, Lembke appears completely disinterested in doing so, which is a principal difference between Christ and the smug Republican poseurs who repeatedly claim His mantle.
Lembke's narcissistic posturing disgusted fellow Republicans not noted for showing empathy to ordinary Americans. Representative Barney Fisher called Lembke's grandstanding "inappropriate," and said that philosophical standpoints might be "interesting," they "didn't put food on the table."
Lembke's infamy outstriped the America-hating antics of Republican politicos in Michigan, who merely cut future benefits from 26 to 20 weeks beginning next year. Michigan's Republican Governor Rick Snyder and his GOP cabal slipped that little ditty into a bill that accepted the same extension of current federal unemployment benefits that Missouri has now disdained. Lembke and his gang proved they were the most barbaric of the ax-wielding Gothic proselytizers by sacrificed tens of thousands of Americans' well being in their lust for national headlines and TV exposure.
While Republicans universally hate all living things and Americans in particular, Lembke's shameless toadying to corporate overlords who relish reducing their unemployment insurance premiums reveals a black abyss of pure evil and hatred rarely parallelled in recorded history. No smug protestation that a budget strapped by Republican tax giveaways to the rich forced the abuse of their people could mask the depravity Lembke displayed in brutalizing people whose welfare he was supposedly elected to champion.
Republican pols continually snivel about the well-being of the "American people," but to Republicans, there are only a handful of such people: the multi-billionaire Koch brothers, Rupert Murdoch (an Australian), Donald Trump, and a few Texas oil moguls. It is apparent that no other Americans exist to them. When Republican pols crow about "securing the future for our children," they literally mean their own offspring, who will enjoy extravagant trust-fund reigns thanks to their progenitors' perfidy.
While the world condemns Libyan dictator Moammar Khadafy for killing his own people, Lembke and his co-conspirators would likewise plunge his own people into hunger, despair and homelessness, and force anguished Missouri parents to watch their babies condemned to the life-long misery of mind- and body-stilting childhood deprivation.
Tuesday, March 29, 2011
Ohio Republicans' Union-Busting Bill Goes Up For House Vote
Although the union-busting mayhem in Wisconsin has gotten most of the attention, Republicans throughout the Great Lakes region have been assaulting workers' rights, pay and benefits. Ohio moved a step closer to joining Wisconsin in infamy Tuesday, as a bill that would restrict public workers' collective bargaining rights and proscribe them from striking passed out of committee and was sent to the full House for a Wednesday vote.
While a judge in Wisconsin reiterated her order for that state's union-busting measure to be put on hold while a lawsuit against it is litigated, the nine Republicans on Ohio's House committee voted for their version of the anti-worker law. Six Democrats voted against it.
It was not immediately known whether the Republicans' plutocrat overlords had yet granted their vassals any tokens for hacking down the local peasantry. While Wisconsin's law was passed and measures in Ohio and Indiana were still pending, none had yet been enacted, and the GOP's wealthy masters might demand complete implementation before bestowing rewards and fiefs.
Republicans are in the majority in Ohio's lower chamber, and are expected to bestow their blessing on the union-busting measure immediately. The Ohio Senate, also run by Republicans, passed a similar bill by a 17-16 margin earlier in the month.
Ohio's Republican Governor John Kasich had been vying with his Republican counterparts in nearby states to deliver the most extreme worker-strangling laws the fastest. He downplayed the possibility that the House bill wasn't as severe as the Senate version. House bill, while outlawing workers' right to strike, lost a provision that promoted jail time for workers who went on strike. Workers in many public sector jobs may be fired if they are found to have criminal records.
More importantly, the Ohio legislation stripped unions of the ability to use payroll deductions for union organizing and collective political action. As the unions have been reliable supporters of the Democratic Party, Republicans have long coveted breaking their ability to raise money for elections and political causes. While Republicans constantly protest that their actions are purely to balance state budgets strapped because of Republican tax giveaways to their plutocrat masters, the union-busting measures are nothing more than partisan political vendettas aimed at destroying workers' abilities to organize opposition to GOP tyranny.
Should the Ohio law reach Kasich for his signature soon enough, he would have significantly closed the gap created by Wisconsin's early passage of their law. Wisconsin's governor signed his bill March 11, but a state judge blocked its implementation pending a legal challenge to the law. Wisconsin Republican officials, in open defiance of the court order, had tried to publish the law among the state's official announcements, and claim that by itself made the law's implementation a fait accompli. With Herculean patience and charity, the judge, Maryann Sumi, issued specific orders prohibiting Wisconsin's Republican Secretary of State Doug La Follette from taking any action to implement the law. Clearly, Judge Sumi could have found La Follette and Governor Scott Walker in contempt of court, and issued bench warrants for their arrest.
Indiana Republicans also moved closer to passing their union-busting bill, as that state's Democrats ended a five-week boycott to stall action. It is now a three-way race for to see which set of GOP toadies will be the first to lay their victim's head before their overlords.
While the GOP thugs vie for the honor to be first to scourge their workers, all will flay their peasantry however possible. They have also pledged to bestow their plutocrats with state assets such as buildings and power plants, as well as plunder from pension and unemployment insurance funds. Republican rapacity is unlimited in its scope and arrogance.
While a judge in Wisconsin reiterated her order for that state's union-busting measure to be put on hold while a lawsuit against it is litigated, the nine Republicans on Ohio's House committee voted for their version of the anti-worker law. Six Democrats voted against it.
It was not immediately known whether the Republicans' plutocrat overlords had yet granted their vassals any tokens for hacking down the local peasantry. While Wisconsin's law was passed and measures in Ohio and Indiana were still pending, none had yet been enacted, and the GOP's wealthy masters might demand complete implementation before bestowing rewards and fiefs.
Republicans are in the majority in Ohio's lower chamber, and are expected to bestow their blessing on the union-busting measure immediately. The Ohio Senate, also run by Republicans, passed a similar bill by a 17-16 margin earlier in the month.
Ohio's Republican Governor John Kasich had been vying with his Republican counterparts in nearby states to deliver the most extreme worker-strangling laws the fastest. He downplayed the possibility that the House bill wasn't as severe as the Senate version. House bill, while outlawing workers' right to strike, lost a provision that promoted jail time for workers who went on strike. Workers in many public sector jobs may be fired if they are found to have criminal records.
More importantly, the Ohio legislation stripped unions of the ability to use payroll deductions for union organizing and collective political action. As the unions have been reliable supporters of the Democratic Party, Republicans have long coveted breaking their ability to raise money for elections and political causes. While Republicans constantly protest that their actions are purely to balance state budgets strapped because of Republican tax giveaways to their plutocrat masters, the union-busting measures are nothing more than partisan political vendettas aimed at destroying workers' abilities to organize opposition to GOP tyranny.
Should the Ohio law reach Kasich for his signature soon enough, he would have significantly closed the gap created by Wisconsin's early passage of their law. Wisconsin's governor signed his bill March 11, but a state judge blocked its implementation pending a legal challenge to the law. Wisconsin Republican officials, in open defiance of the court order, had tried to publish the law among the state's official announcements, and claim that by itself made the law's implementation a fait accompli. With Herculean patience and charity, the judge, Maryann Sumi, issued specific orders prohibiting Wisconsin's Republican Secretary of State Doug La Follette from taking any action to implement the law. Clearly, Judge Sumi could have found La Follette and Governor Scott Walker in contempt of court, and issued bench warrants for their arrest.
Indiana Republicans also moved closer to passing their union-busting bill, as that state's Democrats ended a five-week boycott to stall action. It is now a three-way race for to see which set of GOP toadies will be the first to lay their victim's head before their overlords.
While the GOP thugs vie for the honor to be first to scourge their workers, all will flay their peasantry however possible. They have also pledged to bestow their plutocrats with state assets such as buildings and power plants, as well as plunder from pension and unemployment insurance funds. Republican rapacity is unlimited in its scope and arrogance.
Monday, March 28, 2011
With High Joblessness, Republicans Cut Unemployment Benefits
Michigan Governor Rick Snyder triumphantly waved a press release crowing, "Snyder Signs Bill to Protect Unemployed," but Snyder is a Republican, so the law he just signed actually slashed state unemployment benefits from 26 weeks to 20 weeks.
Only a Republican would claim that cutting unemployment benefits somehow protects the jobless.
Perhaps Snyder means he's protecting the interests of the idle rich, as the Michigan Chamber of Commerce was certainly all for slashing the benefits. Thankfully, the downtrodden billionaire plutocrats won't have to pay for all that unemployment insurance, leaving so much more money for extra cases of Dom Perignon and baubles from Tiffany's.
Republicans quietly slipped the measure to cut unemployment payments from 26 weeks to 20 weeks into a bill that fixed a technical glitch that would otherwise have jeopardized the 99-week extended federal unemployment benefits for hundreds of thousands of jobless Michiganites. Thus, Snyder's audacious claim that he was actually helping the jobless.
Not that Snyder is alone in his infamy. Wherever there are Republicans in office, you can be sure workers' rights are imperiled. Republican fiefdoms Florida and Ohio are lining up similar plans to slash jobless benefits from 26 weeks to 20. Snyder just won this particular race among the GOP thugs who vie for their plutocrat overlords' favor by committing the most horrific outrages against Americans. There was no immediate word what prize Snyder won for being first across the finish line. The benefit reduction takes effect next year.
From the perspective of the GOP's plutocrat masters who outsourced and offshored all the jobs in the first place, there's simply no point in providing unemployment benefits to Americans who they have no intention of ever again hiring. Do those jobless losers expect free handouts forever? Better they starve to death sooner rather than later. The trans-national corporate nobles who call the shots in the GOP are too busy shovelling mountains of taxpayer-subsidized overseas profits from all the jobs they've created in India and China.
The Republican pols cried huge crocodile tears over the depleted unemployment insurance trust funds they said necessitated benefit cuts. Of course, the funds became depleted because huge tax breaks allowed employers to keep money that should have gone to keep the funds afloat. Then, Republican economic policy allowed their Wall Street cronies to crash the global markets and create a catastrophic recession the unemployment funds were ill-equipped to handle. Oh, well, gas up the corporate jet and let the American people take it on the chin. After all, they're the ones who're stupid enough not to lynch us for destroying their country.
Unemployment benefits aren't just intended to help idled workers. They are supposed to help stimulate the economy by creating demand for consumer goods. Republican actions reveal they don't care much about the American economy, as their overlords are already getting rich overseas and in the equity markets.
In state houses across America, the Republicans are attacking Americans from every side. They're union busting, raiding pension funds, and slashing pay and benefits. They're blocking and reversing clean air and water rules. They're slashing education and ditching worker safety and dumping child labor laws. They're handing state assets to big-money cronies, and allowing toxic wastes to flood wind and water. They're forcing cuts to services for the elderly and the sick, and now they've taken the first step toward eliminating jobless benefits.
The Republicans are devoted vassals to the 20% of Americans who own 84% of everything in America, which is completely understandable behavior for incorrigible toadies. Unless Americans wake up and start taxing some of that 84% of stuff, you won't have anything left of the few pennies you do have. The GOP will make sure of that.
Only a Republican would claim that cutting unemployment benefits somehow protects the jobless.
Perhaps Snyder means he's protecting the interests of the idle rich, as the Michigan Chamber of Commerce was certainly all for slashing the benefits. Thankfully, the downtrodden billionaire plutocrats won't have to pay for all that unemployment insurance, leaving so much more money for extra cases of Dom Perignon and baubles from Tiffany's.
Republicans quietly slipped the measure to cut unemployment payments from 26 weeks to 20 weeks into a bill that fixed a technical glitch that would otherwise have jeopardized the 99-week extended federal unemployment benefits for hundreds of thousands of jobless Michiganites. Thus, Snyder's audacious claim that he was actually helping the jobless.
Not that Snyder is alone in his infamy. Wherever there are Republicans in office, you can be sure workers' rights are imperiled. Republican fiefdoms Florida and Ohio are lining up similar plans to slash jobless benefits from 26 weeks to 20. Snyder just won this particular race among the GOP thugs who vie for their plutocrat overlords' favor by committing the most horrific outrages against Americans. There was no immediate word what prize Snyder won for being first across the finish line. The benefit reduction takes effect next year.
From the perspective of the GOP's plutocrat masters who outsourced and offshored all the jobs in the first place, there's simply no point in providing unemployment benefits to Americans who they have no intention of ever again hiring. Do those jobless losers expect free handouts forever? Better they starve to death sooner rather than later. The trans-national corporate nobles who call the shots in the GOP are too busy shovelling mountains of taxpayer-subsidized overseas profits from all the jobs they've created in India and China.
The Republican pols cried huge crocodile tears over the depleted unemployment insurance trust funds they said necessitated benefit cuts. Of course, the funds became depleted because huge tax breaks allowed employers to keep money that should have gone to keep the funds afloat. Then, Republican economic policy allowed their Wall Street cronies to crash the global markets and create a catastrophic recession the unemployment funds were ill-equipped to handle. Oh, well, gas up the corporate jet and let the American people take it on the chin. After all, they're the ones who're stupid enough not to lynch us for destroying their country.
Unemployment benefits aren't just intended to help idled workers. They are supposed to help stimulate the economy by creating demand for consumer goods. Republican actions reveal they don't care much about the American economy, as their overlords are already getting rich overseas and in the equity markets.
In state houses across America, the Republicans are attacking Americans from every side. They're union busting, raiding pension funds, and slashing pay and benefits. They're blocking and reversing clean air and water rules. They're slashing education and ditching worker safety and dumping child labor laws. They're handing state assets to big-money cronies, and allowing toxic wastes to flood wind and water. They're forcing cuts to services for the elderly and the sick, and now they've taken the first step toward eliminating jobless benefits.
The Republicans are devoted vassals to the 20% of Americans who own 84% of everything in America, which is completely understandable behavior for incorrigible toadies. Unless Americans wake up and start taxing some of that 84% of stuff, you won't have anything left of the few pennies you do have. The GOP will make sure of that.
Friday, March 4, 2011
Ruining America is Republican Priority
Republican Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker's union-bashing blitz has earned him the disapproval of 57% of the people of his state, according to a new poll released by Rasmussen. Significantly, Rasmussen is the GOP's virtual in-house polling organ, which spun the poll result as '43% approve of Walker.' Republicans hope that thirty years of eroding the nation's public schools and all those abysmal math and science test scores means people won't know 43% is less than half.
Funny how ignorance and hate work out well for the GOP.
And that, of course, is at the core of the Republican plan to ruin America. Their plutocrats just want to steal all the money, mostly using accounting tricks, while their racist thugs just want to kill and enslave all the people of color. The Republicans can accomplish neither if people remain informed and aren't forced to fight among themselves over the few scraps of civilization the Republicans toss their way. Therefore, for Republicans, it is critical to dismantle public education, which socializes as well as educates. It is much easier to defraud with accounting tricks if people can't add or subtract. Republicans know they must destroy any media (PBS) they cannot co-opt. It is much easier to disenfranchise people who are uninformed. Republicans know they must continue to carve up the government's ability to provide vital services and to assure the public's safety, as an orderly society is less inclined to surrender its freedom. Chaos is the Republicans' ally. If they can distract and misinform and confuse the public, they can achieve their goal of destroying the nation.
Then, the GOP plutocrats can enjoy the rampaging capitalism of Russian gangster oligarchs and Chinese autocrats.
The battles over collective bargaining in Wisconsin, Indiana and Ohio are crucial campaigns for the Republicans, but in the chronology of war, those battles are more akin to the final assault on Berlin at the end of World War II than the rolling of German tanks over the Polish frontier at the beginning of World War II. The Republicans have already dismantled private sector unions and off-shored most organizable jobs. This is why Republicans are able to point to the unionized state workers and say, 'those undeserving scum are getting all sorts of benefits you aren't!' People buy into the divisive hate, never considering that they too should be getting the same benefits, and that it's Republican plutocrats who are denying them those benefits.
And yet, recent polling has begun to show cracks in support for the Republicans' final assault on America. People seem to have begun to realize there's something fishy about the Republicans. They promised jobs, but they're doing away with jobs. They promised fiscal responsibility, but they continue to expand tax subsidies for their wealthy cronies while the nation's debts pile ever higher. And, people may have begun to realise that further cuts to vital services that have already been cut to the bone might have messy results.
The Republicans never cared about the American people, and now their attack on America is so far along they no longer need to fool anybody. Every sneak attack loses the element of surprise at some point, usually when the bombs start falling. Their sneak attack on America has caught people napping for thirty years. As sneak attacks go, thirty years without your enemy catching on is pretty good.
So, polls notwithstanding, Walker careens ahead with his plan to strip state workers of their collective bargaining rights, as well as giving away the state's power plants to his Republican masters, the Koch brothers. Aside from plunging his state into debt with billions in tax subsidies to wealthy GOP cronies, Walker flexed his Khadafy muscles by denying emergency responders access to the state capitol building when some people got stuck in an elevator, and by having his goon squad batter a Democratic lawmaker to the ground as he tried to go to his office. To the GOP's undoubted chagrin, no one died from blocking the emergency responders, and the goons failed to provoke a resisting arrest charge.
As Republicans in state houses across the nation strip away the final vestiges of organized labor and plan the mass surrender of state properties to Republican plutocrats, and Republicans in Washington take the federal government hostage, offering a choice of government shut down completely or crippled into ineffectiveness, the GOP is feeling they are nearing the top of the hill in their final battle to destroy the country they most hate. They feel that soon, very soon, all those hated institutions of democracy and good governance will be forever vanquished, ghosts of a distant past that will not trouble them again.
Funny how ignorance and hate work out well for the GOP.
And that, of course, is at the core of the Republican plan to ruin America. Their plutocrats just want to steal all the money, mostly using accounting tricks, while their racist thugs just want to kill and enslave all the people of color. The Republicans can accomplish neither if people remain informed and aren't forced to fight among themselves over the few scraps of civilization the Republicans toss their way. Therefore, for Republicans, it is critical to dismantle public education, which socializes as well as educates. It is much easier to defraud with accounting tricks if people can't add or subtract. Republicans know they must destroy any media (PBS) they cannot co-opt. It is much easier to disenfranchise people who are uninformed. Republicans know they must continue to carve up the government's ability to provide vital services and to assure the public's safety, as an orderly society is less inclined to surrender its freedom. Chaos is the Republicans' ally. If they can distract and misinform and confuse the public, they can achieve their goal of destroying the nation.
Then, the GOP plutocrats can enjoy the rampaging capitalism of Russian gangster oligarchs and Chinese autocrats.
The battles over collective bargaining in Wisconsin, Indiana and Ohio are crucial campaigns for the Republicans, but in the chronology of war, those battles are more akin to the final assault on Berlin at the end of World War II than the rolling of German tanks over the Polish frontier at the beginning of World War II. The Republicans have already dismantled private sector unions and off-shored most organizable jobs. This is why Republicans are able to point to the unionized state workers and say, 'those undeserving scum are getting all sorts of benefits you aren't!' People buy into the divisive hate, never considering that they too should be getting the same benefits, and that it's Republican plutocrats who are denying them those benefits.
And yet, recent polling has begun to show cracks in support for the Republicans' final assault on America. People seem to have begun to realize there's something fishy about the Republicans. They promised jobs, but they're doing away with jobs. They promised fiscal responsibility, but they continue to expand tax subsidies for their wealthy cronies while the nation's debts pile ever higher. And, people may have begun to realise that further cuts to vital services that have already been cut to the bone might have messy results.
The Republicans never cared about the American people, and now their attack on America is so far along they no longer need to fool anybody. Every sneak attack loses the element of surprise at some point, usually when the bombs start falling. Their sneak attack on America has caught people napping for thirty years. As sneak attacks go, thirty years without your enemy catching on is pretty good.
So, polls notwithstanding, Walker careens ahead with his plan to strip state workers of their collective bargaining rights, as well as giving away the state's power plants to his Republican masters, the Koch brothers. Aside from plunging his state into debt with billions in tax subsidies to wealthy GOP cronies, Walker flexed his Khadafy muscles by denying emergency responders access to the state capitol building when some people got stuck in an elevator, and by having his goon squad batter a Democratic lawmaker to the ground as he tried to go to his office. To the GOP's undoubted chagrin, no one died from blocking the emergency responders, and the goons failed to provoke a resisting arrest charge.
As Republicans in state houses across the nation strip away the final vestiges of organized labor and plan the mass surrender of state properties to Republican plutocrats, and Republicans in Washington take the federal government hostage, offering a choice of government shut down completely or crippled into ineffectiveness, the GOP is feeling they are nearing the top of the hill in their final battle to destroy the country they most hate. They feel that soon, very soon, all those hated institutions of democracy and good governance will be forever vanquished, ghosts of a distant past that will not trouble them again.
Thursday, March 3, 2011
Republicans Are Autocrats for the Plutocrats
Another day, another poll showing Republicans blustering and bludgeoning their way toward a GOP plutocrat Nirvana in defiance of the American peoples' will.
A new NBC/Wall Street Journal poll revealed 60% of Americans feared the Republicans' rampant budget-slashing would harm their families. While most respondents expressed concern about federal budget deficits and growing debt, Americans oppose Republicans cutting education, Social Security and Medicare.
This comes a day after another NBC/Wall Street Journal poll showing 77% of Americans support Wisconsin state workers' right to collective bargaining, while Republicans blitz to strip those rights away
Despite the clear message that Americans oppose the GOP plutocrats' agenda, the Republicans are pushing ahead with their heinous schemes.
While 74% of Americans (including one former Shell Oil Company CEO, John Hofmeister) oppose extending tax subsidies for the oil and gas industries, Republicans voted unanimously to extend those tax subsidies. 76% of Americans want to ax unnecessary weapon systems, but lavish giveaways to their defense industry cronies is one of the few sacred expenditures Republicans will not touch.
And the 81% who favor raising taxes on the very rich would probably make some Republican death list, if the Republicans hadn't already decided the very rich would never be taxed, and people who think they should be are simply nonentities.
Oblivious to the hew and cry rising across the nation, Republicans continue to loudly drone their mantra of more tax subsidies for the wealthy, and more service cuts for everyone else. Republicans lecture one and all that public sector workers unions are the cause of states' budget woes, even though it is obvious that the culprit is the Republicans' ever-spiralling tax giveaways to GOP plutocrats for their ever-expanding fleets of private jets and mega-yachts.
Republicans, like all autocrats, specialize in ear-splitting harangues completely dissociated from facts. They say they want to address budget shortfalls and create jobs while pushing an agenda that would devastate the nation's economy and annihilate tens of thousands of jobs. They stand smugly before TV cameras and continue to spout lies as obvious as Muammar Khadafy's claim that all Libyans love him, and that there are no protests in his country.
Clearly, Republicans are unconcerned about dictating policies contrary to the electorates' wishes. Their actions would indicate they consider themselves above the democratic process. Their actions are consistent with those of autocrats who feel no need to act on behalf of their citizens. Are Republicans ready to do away with the electoral process altogether, or do they just know the voting machines have been rigged by their cronies at Diebold?
The Republican juggernaut careens ahead unimpeded, busting unions, crippling government, and devastating the environment certain that the wealthiest and most ruthless have absolute dominion over the world and all its people.
A new NBC/Wall Street Journal poll revealed 60% of Americans feared the Republicans' rampant budget-slashing would harm their families. While most respondents expressed concern about federal budget deficits and growing debt, Americans oppose Republicans cutting education, Social Security and Medicare.
This comes a day after another NBC/Wall Street Journal poll showing 77% of Americans support Wisconsin state workers' right to collective bargaining, while Republicans blitz to strip those rights away
Despite the clear message that Americans oppose the GOP plutocrats' agenda, the Republicans are pushing ahead with their heinous schemes.
While 74% of Americans (including one former Shell Oil Company CEO, John Hofmeister) oppose extending tax subsidies for the oil and gas industries, Republicans voted unanimously to extend those tax subsidies. 76% of Americans want to ax unnecessary weapon systems, but lavish giveaways to their defense industry cronies is one of the few sacred expenditures Republicans will not touch.
And the 81% who favor raising taxes on the very rich would probably make some Republican death list, if the Republicans hadn't already decided the very rich would never be taxed, and people who think they should be are simply nonentities.
Oblivious to the hew and cry rising across the nation, Republicans continue to loudly drone their mantra of more tax subsidies for the wealthy, and more service cuts for everyone else. Republicans lecture one and all that public sector workers unions are the cause of states' budget woes, even though it is obvious that the culprit is the Republicans' ever-spiralling tax giveaways to GOP plutocrats for their ever-expanding fleets of private jets and mega-yachts.
Republicans, like all autocrats, specialize in ear-splitting harangues completely dissociated from facts. They say they want to address budget shortfalls and create jobs while pushing an agenda that would devastate the nation's economy and annihilate tens of thousands of jobs. They stand smugly before TV cameras and continue to spout lies as obvious as Muammar Khadafy's claim that all Libyans love him, and that there are no protests in his country.
Clearly, Republicans are unconcerned about dictating policies contrary to the electorates' wishes. Their actions would indicate they consider themselves above the democratic process. Their actions are consistent with those of autocrats who feel no need to act on behalf of their citizens. Are Republicans ready to do away with the electoral process altogether, or do they just know the voting machines have been rigged by their cronies at Diebold?
The Republican juggernaut careens ahead unimpeded, busting unions, crippling government, and devastating the environment certain that the wealthiest and most ruthless have absolute dominion over the world and all its people.
Tuesday, March 1, 2011
America Can't Afford Republicans
There are liars, damned liars, and Republicans.
Republicans say America can't afford to allow its state workers collective bargaining rights, even though the nine states that don't allow their workers those rights are actually running higher average deficits than states overall.
In Wisconsin, Republican Governor Scott Walker claims he has to bust the state workers' unions because the state has a $3 billion budget deficit. In fact, it is common knowledge that Walker himself is the source of the budget shortfall, having inherited a budget surplus which he annihilated with billions of dollars of tax subsidies to his wealthy cronies.
As obvious as these lies are, Republicans smugly continue to prevaricate with impunity, backed by the incessant howling of their Republican-owned corporate media and the menacing scowls of their gun-toting racist thugs.
And so it goes. Republicans say America cannot afford schools, teachers, firefighters, or police. Republicans say America cannot afford clean water, breathable air, untainted foods or safe products. Republicans say America cannot afford to maintain its roads and bridges and dams and canals. Republicans say America cannot afford to regulate banks, proscribe toxic pollution, outlaw predatory lenders, prevent systemic financial risk, or to investigate and charge Wall Street fraud and malfeasance. Republicans say America cannot afford to care for our elderly, our sick, our injured, our wounded warriors, or our wayward children.
Republicans say America cannot afford affordable health care. Republicans say America cannot afford to pay people a decent living wage and must offshore all our jobs. Republicans say America cannot afford the freedom to assemble and petition our government. Republicans say America cannot afford to support innovation, invention, and the free exchange of ideas. Republicans say America cannot afford to build a new generation of trains, or power transmission lines, or infrastructure for mass transit or fuel-efficient cars. Republicans say America cannot afford to catch up with the rest of the world in designing and building wind turbines, solar panels, geothermal plants, carbon-capture systems and the industries those technologies would create.
Republicans say America cannot afford Public Broadcasting, or the EPA, or FEMA, or the Social Security Administration, or bank regulators, or food inspectors, or product safety specialists. Republicans say America cannot afford air traffic controllers. Again.
Republicans say America cannot afford National Parks, or National Forests or National Monuments. Republicans say America cannot afford to keep its wildlands free and clean and beautiful for generations to come. Republicans say America cannot keep its groundwater in the ground, let alone, pure, or clean, or nontoxic, or free of radiation and carcinogens. Republicans say America cannot keep its topsoil from blowing away. Republicans say America cannot afford wildlands, or wildlife, or even wildflowers.
Republicans say America cannot afford to pay for its citizens' retirement needs, and that all the money for Social Security and Medicare has to be given over to their pals and cronies so they can blow it all on more private parties on private jets with very private dancers.
Republicans say America cannot afford anything except to give all its money and resources and buildings and roads and infrastructure and institutions and forests and trees and minerals and lands and rivers and lakes and freedoms and hopes and health and vitality to their plutocrat cronies to squander on designer labels, noisome bourgeois excesses and all those very, very private dancers.
In fact, America can afford all those things, and much, much more.
What America cannot afford is its Republicans.
Republicans say America can't afford to allow its state workers collective bargaining rights, even though the nine states that don't allow their workers those rights are actually running higher average deficits than states overall.
In Wisconsin, Republican Governor Scott Walker claims he has to bust the state workers' unions because the state has a $3 billion budget deficit. In fact, it is common knowledge that Walker himself is the source of the budget shortfall, having inherited a budget surplus which he annihilated with billions of dollars of tax subsidies to his wealthy cronies.
As obvious as these lies are, Republicans smugly continue to prevaricate with impunity, backed by the incessant howling of their Republican-owned corporate media and the menacing scowls of their gun-toting racist thugs.
And so it goes. Republicans say America cannot afford schools, teachers, firefighters, or police. Republicans say America cannot afford clean water, breathable air, untainted foods or safe products. Republicans say America cannot afford to maintain its roads and bridges and dams and canals. Republicans say America cannot afford to regulate banks, proscribe toxic pollution, outlaw predatory lenders, prevent systemic financial risk, or to investigate and charge Wall Street fraud and malfeasance. Republicans say America cannot afford to care for our elderly, our sick, our injured, our wounded warriors, or our wayward children.
Republicans say America cannot afford affordable health care. Republicans say America cannot afford to pay people a decent living wage and must offshore all our jobs. Republicans say America cannot afford the freedom to assemble and petition our government. Republicans say America cannot afford to support innovation, invention, and the free exchange of ideas. Republicans say America cannot afford to build a new generation of trains, or power transmission lines, or infrastructure for mass transit or fuel-efficient cars. Republicans say America cannot afford to catch up with the rest of the world in designing and building wind turbines, solar panels, geothermal plants, carbon-capture systems and the industries those technologies would create.
Republicans say America cannot afford Public Broadcasting, or the EPA, or FEMA, or the Social Security Administration, or bank regulators, or food inspectors, or product safety specialists. Republicans say America cannot afford air traffic controllers. Again.
Republicans say America cannot afford National Parks, or National Forests or National Monuments. Republicans say America cannot afford to keep its wildlands free and clean and beautiful for generations to come. Republicans say America cannot keep its groundwater in the ground, let alone, pure, or clean, or nontoxic, or free of radiation and carcinogens. Republicans say America cannot keep its topsoil from blowing away. Republicans say America cannot afford wildlands, or wildlife, or even wildflowers.
Republicans say America cannot afford to pay for its citizens' retirement needs, and that all the money for Social Security and Medicare has to be given over to their pals and cronies so they can blow it all on more private parties on private jets with very private dancers.
Republicans say America cannot afford anything except to give all its money and resources and buildings and roads and infrastructure and institutions and forests and trees and minerals and lands and rivers and lakes and freedoms and hopes and health and vitality to their plutocrat cronies to squander on designer labels, noisome bourgeois excesses and all those very, very private dancers.
In fact, America can afford all those things, and much, much more.
What America cannot afford is its Republicans.
Tuesday, February 22, 2011
Union Busters Hit a Speedbump
The Grand Old Party's union-buster express hit a bit of a speedbump when a new USA Today/Gallup poll revealed 61% of Americans opposed the Republican's pet agenda to slash collective bargaining rights for state workers.
Despite Americans' increasing revulsion, Wisconsin Republican Governor Scott Walker plowed ahead with the union-busting gambit, spearheaded by a new multi-million dollar ad blitz funded by the Koch brothers' Americans for Prosperity front. The radio and television blitzkrieg will start tomorrow, adding to the right-wing clamor already coming from the corporate news networks.
In the face of the unified media disinformation campaign, what's most astonishing is that as many as 61% of those polled were well-informed enough to make a cogent decision on the question. This is noteworthy, considering how the traditional media had incessantly attempted to frame the issue as greedy union workers bankrupting a state by refusing to make concessions on overly generous wages and benefits they didn't deserve. Somehow, word got out that the employes were more than willing to negotiate on wages and pensions, but the GOP wanted to proscribe their right to negotiate at all.
And this is on top of similar poll results from Ohio where a whopping 88% told the Columbus Dispatch they backed collective bargaining rights for state workers there.
Perhaps the message leaked out through Facebook and Twitter.
It may have been fear of information leaking through the worldwide web that prompted Walker and his masters to take an action that garnered the Tea Party darling the new moniker "Hosni" Walker. For a considerable period today, the protestors' website defendwisconsin.org had been blocked from the state capitol's wifi.
Under a wave of outcry, the Teapublican powerbrokers restored access to the site late in the day.
As protests spread to Indiana and Ohio, perhaps poll results such as those in USA Today and the Columbus Dispatch can help encourage Democratic leaders to decide they are in fact stalwart champions of the American working people. Many of them have remained quietly shuffling along the sidelines, timidly sniffing the wind for some sign that might indicate to them what they think.
Meanwhile, Hosni Walker remains defiant in his palace, waiting for the Koch brothers to send more thugs to reinforce the counter-demonstrations and to begin the media blitz on local versions of Egyptian State Television.
Despite Americans' increasing revulsion, Wisconsin Republican Governor Scott Walker plowed ahead with the union-busting gambit, spearheaded by a new multi-million dollar ad blitz funded by the Koch brothers' Americans for Prosperity front. The radio and television blitzkrieg will start tomorrow, adding to the right-wing clamor already coming from the corporate news networks.
In the face of the unified media disinformation campaign, what's most astonishing is that as many as 61% of those polled were well-informed enough to make a cogent decision on the question. This is noteworthy, considering how the traditional media had incessantly attempted to frame the issue as greedy union workers bankrupting a state by refusing to make concessions on overly generous wages and benefits they didn't deserve. Somehow, word got out that the employes were more than willing to negotiate on wages and pensions, but the GOP wanted to proscribe their right to negotiate at all.
And this is on top of similar poll results from Ohio where a whopping 88% told the Columbus Dispatch they backed collective bargaining rights for state workers there.
Perhaps the message leaked out through Facebook and Twitter.
It may have been fear of information leaking through the worldwide web that prompted Walker and his masters to take an action that garnered the Tea Party darling the new moniker "Hosni" Walker. For a considerable period today, the protestors' website defendwisconsin.org had been blocked from the state capitol's wifi.
Under a wave of outcry, the Teapublican powerbrokers restored access to the site late in the day.
As protests spread to Indiana and Ohio, perhaps poll results such as those in USA Today and the Columbus Dispatch can help encourage Democratic leaders to decide they are in fact stalwart champions of the American working people. Many of them have remained quietly shuffling along the sidelines, timidly sniffing the wind for some sign that might indicate to them what they think.
Meanwhile, Hosni Walker remains defiant in his palace, waiting for the Koch brothers to send more thugs to reinforce the counter-demonstrations and to begin the media blitz on local versions of Egyptian State Television.
Friday, February 18, 2011
Media Buries Wisconsin Collective Bargaining Issue
Wisconsin Republican state legislators and Governor Scott Walker moved to strip collective bargaining rights from state workers, thousands protested, and Democratic legislators fled the state to prevent the required quorum for a vote. Meanwhile, network television news framed the issue in such a way that the casual viewer would think that greedy unions were refusing to make wage and benefit concessions in spite of gaping budget deficits.
The networks passed over the collective bargaining issue, which is the actual crux of the conflict.
While the Governor is calling for wage and benefit concessions, and asking public workers to contribute more to their pension plans, the primary issue at stake is the collective bargaining agreement. The network news played up the wage and benefit concessions, but failed to explain the slashing of collective bargaining rights.
For example, the CBS Evening News displayed a graphic featuring four bullet points outlining the issues and anchor Katie Couric's voice-over explained the bullet points relating to the wage, benefit and pension plan issues. The fourth bullet point read "Collective bargaining agreement," but Couric's voice-over did not explain what that bullet point meant.
A viewer who wasn't already informed on the topic would have no idea that the collective bargaining issue was the heart of the matter, and, if the viewer hadn't been watching the screen for the few seconds the bullet point appeared, wouldn't even know the issue existed.
The net effect would be to make the viewer believe that the state workers were simply being intransigent during a time when everyone else was making sacrifices to keep the state going. Obviously, the intent is to make viewers believe the state workers shouldn't be entitled to generous wages and benefits everyone else wasn't getting.
The CBS Evening News had found a clever way to report the news and mislead its viewers at the same time.
For many years, going after unions has been the fashionable thing to do. Wide swaths of the electorate fall for the "I don't get those kinds of benefits, why should they?" ruse without considering that perhaps they themselves should be getting the same kinds of protections and benefits, and organizing toward that end.
The networks passed over the collective bargaining issue, which is the actual crux of the conflict.
While the Governor is calling for wage and benefit concessions, and asking public workers to contribute more to their pension plans, the primary issue at stake is the collective bargaining agreement. The network news played up the wage and benefit concessions, but failed to explain the slashing of collective bargaining rights.
For example, the CBS Evening News displayed a graphic featuring four bullet points outlining the issues and anchor Katie Couric's voice-over explained the bullet points relating to the wage, benefit and pension plan issues. The fourth bullet point read "Collective bargaining agreement," but Couric's voice-over did not explain what that bullet point meant.
A viewer who wasn't already informed on the topic would have no idea that the collective bargaining issue was the heart of the matter, and, if the viewer hadn't been watching the screen for the few seconds the bullet point appeared, wouldn't even know the issue existed.
The net effect would be to make the viewer believe that the state workers were simply being intransigent during a time when everyone else was making sacrifices to keep the state going. Obviously, the intent is to make viewers believe the state workers shouldn't be entitled to generous wages and benefits everyone else wasn't getting.
The CBS Evening News had found a clever way to report the news and mislead its viewers at the same time.
For many years, going after unions has been the fashionable thing to do. Wide swaths of the electorate fall for the "I don't get those kinds of benefits, why should they?" ruse without considering that perhaps they themselves should be getting the same kinds of protections and benefits, and organizing toward that end.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)