Tuesday, April 30, 2013

Wacky Anti-America Senator Rob Portman (R-OH) and Crazy Rep. Jim Jordan (R-OH) Fight for Corporate Welfare and Corruption of the Army














Wacky Anti-America Senator Rob Portman (R-OH) and Crazy Rep. Jim Jordan (R-OH) Fight for Corporate Welfare and Corruption of the Army

Congress is forcing the Army to spend nearly half a billion dollars building tanks that Army officials insist they don’t want, with money they say could be better spent elsewhere, according to a new report from the AP.

Sen. Rob Portman (R-OH) and Rep. Jim Jordan (R-OH) are the two members of congress at the helm of the effort to spend $436 million on upgrading the Abrams tank, “a weapon the experts explicitly say is not needed.” The reason? Both represent Ohio, home to the nation’s only tank manufacturing plant, which would profit from the money.

The move is contradictory for the two politicians; both are also vocal advocates for fiscal austerity, and have made careers insisting that the government cut what they see as wasteful spending. It would seem that pushing for tank production against the will of the Army — as Army Chief of Staff Gen. Ray Odierno put it, “If we had our choice, we would use that money in a different way” — is in direct contradiction to that aim.

Still, Rep. Jordan defended his request for the funding, saying, “The one area where we are supposed to spend taxpayer money is in defense of the country.” This is a common line among Republicans. The House GOP’s proposed budget also seeks to restore funding the military says it doesn’t need.

Indeed, Republicans have tried to maintain defense spending while pushing for cuts to mental health programs, cancer treatment, food safety inspectors, and preschool programs. They have repeatedly ignored or dismissed the assertion from military generals that President Obama’s budget, which would have made targeted cuts to military programs, was an acceptable path to spending reduction.

A cut to one specific program would by no means be a drastic setback for the military; between 2001 and 2011, military spending nearly doubled. American voters, much like the military’s generals, also support scaling back the military’s spending.

So plastic patriots Portman and Jordan want to waste tax dollars. They want to weaken our national defense. They want to go against the best judgment of military experts. yep, sounds like more conservatism in action. Isn't that what conservatism is all about, making America weaker and more corrupt, while wrapping it's dangerous agenda in the flag and fear.

Friday, April 26, 2013

Real Americans Do Not Disregard Medical Research Budget Cuts To Ridicule Patriotic Senator Harry Reid (D-NV)



















Real Americans Do Not Disregard Medical Research Budget Cuts To Ridicule Patriotic Senator Harry Reid (D-NV)

Fox News selectively edited comments by Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid to accuse him of exaggerating the effects of automatic budget cuts that began March 1. Fox's excerpt of Reid's call to end the cuts left out his description of specific impacts and ignored widespread media reporting that supports his statements.

Due to the across-the-board spending cuts, the National Institute of Health (NIH) will be forced reduce its budget by $1.5 billion and expects to award 1,000 fewer grants in 2013. Because approximately three-fifths, or $40.8 billion, of all university research funding in 2011 came from the federal government, this loss will be disruptive. Some disruptions have already begun.

On April 25, Fox & Friends aired a short clip from Sen. Reid's April 24 remarks to the Senate that called for an end to the arbitrary budget cuts. Although Reid prefaced the aired comments with a broader description of the impact that the mandatory budget cuts may have on education and the economy, Fox Business host Stuart Varney and Fox News host Steve Doocy chose to focus on just three sentences, accusing Reid of "desperate" exaggeration. Doocy claimed that Reid "essentially is saying Republicans want to kill people."

Fox's short excerpt of Reid's testimony omitted context in which Reid detailed specific examples of how the budget cuts may curb medical research. Here is a larger excerpt of Reid's statement [what Fox aired is bolded]:

    Nationwide these across-the-board cuts will cost 750,000 jobs. They will cost us investments in education that keep America competitive. They will cost millions of seniors, children, veterans and needy families the safety net that keeps them from descending into poverty.

    Most of the headlines are focused on the hours the sequester has cost travelers in airports across the nation. The frustration and the economic effects of those delays should not be minimized. But the sequester could also cost this country - and humankind - a cure for AIDS or Parkinson's disease or cancer.

    These arbitrary cuts have decimated funding for medical researchers seeking cures for diabetes, epilepsy and hundreds of other dangerous and debilitating diseases. The National Institutes of Health has delayed or halted vital scientific projects and reduced the number of grants it awards to research scientists. Thousands of researchers will lose their jobs in the next few months. And projects that can't go on without adequate staffing will be cancelled altogether.

    At Ohio State University, grants for cancer research and infectious disease control have been axed. At the University of Cincinnati - which is at the forefront in research on strokes, a leading cause of death in the United States - scientists are bracing for similar cuts. Vanderbilt University and the University of Kentucky are accepting fewer science graduate students because of funding reductions. At Wright State University, scientists researching pregnancy-related disorders such as preeclampsia will lose their jobs. Boston University has laid off lab scientists, and research laboratories in San Francisco have instituted hiring freezes and delayed the launch of important studies. And grants to some of Harvard University's most successful research scientists were not renewed because of the sequester.

    This kind of research saves lives. These scientists are looking for the next successful treatment for Alzheimer's disease or the next drug to treat high cholesterol. But they might never get the chance to complete their groundbreaking work or make their life-saving discoveries because of these short-sighted cuts.

    We have seen the devastating impacts of these arbitrary budget cuts. Now it's time to stop them.

News reports confirm the cuts to medical research highlighted in Reid's statement.

The Toledo Blade reported that cuts to cancer and infectious disease research have already begun to take effect at Ohio State University. The school expects to lose $27 million by the end of 2014. The Blade also highlighted the $17 million cut expected to hit the University of Cincinnati's groundbreaking research on strokes and how the cuts have jeopardized Wright State University's potentially life-saving research on pregnancy complications:

    In his lab at Wright State University, Thomas Brown is moving closer to understanding why some babies are born premature -- cutting-edge research that has the potential to save the lives of babies and their mothers.

    But Brown, who has a five-year, $1.5 million grant from the National Institutes of Health to study the underlying factors that cause pre-eclampsia and pregnancy-related disorders, faces uncertainty about the funding that makes his lab work possible.

According to U.S. News & World Report, Vanderbilt University already plans to reduce graduate student admissions for next year, and may have to cut research assistants on some of its 3,500 active research grants and contracts. The Stateline news service from the Pew Charitable Trusts reported that the University of Kentucky's College of Medicine reduced admissions to its Ph.D. program in physiology by a third due to federal budget cuts. Similarly, staffing reductions have begun to take effect among researchers at the University of California at San Francisco, which expects to lose more than $28 million. And Harvard Medical School shut down its primate research center, citing growing uncertainty of federal funding.

It is already well known that Fox Business host Stuart Varney and Fox News host Steve Doocy are rapid anti-American zealots. They have both pushed for America to adopt European style austerity measures. Austerity measures which have kept Europe from recovering from the world wide recession that started in 2007. Varney and Doocy make over a million dollars a year trashing America, advocating UnAmerican conservative economics, deceptively editing video as though they were working for the Spanish fascists of WW II. You would think they would show some appreciation for a country that has been so generous to them, especially considering they have the morals of a cockroach and the brains of a tree stump. 

Wednesday, April 24, 2013

Obamacare, Do Real Patriots Have Two Faces - Republicans To Back Bill Expanding Obamacare Program















Obamacare, Do Real Patriots Have Two Faces - Republicans To Back Bill Expanding Obamacare Program

House Republicans plan to vote on a bill on Wednesday that would shift money from the portion of Obamacare that invests in prevention and use it to expand a temporary initiative that has helped individuals and families with pre-existing medical conditions obtain coverage.

The Helping Sick Americans Now Act would move $4 billion from the Affordable Care Act’s $10 billion Prevention and Public Health Fund into the Pre-Existing Condition Insurance Plan (PCIP), a program of high-risk pools that has provided coverage to uninsured Americans who didn’t have an offer of insurance from an employer and couldn’t find a plan in the individual market. The PCIP was designed as a bridge to the exchanges, which will become operational in 2014, but the $5 billion program stopped accepting new enrollees in February.

“Like in so many other areas, the President’s health care legislation failed to adequately protect sick patients with pre-existing conditions, like those battling cancer,” Rory Cooper, a spokesman for House Majority Leader Eric Cantor (R-VA), told Talking Points Memo. “House Republicans are determined to do so by taking funding from a slush fund and moving it where it is critically needed.”

But while insuring high-cost individuals in separate pools has long been a staple of Republican health policy, the Prevention Fund also supports GOP-backed priorities. The Fund has invested in community and clinical prevention, research, public health infrastructure, immunizations and screenings, tobacco prevention and public health workforce and training — measures that Republicans touted as critical to lowering health care costs:

    – Former Sen. Jon Kyl (R-AZ) argued that “one of the things we did in the health care legislation was to provide a lot of different incentives for preventive care.” [7/12/2010]

    – Sen. Chuck Grassley (R-IA) said the law’s emphasis on preventive care is good “because it costs less to keep people well than to treat them when they’re sick.” [10/18/2010]

    – Sen. Mitch McConnell (R-KY): “Congress should be able to work together on our practical ideas that the American people support, such as reforming our medical liability laws to discourage junk lawsuits…encouraging wellness and prevention programs that have proved to be effective in cutting costs and improving care.” [8/26/2010]

    – Sen. Saxby Chambliss (R-GA): “I am an original cosponsor of S. 1099, the “Patients’ Choice Act,” …. The legislation would make health care coverage accessible and affordable for all Americans through private insurance coverage, while also promoting prevention and wellness which can improve lives and lower long-term medical costs. [7/19/2009]

Now, the party is seeking to undermine one priority to fund the other, even after repeatedly voting to repeal Obamacare and eliminate the PCIP and the Prevention Fund.

Conservatives are just spiteful venal children who never grow up. Republicans do not stand for American values. This is an excellent example of what they do stand for, glaringly wanton behavior. Not good government. In their fantasies all conservatives really want to live in Somalia rather than big-government Sweden. I'd suggest taking up a collection to buy them all a boat ticket, but they have stolen so much from American workers they can pay their own way.

Monday, April 22, 2013

The Freaky Koch Brothers Have Another Bill on Their Anti-American Agenda





































The Freaky Koch Brothers Have Another Bill on Their Anti-American Agenda

Will the "Koch Brothers Bill" Make Industrial Accidents More Likely?
Such accidents are all too common in chemical country. So why are congressmen fighting to keep the EPA from doing anything about it?

Last Wednesday’s explosion at a West, Texas, fertilizer plant, which left at least 15 people dead and more than a hundred injured, was made possible by an ultra-lax [1] state- and federal oversight climate that make inspections of such facilities all but a rubber-stamp process—when they even happen. If the chemical lobby and its allies in Congress get their way, a regulatory process dismissed by environmental activists and labor unions as extremely weak would be watered down even more.

In February, 11 congressmen—10 Republicans and 1 Democrat—joined some two dozen [2] industry groups, including the Fertilizer Institute, the American Chemistry Council, and the International Institute of Ammonia Refrigeration, to back the General Duty Clarification Act [3]. The bill is designed to sap the Environmental Protection Agency of its powers to regulate safety and security at major chemical sites, as prescribed by the Clean Air Act.

"We call that the Koch brothers bill," Greenpeace legislative director Rick Hind says, because the bill's sponsor, GOP Rep. Mike Pompeo, represents the conservative mega-donors' home city of Wichita. (The sponsor of the sister legislation in the senate, GOP Sen. Pat Roberts, represents the Kochs' home state of Kansas.) The brothers have huge investments in fertilizer production, and Hind thinks they'll ultimately get what they want, whether or not the bill becomes law. "It's not necessarily intended to achieve legislative passage—it's more about intimidation of a beleaguered agency."

The fight over fertilizer and the Clean Air Act has its origins in the passage of the law back in 1990. Although the original bill included language that would have permitted the EPA to regulate the emissions of ammonia and hydrogen sulfide—both of which are important ingredients and fertilizer manufacturing—a fierce lobbying push from the fertilizer industry resulted in the compounds being stricken from the formal list.

The radical Kochs, their supporters and the Congressional representatives they buy off in Congress say they stand for freedom. Ever been sick or known someone who was seriously ill. How free were they. How much could they enjoy their family, their friends or just enjoy being alive. The Koch-heads want to make a lot of people sick, including children, so they ( already billionaires) can make even more money. The Koch-heads have only one god and that is money. They respect nothing else. Maybe they have figured out a way to take all the money they made off the labor of average workers, with them when they die.

The gun lobby often claims that firearms are used for self-defense an estimated 2.5 million times a year. But according to the Department of Justice's National Crime Victimization Survey, the actual number is just a fraction of that:

Saturday, April 20, 2013

Freedom Loving Americans Understand What It Is Like to Have Fracking in Your Backyard













Freedom Loving Americans Understand What It Is Like to Have Fracking in Your Backyard

Ed Wade’s property straddles the Wetzel and Marsh county lines in rural West Virginia and it has a conventional gas well on it. “You could cover the whole [well] pad with three pickups,” said Wade. And West Virginia has lots of conventional wells — more than 50,000 at last count. West Virginians are so well acquainted with gas drilling that when companies began using high-volume horizontal hydraulic fracturing in 2006 to access areas of the Marcellus Shale that underlie the state, most residents and regulators were unprepared for the massive footprint of the operations and the impact on their communities.

When it comes to a conventional well and a Marcellus well, “There is no comparison, none whatsoever,” said Wade, who works with the Wetzel County Action Group [4]. “You live in the country for a reason and it just takes that and turns it upside down. You know how they preach all the time that natural gas burns cleaner than coal; well, it may burn cleaner than coal, but it’s a hell of a lot dirtier to extract.”

To understand what’s at stake, you have to understand the vocabulary. Take the word “fracking” for example. When people say it’s been around since the 1950s, they are referring to vertical fracturing, but what’s causing all the contention lately is a much more destructive process known as high-volume horizontal hydraulic fracturing. Or they’re using "fracking" in a very limited way. “The industry uses [fracking] to refer just to the moment when the shale is fractured using water as the sledgehammer to shatter the shale,” scientist Sandra Steingraber told AlterNet [5]. “With that as the definition they can say truthfully that there are no cases of water contamination associated with fracking. But you don’t get fracking without bringing with it all these other things — mining for the frack sand [6], depleting water, you have to add the chemicals, you have to drill, you have to dispose of the waste, you have drill cuttings. I refer to them all as fracking, as do most activists.”

The potential impacts that go well beyond the moment the well is fracked are mammoth. What has been most discussed is the concern that the chemicals used in the fracking process, as well as naturally occurring but dangerous substances underground like arsenic, heavy metals and methane, can migrate back to the surface with water through faults, fissures and abandoned mines. That’s deeply concerning, but it’s just the tip of the iceberg.

The footprint of the well site, which now often includes freshwater or wastewater ponds and tankers full of chemicals, has grown expotentially from the size of conventional wells -- they certainly aren't the size of a few pickup trucks. Here's an aerial view of a new home, built in rural West Virginia that is now surrounded by a fracking operation after the owner's neighbor leased to a drilling company.


Fracking takes rural communities and turns them into industrial zones — and citizens have little recourse. Thanks to the so-called “Halliburton Loophole” in the 2005 Energy Policy Act, fracking is exempt from the Safe Drinking Water Act and there are exemptions also in the Clean Air Act and Clean Water Act. In West Virginia, a state with a long history of energy extraction, industry has a controlling hand in local and state politics and thus far, seems to be calling the shots. To make matters worse, many properties had their mineral rights separated over a century ago. So, people may own their homes and properties, but not the minerals underneath. Their property can be destroyed by drilling and they will have no financial gain.

Or, they can lose virtually everything, simply by living next door to someone who does lease.

Maybe some old school vertical fracturing is safe enough. Maybe. Yet it is fairly obvious that that horizontal fracking combined with the massive numbers of wells is not safe, not clean, not sustainable and not good for American families.

Thursday, April 18, 2013

The NRA or National Right to Murder Association has already blocked Boston Marathon Investigation









The NRA or National Right to Murder and Get Away With It Association has already blocked Boston Marathon Investigation

One avenue of investigation is already closed off to forensic officials working the Boston Marathon bombing case due to efforts dating back decades by the National Rifle Association and gun manufacturers.

The FBI said Tuesday that gunpowder, along with pieces of metal and ball bearings, were packed into at least one pressure cooker and another device to make the crude bombs that killed three people—including an 8-year-old boy—and wounded more than 170 more during the Boston Marathon Monday.

But a crucial piece of evidence called a taggant that could be used to trace the gunpowder used in the bombs to a buyer at a point of sale is not available to investigators.

“If you had a good taggant this would be a good thing for this kind of crime. It could help identify the point of manufacturer, and chain of custody,” Bob Morhard, an explosives consultant and chief executive officer of  Zukovich, Morhard & Wade, LLC., in Pennsylvania, who has traced explosives and detonators in use in the United States and Saudi Arabia, told MSNBC.com. “The problem is nobody wants to know what the material is.”

Explosives manufacturers are required to place tracing elements known as identification taggants only in plastic explosives but not in gunpowder, thanks to lobbying efforts by the NRA and large gun manufacturing groups.

NRA officials at the group’s headquarters in Fairfax, Virginia declined to respond to calls and emails from MSNBC.com requesting comment.

The National Shooting Sports Foundation and the Sporting Arms and Ammunition Manufacturers’ Institute, Inc., share a cross-membership of dozens of firearms manufacturers based out of their joint offices in Newtown, Connecticut. Foundation spokesman Bill Brassard, Jr. told MSNBC.com that no one from either group was available for comment.

“They are concerned about tort liability,” Morhard added to MSNBC.com, referring to manufacturers worried about being sued over the improper use of their ammunition or explosives.

Has American noticed that the NRA - worried that gov'mint will take away their right to be part of a well "regulated" militia does done nothing to fight for the civil liberties that conservatives regularly take away from Americans in the form of the Patriot Act and other surveillance state activity. The NRA does nothing to keep the gov'mint from entangling itself with religious fanatics. The NRA does nothing to protect the right of individuals to have autonomy over their own body. I could go on, but the point is easily made, the gov'mint that they say they need their guns to protect themselves against, takes away rights that the NRA supports being taken away. I'm not anit-gun ownership, but I am anti-fanatics.

Related to chart above, Conservative Republicans want America to follow European economic austerity

Tuesday, April 16, 2013

How Should a Patriot React To The Boston Marathon Bombings



































How Should a Patriot React To The Boston Marathon Bombings

The horror that was the aftermath of the explosions at the end of the Boston Marathon on Monday drew forth some of the best of people. With three dead and more than 100 wounded, dozens of citizens comforted and aided the injured, thousands more offered up their homes to stranded marathon runners. Such national tragedies can also bring out the worst in people, pulling forth responses that fly in the face of the feelings many are still grappling with. Here’s ThinkProgress’ list of the worst responses to what the Federal government is referring to as an attack:

Islamophobia. Fox News contributor Erik Rush, RedState, Pamela Geller, and the New York Post all blamed Muslims for the attack. Law enforcement officials say that it “remains too early to establish the cause and motivation” describing it as a “potential terrorist investigation.”

    Jihad in Boston: 12 dead, 50 injured …… horrific Boston Marathon bombing

    — Pamela Geller (@pamelageller) April 15, 2013

    Breaking: Authorities ID a Saudi national as a suspect in Boston Marathon bombings nyp.st/XNBHHr

    — New York Post (@nypost) April 15, 2013

Settling partisan gripes. The Washington Post’s Jennifer Rubin launched an attack on her colleague, snidely referencing the Kermit Gosnell trial’s coverage in calling the Boston explosions a “local crime story.” Rubin later attempted to explain that she only meant that she would avoid writing until more facts were known. The New York Times’ Nick Kristof took the time to call out Republicans’ blocking confirmation of a new head of the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, and Firearms, but later deleted the tweet and apologized:

    Not writing on Boston. It is a local crime story for now.

    — Jennifer Rubin (@JRubinBlogger) April 15, 2013

Unnecessary partisanship. Minutes after the explosions were first reported, Michael Goldfarb of the Emergency Committee for Israel, chose to use the moment to mock Vice-President Joe Biden’s response to the incident. Others blamed Obama:

    Biden reassures America: “apparently there has been a bombing. I don’t know any of the details of what caused it, who did it.”

    — Michael Goldfarb (@thegoldfarb) April 15, 2013

    GEORGE BUSH KEPT US SAFE FOR 8 YEARSAND ONCE AGAIN @barackobama FAILS AS TERRORISTS BOMB BOSTON MARATHON is.gd/yhzvxB #p2 #dnc

    — Patrick Dollard (@PatDollard) April 15, 2013  ( Bush kept us safe for eight years? Talk about delusional. More Americans were killed by terrorists during the Bush presidency than Reagan, Bush Sr and Clinton combined).


False-flag. Conspiracy theory-monger — and Drudge favorite — Alex Jones of the website InfoWars wondered aloud whether the attack was a “false-flag” operation — an event made to look as though another perpetrated it, often used in reference to supposed government plots.

    Our hearts go out to those that are hurt or killed #Boston marathon – but this thing stinks to high heaven #falseflag

    — Alex Jones (@RealAlexJones) April 15, 2013
Conservative do American parents a great favor. All parents have to do is tell their children to watch and listen to conservatives to learn how NOT to behave.

Sunday, April 14, 2013

If You Love The USA You Should Demand Millionaires Pay Their Fair Share

















If You Love The USA You Should Demand Millionaires Pay Their Fair Share

President Barack Obama’s new budget proposal, released Wednesday, would raise $16 billion in revenue over 10 years by getting rid of one of the ways millionaires and billionaires pay lower taxes than their secretaries. It's called the carried interest tax break, and it allows the wealthy to pay a lower rate on some of their income. But ending the carried interest exception will be tough, and not just because a budget compromise with Republicans is unlikely: Previous proposed legislation to kill the tax break was riddled with loopholes.

The carried interest tax break works by letting private equity and hedge fund managers treat some of the income they earn from managing clients' portfolios as if they had invested it themselves. That allows folks like Mitt Romney to pay a 20 percent investment income tax rate on their money management fees, instead of the normal 39.6 percent tax rate on earned income. This special rich person perk costs the government some $1.3 billion a year. That's one reason why Obama and many Democrats slam the tax break as unfair and have targeted it for repeal.

"There continues to be no rationale whatsoever for people to pay at a vastly lower tax rate when they are managing other people’s money," Rep. Sander Levin (D-Mich.), who has introduced all of the carried interest legislation in past years, said in an email. "This is an issue of fairness that we should address as we seek a balanced approach to deficit reduction that involves both additional revenues and spending cuts."

But getting rid of the tax break may not be such an easy task, given the tortuous history of the movement to deep-six it. The fight against carried interest is Levin's baby. He first introduced a bill to ax the loophole in 2007, and has introduced two more versions since then, all of which have stalled.

"It's rather unusual that this legislation hung out there for so many years," says Steve Rosenthal, a fellow at the Tax Policy Center. That's due to the "pretty effective job" that the trillion-dollar private equity industry has done in "confusing and delaying legislation," he says.

Rosenthal says that so much damage has been done to the legislation over the years that he has no faith in the effectiveness of whatever nominal repeal legislation eventually does get into a compromise budget bill—if there ever is one.

First of all, he notes, it's unclear whether the entirety of an executive's carried interest income would be subject to the higher tax rate. Rosenthal says some versions of the bill have only called for raising taxes on 75 percent of it.

Rosenthal says the most recent legislation also includes a loophole that would allow private equity firms, which are usually organized as limited partnerships, to convert themselves into a special kind of small business entity, which would allow them to avoid the carried interest tax hike.

And if Levin's most recent legislation passes, private equity managers would also be exempt in certain cases from a higher carried interest rate on the profit from selling part of their own interest in the firm.

"The carried interest lobbying effort has been a scandal," Rosenthal says.
This insanity where the American people reward wealth and punish work could end in a week. All it would take, and it is asking a lot apparently, is for a few million patriotic Americans to send a postcard to their Senator and representative. They can't ignore the overwhelming wished of working class Americans who want the filthy rich to start paying back society for providing them with roads, firefighters, the world's best military and other infrastructure - that makes their wealth even possible.

Friday, April 12, 2013

American Patriots Know That Federal Income Taxes on Middle-Income Americans Near Historic Lows


















American Patriots Know That Federal Income Taxes on Middle-Income Americans Near Historic Lows

Federal taxes on middle-income Americans are near historic lows, our updated report explains, and that’s true whether you’re talking about federal income taxes or all federal taxes.

When it comes to income taxes, a family of four in the exact middle of the income spectrum will pay only 5.3 percent of its 2013 income in federal income taxes next year, according to a new analysis by the Urban-Brookings Tax Policy Center.

Average income tax rates for these typical families have been lower during the Bush and Obama Administrations than at any time since the 1950s (see graph).  Taxes were particularly low from 2008 to 2010 because of the Recovery Rebate Credit and the Making Work Pay Tax Credit, which have since expired.

When it comes to overall federal taxes, households in the middle fifth of the income spectrum paid an average of 11.1 percent of their income in taxes in 2009, the latest year for which data are available, according to the Congressional Budget Office (CBO).  This is the lowest on record in data that go back to 1979.
When CBO publishes data for more recent years (such as 2013), overall federal average tax rates on this middle group will likely be higher — though still low historically — because they will reflect the expiration of Making Work Pay and other temporary tax cuts, including the payroll tax cut that expired at the end of last year.

The expiration of the payroll tax cut is the biggest tax change for most people in 2013.  As this table shows, the tax cut helped workers in a wide range of income groups, and its expiration is a key contributor to the slowdown in economic growth that CBO forecasts for 2013.

Yet those wacky conservatives keep claiming that we have to keep large tax cuts for wealthy corporations and billionaires to stimulate economic growth, or have new tax cuts. There is no relationship between low taxes for those skimming huge profits off the backs of American workers. Why are cons lying about taxes. They want to starve thew government safety net - Medicare, Social Security, workmen's comp, unemployment insurance  - pretty much anything that does not fire a missile. The reason we safety net is because history shows us that markets are often good and create wealth, but they are not perfect - as any adult who was around in 2007 will know. The U.S. and it's imperfect markets have a long history. Patriots learn from history, conservatives either rewrite it or pretend it didn't happen.

Wednesday, April 10, 2013

Evil is Restless, Monsanto's Next Target is the Destruction of American Democracy


















Evil is Restless, Monsanto's Next Target is the Destruction of American Democracy

Big Food’s greatest fear is materializing. A critical mass of educated consumers, food and natural health activists are organizing a powerful movement that could well overthrow North America’s trillion-dollar junk food empire. Savvy and more determined than ever, activists are zeroing in on the Achilles heel of Food Inc. -- labeling.

But as consumers demand truth and greater transparency in labeling, it isn’t just Big Food whose empire is vulnerable. The biotech industry, which makes billions supplying junk food manufacturers with cheap, genetically engineered (GE) ingredients, has even more to lose. Monsanto knows that if food producers are forced to label the genetically modified organisms (GMOs) in their food products, they’ll reformulate those products to meet consumer demand for GMO-free alternatives. That’s why companies like Monsanto, DuPont and Dow, along with Coca-Cola and Pepsi, last year spent more than $46 million to defeat Proposition 37, California’s GMO labeling initiative.

The junk food and biotech industries narrowly (48.5% - 51.5%) prevailed in California, but they know it’s only a matter of time before one or more states pass a mandatory GMO labeling law. More than 30 state legislatures are now debating GMO labeling bills. And consumers have broadened the fight [4] beyond just labeling. Five counties and two cities in California and Washington have banned the growing of GE crops. In addition, given the near total absence of FDA regulation, 19 states have passed laws restricting GMOs [4].

How is the biotech industry fighting back? By attacking democracy.  Experts say the laws are on the side of consumers. But consumers will no doubt still have to defend democracy against an increasingly desperate, and aggressive, industry bent on protecting the highly profitable business of genetically engineered food.

The battle lines have been drawn. Will we cede our food sovereignty rights to a profit-at-all costs corporatocracy?

Monsanto’s lobbyists are out in force in Washington, Vermont, Connecticut, and several dozen other states. They’re lobbying politicians behind the scenes and planting misleading articles [5] in the press. Attacking pro-labeling anti-GMO proponents as anti-technology Luddites.  They’re repeating ad nauseum their propaganda claims that GE foods and crops are perfectly safe and therefore need no labeling, that transgenics are environment- and climate-friendly, and that genetically modified crops are necessary to feed the world.

One of Monsanto’s major propaganda points, designed to discourage state officials from passing GMO labeling laws, is that state GMO labeling is unconstitutional. Monsanto has repeatedly stated that it will sue any state that dares to label. This threat of a lawsuit was enough to convince lawmakers in Vermont and Connecticut in 2012 to back off [6] from labeling, even though there were sufficient votes, and overwhelming public sentiment, to pass these bills.

The same scenario [7] is unfolding again [7] in Vermont, where the Governor is refusing to endorse a popular labeling bill that could easily pass through both houses of the legislature.

Biotech industry lawyers claim that Federal courts will strike down mandatory state GMO labeling for three reasons: 1)because Federal law, in this case FDA regulations, preempts state law; 2) because commercial free speech allows corporations to remain silent on whether or not their products are genetically engineered and; 3) because GMO labeling would interfere with interstate commerce.

These claims simply don’t hold up. State GMO labeling, and other food safety and food labeling laws, are constitutional. Federal law, upheld for decades by federal court legal decisions, allows states to pass laws relating food safety or food labels when the FDA has no prior regulations or prohibitions in place. There is currently no federal law or FDA regulation on GMO labeling, except for a guidance statement on voluntary labeling, nor is there any federal prohibition on state GMO or other food safety labeling laws. In fact there are over 200 state food labeling laws in effect right now in the U.S., including a GMO fish labeling law in Alaska, laws on labeling wild rice, maple syrup, dairy quality, kosher products, and laws on labeling dairy products as rBGH-free. It is very unlikely that any federal court will want to make a sweeping ruling that would nullify 200 preexisting state laws.

U.S. case law does indicate that commercial free speech in certain instances allows corporations to remain silent about what’s in their products. However federal courts have consistently ruled that when there are compelling state interests -- health, environment, economic -- states can require corporations to divulge what’s in their products or how they were produced.

When it comes to GMOs, states can clearly make the case for compelling state interests, according to Consumer Union’s senior scientist, Michael Hansen. Hansen says: “...there is a compelling state interest in labeling of genetically engineered foods and that is due to the potential human health and environmental impacts of genetically engineered foods.”

Hansen also argues that Codex Alimentarius,  a collection of internationally recognized standards, codes of practice, guidelines and other recommendations relating to foods, food production and food safety, guarantees nations the right to implement mandatory labeling of GMO foods. The standards support the argument that GMO labels do not constitute a restriction of free trade, as long as they are applied to both domestic and international producers.  Similarly state GMO labels, as long as they do not discriminate against particular producers, but rather apply to all producers -- state, national, and international -- do not constitute a restriction of interstate commerce.

The U.S. government, under massive global pressure, has signed on to the Codex Alimentarius, which serves "as a risk management measure to deal with the scientific uncertainty" associated with genetically engineered foods. And according to Hansen, there most certainly is significant scientific uncertainty [8] about the potential health impacts of genetically engineered foods.”

States and localities have the right and the power to pass their own legislation, especially when the federal government fails or refuses to act on matters of compelling interest. Although large corporations now control the federal government, we still have room to organize and govern ourselves, especially at the local level.

“Home rule,” embedded in state constitutions and municipal charters across the U.S., provides the legal basis that has enabled several hundred cities and counties to pass ordinances banning factory farms, the spreading of sewage sludge on farmlands, fracking (which pollutes groundwater, farms and gardens), and even GMOs.

Yet undeterred by 200 years of case law and legislation institutionalizing states’ rights and local “Home Rule,” corporations are brazenly attacking the rights of states and localities to regulate Corporate America’s often reckless and criminal behavior.  They’re getting help from the infamous pro-corporate lobbying group, the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC). ALEC [9]is lobbying states across the country to restrict counties or local governments from passing any laws limiting pesticide use, GMOs, fracking, or industrial agriculture practices.
So corporations do not have human rights, they have super human rights. or so they seem to think. Let's say that all genetically modified foods are safe, how could labeling them - thus giving people a choice interfere with Monsanto's ability to do business. That is unless they know that some people do not want to gamble their lives or the lives of their children on what a corporation says is safe.

Former Tenn. Vice-Mayor William Blakely Allegedly Drove 90 MPH While Masturbating Out Window

According to Monsanto corporations never lie, Former Walmart District Manager Accuses Company of Widespread Inventory Manipulation

Tuesday, April 9, 2013

Patriots Don't Lie About The Number of Americans Receiving Disability





















Patriots Don't Lie About The Number of Americans Receiving Disability

Unpatriotic Conservative Media Hype NPR's Myth-Filled Disability Report

A misleading NPR report has become fodder for a right-wing media campaign to scapegoat federal disability benefits, despite the fact that the rise in disability claims can be attributed to the economic recession and demographic shifts, and that instances of fraud are minimal.

NPR reported that the rise in the number of federal disability beneficiaries was "startling" and claimed it was explained by unemployed workers with "squishy" claims of disability choosing to receive federal benefits rather than work. Right-wing media called the report "brilliant," and used it to further the myth that the increase in the number of individuals receiving disability benefits reveals fraud in the system.

Breitbart.com's Wynton Hall wrote that NPR's "eye-opening" piece uncovered a disability program "fraught with fraud." Fox Nation promoted the piece with the headline, "Every Month, 14 Million People Get a Disability Check from the Government..." The National Review Online's blog called the piece "brilliant," while the Washington Examiner's editorial offered it as evidence that disability benefits provide "a voluntary life sentence to idle poverty." The Drudge Report linked to the NPR story and to the Breitbart.com article:

But as Media Matters previously noted, these reports failed to include crucial facts that explain the rise in disability benefits. The recent financial crisis and the rising rate of child poverty have made more children eligible to receive benefits through the Supplemental Security program, while the growth in the number of adults receiving benefits through Social Security Disability Insurance since the 1970s is largely explained by increases in the number of women qualifying for benefits. As the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities explained, as women have joined the workforce in greater numbers over the past few decades, more women are eligible for disability benefits, resulting in higher numbers of beneficiaries.

Furthermore, in a report published in March 2012, the Government Accountability Office found that improper payments of disability benefits are not a widespread problem, and accounted for less than four percent of total improper payments made by federal agencies in fiscal year 2011.

Why would any intelligent American believe anything that Neo-Nazi sites like Brietbart have to say. They, Drudge and Fox want to transform the USA into an authoritarian cult run by plutocrats and religious fanatics who are similar to the Taliban. 

Saturday, April 6, 2013

Anti-American Legal Analyst Peter Johnson, Jr. Joins Fox News In Spreading Health Care Lies


















Anti-American Legal Analyst Peter Johnson, Jr. Joins Fox News In Spreading Health Care Lies

During an appearance on Fox and Friends Friday morning, Fox News contributor and legal analyst Peter Johnson, Jr. claimed that Medicare beneficiaries who are losing access to critical medical services as a result of sequestration “ain’t seen nothing yet,” as Obamacare will kill off far more Americans in the next ten years.

During a segment discussing how the budget sequester’s two percent cut to Medicare is forcing cancer clinics to deny chemotherapy to thousands of beneficiaries, Johnson told host Steve Doocy that elderly Americans should expect a lot more bad news in the coming decade as a direct consequence of the health care law:

    DOOCY: This story is going to disturb you. Cancer clinics across this country are turning away thousands of Medicare patients in need of chemotherapy. You can blame the sequester. Is there more to come? Peter Johnson, Jr. has a prescription for truth. Peter, what is this about?

    JOHNSON: This is about people dying as a result of Obamacare and as a result of the sequester. What the oncology association is saying is that thousands of chemotherapy patients who should have received their treatments, their benefits under Medicare, will not based on a 2 percent reduction under the sequester. What they fail to understand — and maybe they do and they don’t want to discuss it at this point — is that over the next ten years, 2013 to 2023, under Obamacare, there will be a $716 billion reduction [to Medicare] in Obamacare. We’re talking about a $3 billion reduction in the sequester now and the $3 billion reduction in Obamacare –

    DOOCY: This is a preview of coming awful things.

    JOHNSON: You haven’t seen anything yet. You ain’t seen nothing yet.

Johnson’s conflation of the sequester’s ham-fisted spending cuts with Obamacare’s Medicare savings demonstrates a complete misunderstanding of the sequester, Obamacare, and how federal budgeting works. Sequestration is causing cancer clinics to turn people away because they can’t afford to keep providing expensive chemotherapy drugs to patients in the face of a two percent cut to Medicare Part B that has to come entirely out of clinics’ overhead funding — making the sequester cut more akin to a double-digit pay cut. Obamacare’s $716 billion in Medicare savings come from reducing historically excessive payments to providers that service private Medicare Advantage plans, meaning that it doesn’t affect benefits. Conservatives have consistently fear-mongered over those savings despite including them in their budgets.

Later on in the program, Johnson also revived the widely debunked claim that Obamacare has “death panels” — a claim that is so patently false that Politifact named it 2009's “Lie of the Year.”
Johnson is a wild eyed zealot for a proto-facist agenda who is willing to tell the most blatant lies to advance his anti-American agenda. he is hoping no one will look up the simple fact that conservatives voted for the sequester and held the budget and Medicare hostage because they claimed the sequester cuts are nothing. The review broads that review medical care costs are what pathological ideologue such as Johnson and Fox are calling death panels - only once again they are hoping fair minded Americans do not look up the facts - conservatives voted for such a panel. Americans should also be asking themselves why why a foaming at the mouth America hater like Steve Doocy makes millions of dollars for doing nothing but misleading the nation on crucal public policy issues. It sure looks like hating freedom and democracy pays well.

Thursday, April 4, 2013

The Patriotic Truth About Middle-Class Taxes and Corporations















The Patriotic Truth About Middle-Class Taxes and Corporations

Transplanting Taxes from Corporations to the Rest of Us
American taxpayers are increasingly picking up the tab for unpaid corporate taxes.

Today, corporate profits are setting all-time records while middle class families continue to struggle financially. These trends are intertwined.

Whether you’ve clicked to send your tax forms to the IRS along the cyber-highway or dropped your return in the old-fashioned blue mailbox, you’ll be paying extra to cover the growing amount of taxes that the nation’s clever corporations are shunting onto individual taxpayers.

Officially, the U.S. corporate tax rate stands at 35 percent, but in practice it’s far lower. Corporations have lots of tricks in their box of tax-avoidance tools.

In the 1950s, corporations paid nearly a third of the federal government’s bills. Last year, thanks to the antics of Pfizer and other examples of overly creative accounting, corporate income taxes accounted for less than a tenth of Uncle Sam’s total revenue.

Consider Pfizer’s track record. The drugmaker increased its offshore profits by $10 billion in 2012, boosting its offshore stash to $73 billion — all of it untaxed by Uncle Sam. Like most pharmaceutical companies, Pfizer registers its patents in a low-tax offshore haven, and then charges a high price for the use of this “intellectual property.” Doing so, it shifts all of its U.S. profits offshore, avoiding U.S. taxes and bloating its overseas bank account.

Pfizer’s tax dodging prowess has earned it a gold medal in the sport, but it has also drawn unwanted attention from the Securities and Exchange Commission. The SEC wrote to Pfizer last year asking them to explain four years of large losses in their U.S. operations despite reporting about 40 percent of their sales on American soil. Undeterred by the SEC investigation, Pfizer added a fifth year of U.S. losses to the string in 2012.

Imagine for a moment one of the physicians that prescribes Pfizer’s products taking their diploma off their office wall, carefully packing it up, and shipping it to a bank vault in the Cayman Islands. That diploma represents the doctor’s intellectual property. Without it, they would not be able to practice their profession.

After each visit, patients approaching the check-out desk would be given their bill and an envelope to mail their check to a post office box in the Cayman Islands. Faced with confused looks, the receptionist cheerfully explains, “Well, we have to pay for the use of the skills represented by the diploma, which is housed in the Caribbean.”

The corporate offshore tax dodge that shifts $90 billion of tax expenses onto individual taxpayers this Tax Day is just that crazy. Just like having a doctor’s diploma parked in the Cayman Islands does nothing to improve the quality of care, having corporate profits transferred from America to tax haven nations provides no enhanced benefits in terms of product quality or service. In other words, there is no economic value. It only serves to add more to already-overflowing corporate coffers.

In the 1950s, corporations paid nearly a third of the federal government’s bills. Last year, thanks to the antics of Pfizer and other examples of overly creative accounting, corporate income taxes accounted for less than a tenth of Uncle Sam’s total revenue. This dramatic shortfall shows up in two ways — federal budget deficit growth and the growing trend of individual taxpayers paying an increased share of the costs of government.

Only about two in every thousand American businesses are even eligible to play this game, and far fewer actually do. Most business owners are proud to pay taxes they know support schools, good infrastructure, and national security.

If tax-dodging corporations were people, they might say thanks to the responsible taxpayers who are picking up their share of unpaid taxes. But since they aren’t human, allow me to say on their behalf, “Have a Nice Tax Day.”

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons License

Scott Klinger is an Associate Fellow at the Institute for Policy Studies

But conservatives keep claiming that taxes are too high and are preventing economic growth. Unlike the years following the new Deal and up through the 1970s, when corporations were somewhat responsible about the social contract between workers and consumers, now they let the workers have the crumbs and corporate plutocrats take must of the pie. And big institutional investors get a big share too. On the other hand workers are more productive than ever yet their wages are not keeping up with inflation. Our roads, bridges, cities and schools could use some infrastructure improvement, but that is slow in coming because conservatives, who caused the deficit and the recession, say the deficit is more important than rising revenue. 

Tuesday, April 2, 2013

Real Patriots Do Not Lie About Food Stamps












Real Patriots Do Not Lie About Food Stamps

As you probably know, complaints about the size and cost of the food stamp program (now known as SNAP, for Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program) has become an ever-more-prominent part of the conservative argument that America is awash in redistributive "welfare" spending (they can't much make that case about cash assistance any more). It was no accident that during his 2012 presidential campaign, Newt Gingrich called Barack Obama the "food stamp president." That's now a quasi-racial appeal along the lines of the old "welfare queen" smear.

Just today, the Wall Street Journal had a report [2] on rising SNAP costs, with the provocative title, "Use of Food Stamps Swells Even as Economy Improves," with the planted axiom being that there should be an inverse relationship between food stamps and the unemployment rate.

But as Jordan Weissmann points out [3] at The Atlantic, that's a false premise:

    [R]epeat after me: There are record numbers of Americans on food stamps today because there are record numbers of Americans in poverty (records begin in 1959.)

    As of 2011, there were 46.2 million men, women, and children living below the U.S. poverty line. There isn't much reason to believe that the last year of mediocre job growth has dented that number. And until it plunges, the food stamp rolls are going to stay full -- plain and simple.

One might add that it's more than a bit hypocritical for Republicans to deride reductions in the unemployment rate as meaningless while simultaneously complaining that counter-cyclical assistance programs should be shedding beneficiaries. But it's all kinda beside the point:

    Of all the social welfare programs the U.S. has, we should probably be worrying about food stamps the least. Its beneficiaries are overwhelmingly needy. In 2010, about 87 percent were at or below the poverty line and almost half were children. Only 3.5 percent had incomes higher than 130 percent of the poverty line. Meanwhile, the program arguably encourages more work by letting unemployed parents take the first job they can find, even if it won't pay enough to feed their family on its own. It's also hyper-efficient stimulus. The money has to be spent instead of saved, meaning it cycles quickly back into the economy.

    Our food stamp rolls are eye popping, but they're not the problem. Poverty is.

This won't be much of an answer to those conservatives who claim that helping poor people is why they are poor in the first place. But that's another issue.

[1] http://www.alternet.org/authors/ed-kilgore-0
[2] http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424127887323699704578328601204933288.html?mod=WSJ_hp_mostpop_read
[3] http://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2013/03/the-most-important-thing-to-remember-about-americas-food-stamp-boom/274443/
[4] http://www.alternet.org/tags/food-stamps
[5] http://www.alternet.org/%2Bnew_src%2B

Conservatives live in a bubble of lies. It is the only way they can win an argument. That bubble is the world of fake patriotism they must keep going by lying to America and to themselves. It is beyond pathetic. One of the fastest ways to get people off food stamps is to pay them a living wage. Yet the plastic patriots fight increase in wages. America is subsidizing Wal-Mart, Target, Best Buy, grocery store chains with millionaire owners - because they pay their workers so little for an honest day's work, the workers have to get food stamps or Medicaid to eck out an existence. America needs to stand up and tell these blood sucking conservative leeches to start paying back the American workers who made their wealth possible.