Wacky Conservative David Marsters of Sabattus, Maine Has a Mouth But No Brain or American Values

Wacky Conservative David Marsters of Sabattus, Maine Has a Mouth But No Brain or American Values

David Marsters, a conservative candidate for a town position in Sabattus, Maine, was surprised by a visit from the Secret Service after he posted an article on his Facebook about President Obama along with the words “Shoot the ni**er.” But even after the Secret Service visit, Marsters continues to defend his comment as freedom of speech — although he deleted the original posting.

“[They] didn’t see no pictures of Obama with bullet holes in his head,” Marsters said. “It’s not a threatening statement, in my opinion. People take it out of context as a threat.” Marsters maintains his comment isn’t racist, because “white people are ni**ers, too.” In addition to subscribing to the conspiracy that Obama faked his birth certificate, Marsters has pushed for a town law to require a gun in every house.

Marsters told the Bangor Daily News that he is worried Obamacare will take his and his wife Mary’s health insurance away at a time she has been in and out of the hospital. “I’m pissed off at the system, OK,” he said. “We’re about to lose our benefits because of this asshole.”

Losing spousal insurance is a common myth about Obamacare. For example, the headlines blamed Obamacare when UPS recently announced it would cut 15,000 spouses of employees from insurance coverage. However, experts note that Obamacare simply provides an excuse for UPS to cut its overall health costs. Indeed, this type of cost-shifting was a trend long before Obamacare became law. UPS’ move actually only affects spouses who have jobs that provide coverage, which will become more common when Obamacare fully kicks in.

The health care law, in fact, is good news for Marsters’ wife. If either did lose insurance, they would be able to purchase individual plans on the statewide market, while subsidies could help reduce the cost. And because of Obamacare, insurance companies cannot discriminate based on Mary or Marsters’ pre-existing conditions.

Despite the vitriol surrounding the law, its individual provisions are actually quite popular among conservatives. Yet sometimes they only realize how Obamacare protects them when they or loved ones fall ill.

American values like honor and truth, like the rest of the fake birth certificates freaks, David Marsters will have none of that. he believes he and his wife are going to lose their medical benefits. Some people still believe the earth and flat and the flat earthers claim they can prove it. Marsters is not mentally capable of comprehending the truth so how is that he feels he can rant and wave with any integrity. he looks to be of retirement age - it would not surprise me if he and his wife were getting liberal government benefits like Medicare or Medicaid. Dave? Do you know what the words lying two faced hypocrite mean?

Note that of hundreds of lawsuit claiming that Obama's birth certificate is a fake, the freaks who have brought those law suits have lost every time. Even the Supreme Court with a conservative majority will not hear appeals because nut cases like Marsters have no evidence. making stuff up is not evidence.

The Restaurant Industry is a Conservative Republican Plantation

The Restaurant Industry is a Conservative Republican Plantation

While thousands of fast-food workers were preparing to walk off their jobs earlier this summer to seek raises to $15 an hour, the industry’s corporate lobbyist, the National Restaurant Association, was celebrating a string of political victories blocking state minimum wage increases and preempting local sick day laws.


In June, the NRA boasted [3] that its lobbyists had stopped minimum wage increases in 27 out of 29 states in 2013. In Connecticut, which increased its state minimum wage, a raise in the base pay for tipped workers such as waitresses and bartenders vanished in the final bill. A similar scenario unfolded in New York State: It increased its minimum wage, but the NRA’s last-minute lobbying derailed raising the pre-tip wage at restaurants and bars. The deals came despite polls showing [4] 80 percent support for raising the minimum wage.  

The NRA’s lobbying didn’t stop there. It also told members that it blocked [5] a dozen states this year from passing laws that would require earned paid sick leave, which is what New York City [6] and Portland, Oregon [7] adopted. Meanwhile, it boasted that six states, including Florida, passed NRA-backed laws that preemptively ban localities from granting earned and paid employee sick time.

“These are horrible things, but there are amazing things that are happening to change it,” said Saru Jayaraman, co-director and co-founder of the Restaurant Opportunities Centers United [8] (ROC), which has been working a dozen years to slowly change the industry’s exploitive business model and labor practices. “And there will be increasingly important stuff coming up.”   

As fast-food workers across the country prepare for a second nationwide walkout [9] over wages on Thursday, most Americans have little idea how profitable [10] and politically aggressive the corporate mainstays [11] of America’s second biggest employer have become. While labor activists have had victories in 2013, such as New York and Portland passing sick leave laws, and New Jersey [12] poised to raise its minimum wage via a ballot measure this fall, the restaurant industry’s lobbying powerhouse is at war with the industry’s workers.

“It’s an old-boy network. It’s very old-school thinking. It’s very, very conservative,” said Paul Saginaw, founder of Zingerman’s food companies [13] in Michigan, which employes 600 people and unlike [14] the NRA, supports better benefits for employees like healthcare. “There has to be some pressure put out to provide better lives for people.”

Most Americans are unaware that millions of people who work in the industry—especially the 2.5 million fast-food preparers and servers who earn an average of $8.74 an hour, according to federal labor statistics [15]—are not just teens in their first job, but adults with families to support. They may not know there’s a separate minimum wage for tipped workers, $2.13 an hour, that hasn’t changed in 22 years—although 32 states have raised it slightly. They may not realize that they, as the restaurant-going public, subsidize owners via cash tips, even as the NRA routinely tells legislators its industry cannot afford to pay better wages or basic benefits.

Most Americans don’t know that restaurant salaries are so low [15] that the industry’s 12.2 million workers use food stamps at twice [16] the rate of the U.S. workforce, and are three times as likely to be below the poverty line. Or that women [17] earn less than men in similar jobs. Or that restaurants are among the biggest low-wage employers of people of color. Or that virtually every chain—except for In and Out [18], according to ROC—don’t want to pay living wages and benefits or offer real opportunities [19] for advancement.

Most tellingly, almost every national chain—from fast-food outfits such as Yum! Brands Inc. (Taco Bell, Pizza Hut, KFC) and McDonald’s to full-service dining such as Darden Restaurants Inc. (Olive Garden, Red Lobster, Capital Grille)—have reported [10] higher revenues, profits, margins and cash holdings to Wall Street analysts despite the recession, according to the National Employment Law Project. Giants like McDonalds had 7.8 percent revenue growth over the past decade, according to Gurufocus.com, a financial reporting site. Yum had 10-year revenues of 8.7 percent, and Darden’s 10-year revenues grew 9.1 percent.

But last winter, as the NRA was fighting minimum wage increases and paid sick leave, it was telling lawmakers that the industry could not afford to pay employees more. Yet this August, the NRA’s newsletter was predicting [20] another profitable year, where revenues would be up 4 percent compared to 2012. "Restaurant and foodservice sales are expected to reach a record high of $660.5 billion this year," another 2013 revenue forecast [21] on its website said.

[3] http://www.restaurant.org/News-Research/News/Majority-of-states-reject-minimum-wage-increases
[4] http://www.nelp.org/page/-/rtmw/uploads/Memo-Public-Support-Raising-Minimum-Wage.pdf?nocdn=1
[5] http://www.restaurant.org/News-Research/News/Cities-and-states-debate-paid-sick-leave
[6] http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/06/27/nyc-paid-sick-time_n_3507814.html
[7] http://nwlaborpress.org/2013/04/city-council-portland-sick-leave/
[8] http://rocunited.org/
[9] https://www.facebook.com/FastFoodForward
[10] http://nelp.3cdn.net/e555b2e361f8f734f4_sim6btdzo.pdf
[11] http://rocunited.org/files/2013/04/reports_darden.pdf
[12] http://www.nj.com/politics/index.ssf/2013/04/nj_voters_strongly_support_min.html
[13] http://www.zingermans.com/AboutUs.aspx
[14] http://www.restaurant.org/News-Research/News/NRA-files-brief-with-Supreme-Court-on-health-care
[15] http://www.bls.gov/iag/tgs/iag72.htm#earnings
[16] http://billmoyers.com/segment/saru-jayaraman-on-justice-for-restaurant-workers/
[17] http://www.nelp.org/page/-/rtmw/ROC_GenderInequity_ES.pdf?nocdn=1
[18] http://www.in-n-out.com/
[19] http://www.scribd.com/doc/115557026/2013-ROC-National-Diners-Guide-to-Ethical-Eating
[20] http://www.restaurant.org/News-Research/News/Economist-s-Notebook-Restaurant-sales-growth-will
[21] http://www.restaurant.org/News-Research/Research/Forecast-2013

Yum Brands Inc executive compensation was just shy of $43 million in 2012. The executives at that company have not, and will never do any work that earns that kind of compensation. They could pay their employees a living wage plus gold plated health care insurance and still make a very nice living. Yum Brands are not capitalists, they are rent seek plantation owners-  redistributing the money earned by workers to themselves. Clarence Otis/Chairman and Chief Executive Officer of Darden (Olive Garden, Red Lobster, Capital Grille) paid himself over $6 million in 2013. Total executive pay was $16 million, yet they have threatened to make life even harder for their employees rather than provide health care coverage. Clarence and his executive staff have never done more than $50k a year worth of actual work, they're plantation owners, just like Yum Brands. They would rather their employees collect food stamps, go without heat in the winter and forget about ever getting good dental care; what is important to them is giving working Americans the shaft so they can live in mansions and call people who point out what sleazeball bastards they are, commies.

OK So Freedom Is Not Free, The Conservative Economics Movement Has Bought It

OK So Freedom Is Not Free, The Conservative Economics Movement Has Bought It

Giant bank holding companies now own airports, toll roads, and ports; control power plants; and store and hoard vast quantities of commodities of all sorts. They are systematically buying up or gaining control of the essential lifelines of the economy. How have they pulled this off, and where have they gotten the money?

In a letter to Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke dated June 27, 2013, US Representative Alan Grayson and three co-signers expressed concern about the expansion of large banks into what have traditionally been non-financial commercial spheres. Specifically:

    [W]e are concerned about how large banks have recently expanded their businesses into such fields as electric power production, oil refining and distribution, owning and operating of public assets such as ports and airports, and even uranium mining.

After listing some disturbing examples, they observed:

    According to legal scholar Saule Omarova, over the past five years, there has been a “quiet transformation of U.S. financial holding companies.” These financial services companies have become global merchants that seek to extract rent from any commercial or financial business activity within their reach.  They have used legal authority in Graham-Leach-Bliley to subvert the “foundational principle of separation of banking from commerce”. . . .

    It seems like there is a significant macro-economic risk in having a massive entity like, say JP Morgan, both issuing credit cards and mortgages, managing municipal bond offerings, selling gasoline and electric power, running large oil tankers, trading derivatives, and owning and operating airports, in multiple countries.

A “macro” risk indeed – not just to our economy but to our democracy and our individual and national sovereignty. Giant banks are buying up our country’s infrastructure – the power and supply chains that are vital to the economy. Aren’t there rules against that? And where are the banks getting the money?

How Banks Launder Money Through the Repo Market

In an illuminating series of articles on Seeking Alpha titled “Repoed!”, Colin Lokey argues that  the investment arms of large Wall Street banks are using their “excess” deposits – the excess of deposits over loans – as collateral for borrowing in the repo market. Repos, or “repurchase agreements,” are used to raise short-term capital. Securities are sold to investors overnight and repurchased the next day, usually day after day.

The deposit-to-loan gap for all US banks is now about $2 trillion, and nearly half of this gap is in Bank of America, JP Morgan Chase, and Wells Fargo alone. It seems that the largest banks are using the majority of their deposits (along with the Federal Reserve’s quantitative easing dollars) not to back loans to individuals and businesses but to borrow for their own trading. Buying assets with borrowed money is called a “leveraged buyout.” The banks are leveraging our money to buy up ports, airports, toll roads, power, and massive stores of commodities.

Using these excess deposits directly for their own speculative trading would be blatantly illegal, but the banks have been able to avoid the appearance of impropriety by borrowing from the repo market. (See my earlier article here.) The banks’ excess deposits are first used to purchase Treasury bonds, agency securities, and other highly liquid, “safe” securities. These liquid assets are then pledged as collateral in repo transactions, allowing the banks to get “clean” cash to invest as they please. They can channel this laundered money into risky assets such as derivatives, corporate bonds, and equities (stock).

That means they can buy up companies. Lokey writes, “It is common knowledge that prop [proprietary] trading desks at banks can and do invest in a variety of assets, including stocks.” Prop trading desks invest for the banks’ own accounts. This was something that depository banks were forbidden to do by the New Deal-era Glass-Steagall Act but that was allowed in 1999 by the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act, which repealed those portions of Glass-Steagall.

The result has been a massively risky $700-plus trillion speculative derivatives bubble. Lokey quotes from an article by Bill Frezza in the January 2013 Huffington Post titled “Too-Big-To-Fail Banks Gamble With Bernanke Bucks“:

    If you think [the cash cushion from excess deposits] makes the banks less vulnerable to shock, think again. Much of this balance sheet cash has been hypothecated in the repo market, laundered through the off-the-books shadow banking system. This allows the proprietary trading desks at these “banks” to use that cash as collateral to take out loans to gamble with. In a process called hyper-hypothecation this pledged collateral gets pyramided, creating a ticking time bomb ready to go kablooey when the next panic comes around.

That Explains the Mountain of Excess Reserves

Historically, banks have attempted to maintain a loan-to-deposit ratio of close to 100%, meaning they were “fully loaned up” and making money on their deposits. Today, however, that ratio is only 72% on average; and for the big derivative banks, it is much lower. For JPMorgan, it is only 31%. The unlent portion represents the “excess deposits” available to be tapped as collateral for the repo market.

The Fed’s quantitative easing contributes to this collateral pool by converting less-liquid mortgage-backed securities into cash in the banks’ reserve accounts. This cash is not something the banks can spend for their own proprietary trading, but they can invest it in “safe” securities – Treasuries and similar securities that are also the sort of collateral acceptable in the repo market. Using this repo collateral, the banks can then acquire the laundered cash with which they can invest or speculate for their own accounts.

Lokey notes that US Treasuries are now being bought by banks in record quantities. These bonds stay on the banks’ books for Fed supervision purposes, even as they are being pledged to other parties to get cash via repo. The fact that such pledging is going on can be determined from the banks’ balance sheets, but it takes some detective work. Explaining the intricacies of this process, the evidence that it is being done, and how it is hidden in plain sight takes Lokey three articles, to which the reader is referred. Suffice it to say here that he makes a compelling case.

Can They Do That?

Countering the argument that “banks can’t really do anything with their excess reserves” and that “there is no evidence that they are being rehypothecated,” Lokey points to data coming to light in conjunction with JPMorgan’s $6 billion “London Whale” fiasco. He calls it “clear-cut proof that banks trade stocks (and virtually everything else) with excess deposits.” JPM’s London-based Chief Investment Office [CIO] reported:

    JPMorgan’s businesses take in more in deposits that they make in loans and, as a result, the Firm has excess cash that must be invested to meet future liquidity needs and provide a reasonable return. The primary reponsibility of CIO, working with JPMorgan’s Treasury, is to manage this excess cash. CIO invests the bulk of JPMorgan’s excess cash in high credit quality, fixed income securities, such as municipal bonds, whole loans, and asset-backed securities, mortgage backed securities, corporate securities, sovereign securities, and collateralized loan obligations.

Lokey comments:

    That passage is unequivocal — it is as unambiguous as it could possibly be. JPMorgan invests excess deposits in a variety of assets for its own account and as the above clearly indicates, there isn’t much they won’t invest those deposits in. Sure, the first things mentioned are “high quality fixed income securities,” but by the end of the list, deposits are being invested in corporate securities [stock] and CLOs [collateralized loan obligations]. . . . [T]he idea that deposits are invested only in Treasury bonds, agencies, or derivatives related to such “risk free” securities is patently false.

He adds:

    [I]t is no coincidence that stocks have rallied as the Fed has pumped money into the coffers of the primary dealers while ICI data shows retail investors have pulled nearly a half trillion from U.S. equity funds over the same period. It is the banks that are propping stocks.

Another Argument for Public Banking

All this helps explain why the largest Wall Street banks have radically scaled back their lending to the local economy. It appears that JPMorgan’s loan-to-deposit ratio is only 31% not because the bank could find no creditworthy borrowers for the other 69% but because it can profit more from buying airports and commodities through its prop trading desk than from making loans to small local businesses.

Small and medium-sized businesses are responsible for creating most of the jobs in the economy, and they are struggling today to get the credit they need to operate. That is one of many reasons that banking needs to be a public utility. Publicly-owned banks can direct credit where it is needed in the local economy; can protect public funds from confiscation through “bail-ins” resulting from bad gambling in by big derivative banks; and can augment public coffers with banking revenues, allowing local governments to cut taxes, add services, and salvage public assets from fire-sale privatization. Publicly-owned banks have a long and successful history, and recent studies have found them to be the safest in the world.

As Representative Grayson and co-signers observed in their letter to Chairman Bernanke, the banking system is now dominated by “global merchants that seek to extract rent from any commercial or financial business activity within their reach.” They represent a return to a feudal landlord economy of unearned profits from rent-seeking. We need a banking system that focuses not on casino profiteering or feudal rent-seeking but on promoting economic and social well-being; and that is the mandate of the public banking sector globally.
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 License

Ellen Brown developed her research skills as an attorney practicing civil litigation in Los Angeles. In Web of Debt, her latest of eleven books, she turns those skills to an analysis of the Federal Reserve and “the money trust.” She shows how this private cartel has usurped the power to create money from the people themselves, and how we the people can get it back. She is president of the Public Banking Institute, http://PublicBankingInstitute.org, and has websites at http://WebofDebt.com and http://EllenBrown.com.

So conservatives and libertarians have been claiming for decades that America will only be truly free when everything is privatized. We are well on our way to their dream. Yet the more privatization and less regulation we have, the less freedom the middle-class and working poor have. Deregulation has made our economy dependent on a few large banks. It is like claiming a table is more stable with just two legs. Wall Street has more than recovered from the recession, yet where are the jobs saving Wall Street was supposed to create. They play games with exotic investments and corruption of interest rates while the middle-class is slowly becoming the barely getting by class.

Conservatism Turns Morality Upside Down, Torturers Go Free, Patriots Go To Jail

Conservatism Turns Morality Upside Down, Torturers and Liars Go Free, Patriots Go To Jail

The team the authorized and carried out a torture regime and the invasion of a Iraq, George W. Bush, Donald Rumseld, and Dick Cheney are facing no time in jail this week.

Manning was a 25-year-old Army private first class at the time of his arrest. He saw himself as an idealist acting to end the wars, and said in online chats with hacker Adrian Lamo that he was particularly concerned about the abuse of detainees in Iraq. No political or military higher-ups have ever been prosecuted for detainee abuse or torture in Iraq, Afghanistan or at Guantanamo Bay.

"One of the serious problems with Manning's case is that it sets a chilling precedent, that people who leak information ... can be prosecuted this aggressively as a deterrent to that conduct," said Andrea Prasow, senior counterterrorism counsel and advocate in Human Rights Watch's U.S. Program. "Shouldn't we be deterring people who commit torture?"

Here are some of the individuals who have been involved since 9/11 in detainee abuse and torture, and potential war crimes, and have never been prosecuted.

Conservative Republican George W. Bush

George W. Bush was president when the U.S. invaded Iraq based on faulty intelligence, tortured terror prisoners and conducted extraordinary renditions around the world.

"Enhanced interrogation," a Bush administration euphemism for torture, was approved at the highest level. A "principals committee" composed of Vice President Dick Cheney, National Security Advisor Condoleezza Rice, Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, Secretary of State Colin Powell, CIA Director George Tenet and Attorney General John Ashcroft signed off on the methods.

"There are solid grounds to investigate Bush, Cheney, Rumsfeld, and Tenet for authorizing torture and war crimes," said Kenneth Roth, executive director of Human Rights Watch, when the group released a report called "Getting Away With Torture" in 2011.

Conservative Republican Dick Cheney

As Bush's vice president, Cheney pushed the nation over to the "dark side," as he called it, in the war on terror.

The U.S. used extraordinary renditions to swoop up terror suspects and send them to repressive regimes in places like Syria and Libya for torture. Cheney was the key driver in producing the faulty intelligence that led the U.S. into war in Iraq. And he steadfastly defended the CIA's use of water-boarding and other torture tactics on U.S. prisoners.

Cheney "fears being tried as a war criminal," according to Colin Powell's former chief of staff Col. Lawrence Wilkerson, but he never has been.

Conservative Republican Donald Rumsfeld

One of the planners of the Iraq War, Rumsfeld steadfastly maintained while Defense Secretary under Bush that U.S. soldiers did not have an obligation to stop torture being used by their Iraqi counterparts. He also approved of "stripping prisoners naked, hooding them, exposing prisoners to extremes of heat and cold, and slamming them up against walls" at Guantanamo.

While deployed to Iraq, Manning discovered that Iraqi soldiers had arrested members of a political group for producing a pamphlet called "Where Did the Money Go?" decrying corruption in the cabinet of Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki.

"‘i immediately took that information and *ran* to the officer to explain what was going on," Manning wrote in the chat logs. "he didn’t want to hear any of it … he told me to shut up and explain how we could assist the FPs in finding *MORE* detainees."

It is not just the barbaric and illegal acts of torture themselves, but patriots have to ask how many American troops died or were tortured in response to the torture done with the approval of a conservative administration. Torture is just one aspect of the many ways that conservatism is a complete betrayal of American values and justice.

Lying Conservative Clowns Betsy McCaughey, George Will, Krauthammer and Radicals at Fox News Try To Claim Obama Chipping Away Constitution

Lying Conservative Clowns Betsy McCaughey, George Will, Krauthammer and Radicals at Fox News Try To Claim Obama Chipping Away Constitution

Right-wing media have attempted to manufacture the claim that President Obama is abusing executive power by delaying implementation of the health care law's employer mandate and directing federal prosecutors to avoid maximum drug sentences in some cases, despite the legality of both practices.

Right-Wing Media Claim Health Care Delay Is Unconstitutional

Betsy McCaughey: Obama Is "Chipping Away At The Constitution." In an Investor's Business Daily op-ed, former New York Lieutenant Governor Betsy McCaughey claimed that President Obama's move to delay the employer mandate provision of the Affordable Care Act "reveals how disconnected this president is from this nation's history and constitutional principles":

    With the exception of Richard Nixon, these presidents -- from Eisenhower to Reagan to Clinton and both Bushes -- have not tried to exempt themselves from the Constitution.

    Article II, Sec. 3 of the Constitution commands the president to faithfully execute the law. Courts have consistently ruled that presidents have little discretion about it. Obama can't pick and choose what parts of the Affordable Care Act he enforces and when. [Investor's Business Daily, 8/13/13]

Wash. Post's George Will: "Obama's Unconstitutional Steps Worse Than Nixon's." In an August 14 Washington Post column, George Will claimed that Obama does not have authority to delay the employer mandate, calling his "unconstitutional steps worse than Nixon's":

    Serving as props in the scripted charade of White House news conferences, journalists did not ask the pertinent question: "Wheredoes the Constitution confer upon presidents the 'executive authority' to ignore the separation of powers by revising laws?" The question could have elicited an Obama rarity: brevity. Because there is no such authority.

    [...]

    Neither does the Constitution confer on presidents the power to rewrite laws if they decide the change is a "tweak" not involving the law's "essence." Anyway, the employer mandate is essential to the ACA. [The Washington Post, 8/14/13]

Krauthammer: "Of Course It's Unconstitutional" To Delay The Mandate. On the July 9 edition of Fox News' The O'Reilly Factor, host Bill O'Reilly asked Fox News contributor Charles Krauthammer, "Do you think it's unconstitutional for the president to take an existing law that he signed and say we're not going to force part of that law, the employer mandate? Is that unconstitutional?" Krauthammer replied, "Of course it's unconstitutional. The Constitution says the executive has to faithfully execute the laws and here it is faithfully ignoring a law it doesn't like in the same way it wantonly passed the DREAM Act unilaterally, an act that the Congress had rejected. It is absolutely lawless in the things it does. This is only the latest example." [Fox News, The O'Reilly Factor, 7/9/13 via National Review Online]
Experts Argue That Obama Administration Has Authority To Implement Delay

Constitutional Scholar Simon Lazarus: Delay Is "Well Within The Executive Branch's Lawful Discretion." In a post in The Atlantic, Constitutional Accountability Center Senior Counsel Simon Lazarus wrote that the delay is "a sensible adjustment to phase-in enforcement, not a refusal to enforce" and "well within the Executive Branch's lawful discretion":

    The relevant text requires that the President "take care that the laws be faithfully executed." Scholars on both left and right concur that this broadly-worded phrasing indicates that the President is to exercise judgment, and handle his enforcement duties with fidelity to all laws, including, indeed, the Constitution. As McConnell himself notes, both Republican and Democratic Justice Departments have consistently opined that the clause authorizes a president even to decline enforcement of a statute altogether, if in good faith he determines it to be in violation of the Constitution. But, McConnell contends, a president cannot "refuse to enforce a statute he opposes for policy reasons." While surely correct, that contention is beside the point.

    The Administration has not postponed the employer mandate out of policy opposition to the ACA, nor to the specific provision itself. Thus, it's misleading to characterize the action as a "refusal to enforce." Rather, the President has authorized a minor temporary course correction regarding individual ACA provisions, necessary in his Administration's judgment to faithfully execute the overall statute, other related laws, and the purposes of the ACA's framers. As a legal as well as a practical matter, that's well within his job description. [The Atlantic, 7/17/13]

SCOTUSblog's Denniston: Supreme Court Gave Agencies Discretion Regarding

Implementation. In a post on Constitution Daily, legal expert Lyle Denniston pointed out that "Article II does not say that a law shall be carried out at all cost, so every President operates on the assumption that federal agencies can be given some leeway in how they do it." Denniston pointed to a recent Supreme Court case as relevant, writing that the court "just last month went a long way toward requiring federal courts to trust the government agencies that execute the laws to interpret for themselves just what authority Congress has given them in their areas of official activity":

    Given the complexity of modern government operations, very few of the laws that Congress passes are completely self-executing; most if not all of them require regulations to put them into actual effect. And writing regulations is the business of the federal agencies.  An array of government agencies have been working for more than three years, for example, to write the rules for the new Affordable Care Act - the vast new law regulating the entire health care financing system.

    The Supreme Court just last month went a long way toward requiring federal courts to trust the government agencies that execute the laws to interpret for themselves just what authority Congress has given them in their areas of official activity.  What an agency decides is the range of its power, that ruling said, should be given considerable deference by the courts.

    Very telling in that decision in the case of City of Arlington, Texas, v. Federal Communications Commission is that it was written by Justice Antonin Scalia, the Court's strongest believer that the courts should be very strict in following the letter of the laws that Congress passes.  The actual text, not what someone said about it, is what controls, he has said, over and over. Scalia, a former professor of administrative law, seems quite tolerant of agency discretion. [Constitution Daily, 7/10/13]

Fox Claims Drug Sentencing Guideline Change "Unlawful"

Krauthammer: Obama Administration Decision To Avoid Mandatory Minimum Sentence Is "Unlawful." On Fox News' Special Report, Charles Krauthammer reacted to Attorney General Eric Holder's decision to direct federal prosecutors to avoid triggering mandatory minimum sentences for certain drug-related charges by claiming the change is "unlawful":

    KRAUTHAMMER: What he's done now, what he's proposed with these drug laws is worse than just suspending the parts of the law and instructing prosecutors not to prosecute. He also is telling prosecutors who already have prosecutions in place that they can withhold evidence so that the defendant won't get a maximum or a mandatory penalty. I mean, that is illegal. That's unlawful, that's -- I mean, that is simply shocking that that would be the instruction from an attorney general.

    I think as one former attorney general, deputy attorney general said, if you did that in a private case, you would be accused of a felony if you were prosecuting it and you were withholding evidence. And it is epidemic. It isn't only in this, it is in the Obamacare law, the administration's own law, the parts of which it is suspending. It is in the DREAM Act, which is a unilateral suspension. [Fox News, Special Report with Bret Baier, 8/12/13 via Media Matters]

Fox & Friends Lists "Overruling Congress On Drug War Sentences" As Evidence Of Abuse Of Power. On the August 16 edition of Fox News' Fox & Friends, guest host Shannon Bream claimed that "there are questions about abuse of power" and that "we've seen this administration, not just the president but others in the administration, decide when they're going to" uphold Article II of the constitution "and when they aren't." Co-host Brian Kilmeade asked if he's "breaching the Constitution," listing, among other things, "overruling Congress on drug war sentences." [Fox News, Fox & Friends, 8/16/13]
Holder Advised Prosecutors To Exercise Authority They Currently Possess

NY Times: Prosecutors Have Broad Discretion On Charges. In a 1988 article on the decision to not bring charges against Reagan Attorney General Edwin Meese over his involvement in the Iran-Contra Affair, The New York Times noted that prosecutors have "almost unfettered authority to decide" how to prosecute cases, including "what evidence to present":

    The decision of an independent prosecutor this week not to seek criminal charges against Attorney General Edwin Meese 3d has focused new attention on the broad and controversial power granted to American prosecutors in deciding who shall be brought to justice.

    Far more than in any other democracy, American prosecutors have almost unfettered authority to decide whom to charge, what crimes to identify, what penalties to seek, what bail to urge, what witnesses to call, what evidence to present, what persons to give immunity from prosecution, what plea bargains to make and what sentences to negotiate.

    [...]

    The discretion afforded American prosecutors is defended on the ground that it provides for case-by-case flexibility and ultimately more leniency for deserving defendants. But critics say it has been abused with considerations of race, class and political affiliation. Draft protesters, users of small amounts of marijuana and minor traffic offenders have challenged verdicts and sentences by showing that others were not prosecuted for similar crimes, and prosecutorial bias has been charged in jury selection and death penalty cases.

    The subject has grown so controversial in recent years that it has been the focus of more than 200 law review articles and 280 Federal court cases since 1985. That does not count the thousands of scholarly law articles, speeches and the cases in state and local courts.

    ''It's a fundamental topic in the criminal justice system,'' said Philip B. Heymann, a professor of law at Harvard who was the Assistant United States Attorney General in charge of the criminal division from 1978 to 1981.

    Mr. Heymann, who heads the Center for Criminal Justice at Harvard, said prosecutors have the authority not to bring charges even when they think they can prove a crime has been committed. He noted that such decisions are necessary in part because there is so much crime in the United States; prosecutors could not possibly process all of it.

    The Federal courts have consistently upheld a prosecutor's powers. ''The discretion allowed prosecutors,'' the Supreme Court said last year in a trademark infringement case, Young v. United States, ''is so broad that decisions not to prosecute are ordinarily unreviewable.'' Only in cases of flagrant abuse, including criminal activity by a prosecutor, may a court overrule a prosecutor's decision, the Court has said. [The New York Times, 7/22/88]

Wash. Post: Decision To Change How Criminal Complaints Are Made Is A Change He Can Make On His Own; Other Initiatives Require Legislative Action. The Washington Post reported that Holder's memo to prosecutors represents a change to drug policy he can do on his own authority:

    The attorney general can make some changes to drug policy on his own. He is giving new instructions to federal prosecutors on how they should write their criminal complaints when charging low-level drug offenders, to avoid triggering the mandatory minimum sentences. Under certain statutes, inflexible sentences for drug crimes are mandated regardless of the facts or conduct in the case, reducing the discretion of prosecutors, judges and juries.

    Some of Holder's other initiatives will require legislative change. Holder is urging passage of legislation with bipartisan support that is aimed at giving federal judges more discretion in applying mandatory minimum sentences to certain drug offenses. [The Washington Post, 8/12/13]

Conservative Policy Analysts: Holder Has Authority For His Directive. On National Review Online's The Corner blog, Vikrant P. Reddy and Marc A. Levin from the Texas Public Policy Foundation's Right On Crime initiative explained that the attorney general has the authority to suggest prosecutors use their discretion to reduce sentences, but recommended it be followed up with legislation:

    The attorney general has exercised his authority to provide guidance to federal prosecutors to exercise discretion in applying mandatory minimums in drug cases to ensure that the longest sentences are reserved for kingpins. Nonetheless, this administrative action comes five years into this presidency and could be undone at the whim of this or any future attorney general. Therefore, statutory reforms are still needed to ensure that the law provides a reasonable range of punishment for low-level federal drug offenses such that there is enough prosecutorial and judicial flexibility to craft sentences that fit the crime. [National Review Online, The Corner, 8/13/13]

Gosh, conservatives keep telling us they are experts on the Constitution and legal theory, yet these conservative zealots are not even familiar with legal actions and precedents set by conservatives. Could it be that Betsy McCaughey, George Will, Krauthammer and Radicals at Fox News are acting like petulant anti-American brats who think its fine when conservatives do it, but the end of the world when Democratic patriots do the same thing.

Wisconsin Conservative Scott Walker (R) is Turning Wisconsin Into Iran, And the Police Are Helping

Wisconsin Conservative Scott Walker (R) is Turning Wisconsin Into Iran, And the Police Are Helping

I went to the Wisconsin capitol again today to report on the Solidarity Singers, as I’ve done many times before. I was not intending to get arrested. Nor did I want to get arrested. But that’s what happened.Taken by the author before he himself was arrested by Wisconsin police. (Credit: The Progressive)

I arrived about fifteen minutes late for the one-hour noon sing along, which has been going on steadily for two and a half years now.

When I arrived, I was told that Madison city council member Mark Clear had already been arrested, while he was singing “This Land Is Your Land.” This seemed to be an escalation, since he was the first currently serving elected official to be rounded up in the more than 200 arrests that Scott Walker’s capitol police have made in the last few weeks. (Former longtime member of the Madison school board, Carol Carstensen, was arrested a couple of weeks ago. She’d never even gotten a speeding ticket before, she told me.)

I got out my reporter’s pad, and I did my usual head count, tallying 100 people in the rotunda and 60 people as sympathetic observers in the balcony.

I interviewed Sharon Puttmann, who was holding a sign that said, “United in Purpose, United in Song,” which I took a picture of. I asked her why she was there. “I’m a teacher, and I’m a mom,” she said. “And I’m standing up for my rights.” She’s never been arrested, she told me. But she’s willing to now.

I interviewed Victoria La Chappelle, who was holding a sign saying, “You can tie my hands, but you can never silence my voice.” She’s been arrested twice. “Every time I come, I feel like I need to come back in solidarity,” she said.

I saw that the Raging Grannies were in attendance again, this group of activist elderly women who sing protest songs at various events in the state.

Then I saw some state police officers move in to arrest a couple of the Raging Grannies, including my friend Bonnie Block.

So, as I’ve done every time I’m covering the capitol, I started to take pictures of the officers making the arrest. And then I followed the officers as they took Block, handcuffed and still defiantly singing, toward the elevator.

I was hoping to get a picture of Block as she entered the elevator, the kind of picture that has been taken many times in the last couple of weeks.

But the police officers said to stand back. I said I was a journalist, the editor of The Progressive magazine.

“You can’t be here,” they said.

“I’m with the press,” I said. “I have a right to be here.”

Whereupon, without a warning that I’d be arrested, Officer S. B. Mael grabbed my hands and put them behind my back, cuffed them, and said, “Obstruction.”

“That’s ridiculous,” Block said, as she was put in the elevator.

“This is getting absurd, guys,” I said to the officers, who refused to engage with me.

They took me to the basement of the capitol, frisked me, and put me in a chair.

Block, who was then sitting nearby, said, “It’s a pleasure to be arrested with you.”

“Likewise,” I said.

And she and the handful of other protesters kept singing, “Bring Back My Wisconsin to Me.”

When Block was released, another woman in a red “Wisconsin Mom” shirt came down, handcuffed, and was seated nearby.

Her name was Ellen Holly, the chairman of the Walworth County Democrats, she told me, and she comes up to Madison whenever she can. She was on her way to Minnesota, she said, and wanted to support the sing along. (She also said that the Democrats were up to 45 percent of the vote in traditionally conservative Walworth County.)

The police kept me in the basement of the capitol until all the protesters had left. They took down my name and Social Security number and address and phone number and employer (I reminded them I worked at The Progressive).

And then they hauled me off in a squad car to the Dane County jail just three blocks away, where I was frisked again, booked, fingerprinted, had my mug shot taken, and kept in a holding cell with three other inmates for an hour and twenty minutes before being released.

The paper they gave me on the way out said, under “Charge,” 946.41(1) Resisting or Obstructing.”

The bond was set at $300.

The court date is September 23 at 10:00 a.m., where I will plead not guilty on the basis of the First Amendment.

The reason that citizens exercising their Constitutional rights in Wisconsin are being treated this way is because Scott Walker and the conservative movement cannot abide anyone protesting or witnessing the growth of the conservative cancer eating up the state. In order to treat public workers like wage slaves on the Conservative plantation, Walker and fellow conservative Republicans made a deal with police unions to leave them alone. The irony will be when the police and firefighters in Wisconsin have their rights taken away; who will speak up for the police who sided with the anti-democracy thugs. What goes around comes around.

Patriots Know The Deficit is Shrinking, Even Though Anti-American Conservatives Scream Otherwise

Patriots Know The Deficit is Shrinking, Even Though Anti-American Conservatives Scream Otherwise

Remember all those deficit hawks who screamed that the federal deficit is spiraling out of control and must be stopped with spending cuts that have a funny way of hurting the pocketbooks of the most vulnerable Americans? Their excuse for ripping us off has been literally disappearing, but a new Google survey shows that not only do the vast majority Americans not know it — half of the public actually believes that the deficit is growing [3].

Here are the facts: The U.S. budget deficit has been shrinking at a rapid rate over the last few months. The deficit peaked at 10.2 percent of GDP in 2009, but over the past four quarters, it has shrunk to a mere 4.2 percent of GDP. What’s more, the Congressional Budget Office predicts [4] that the deficit will fall to 2.1 percent of GDP in 2015.

Why such a disconnect? Unfortunately, disgraceful propaganda has left the public misinformed and confused.

Over in Economic Wonderland, the deficit hawk duo of Alan Simpson and Erksine Bowles have made a second career over the last several years wildly exaggerating the deficit issue and scaring Americans into thinking that deep cuts in the federal budget were necessary for the economy. The reality was just the opposite. If these two had ever sat down to read John Maynard Keynes, whose work is vital to understanding how to respond to economic crises, they would have known that cutting the federal budget when the economy is weak actually slows it down even more.  Yet to this day, Simpson and Bowles continue waging battle for a “grand bargain” that would shred the social safety net and cost many Americans their jobs by requiring trillions of dollars to be cut from the federal budget over ten years. All in the name of a “problem” that doesn’t even exist.

Deficit hawks like Simpson and Bowles, and their grand funder, hedge fund billionaire Pete Peterson, go on promoting the nonsense that the deficit is the major economic problem of 2013 despite the obvious facts and a growing consensus from economists that such a claim is utterly absurd. Incredibly, they do it even after the faulty work they relied on to make their case – a paper produced by two Harvard economists, Carmen Reinhart and Kenneth Rogoff – was discredited by a mere grad student [5] in one of the great academic revelations of our time. Even conservative economists are bowing to reality. The folks over at the conservative American Enterprise Institute, for example, have come to the conclusion [6] that austerity is a terrible idea and that without proper stimulus, the U.S. economy would look a lot more like Europe’s, where individual countries without sovereign currency have been forced to go the austerity route. It’s getting increasingly hard to deny that things have gotten pretty ugly over there because of deficit hawks and their ilk.

But deficit hawks are paid well to misinform the public. They write reports. They get corporate honchos to help them run campaigns with innocent-sounding names like “Fix the Debt.” They build websites. They write articles. They hold conferences. They pay off think tanks – even progressive ones – to play ball with them.  And the corporate dominated major media frequently are happy to play along. On it goes, until the lies repeated to the public take on the ring of truth.

So it’s no surprise that the public is not aware of the important news that the deficit is shrinking. Or that it is shrinking precisely for the reason progressive economists have been saying all along. When you have a recession, you have to juice the economy through government investment. That, in turn, reaps you the benefit of more money in people’s pockets, which leads to more jobs, more tax revenue for the government, and less reliance on social safety net programs like unemployment insurance or food stamps. If the original stimulus package had been bigger, the deficit would have shrunk even faster.

The deficit hawks have been more than spectacularly wrong. They have impacted policy in a way that turned the attention of Washington away from what it should have been focused on all along – jobs. Instead of a deficit commission, Obama should have called for a jobs commission to address the fact that hard-working people have not been able to find jobs to feed their families because of a Wall Street-driven financial crisis.

One might hope that the reality emerging will help squelch the calls to recklessly cut government investment in the economy. But there’s a big problem: Deficit lies benefit the 1 percent in the short-run. Rather than shrinking the deficit, what the short-sighted, greedy rich in America really want to shrink is their tax liabilities, which is why they don’t want to pay for things like education, infrastructure, and social safety net programs that benefit the population and ultimately help keep the economy humming.  The financiers among them would also dearly like to privatize things like Social Security so that they can collect fees on American retirement accounts. The corporate honchos like the way austerity drives up unemployment and drives down wages because they hold the mistaken view that keeping workers stressed and vulnerable is good for their bottom line. They want people like Larry Summers to head the Federal Reserve, who, while in the White House as the president’s chief economic adviser , famously presided over a stimulus program many economists warned was way too small.

In the fall, will deficit hawks in Congress manage once again to hold the American economy hostage? Or will reality finally rear its head? Facts have a tough time competing with well-funded mythology.

They're making up numbers and being shamelessly greedy because they believe, in the same way that cultist believe crap, that safety net programs like Social Security and Medicare are too expensive*. Conservative cultists dogma says that the people cannot join together to have the government run safety net programs for them - because we all know the history of economic recessions. We will have them and American workers always suffer the most. Conservatives and most libertarians just don't care. They always blame their screw-ups on workers and the poor. If workers and the poor had that much power we would have strong regulations in place that would prevent corporate America from acting like drunker casino dealers. The plutocrats will always come out on top, they don''t take risks with their money, they take risks with the assets of the American people.



* even though Social Security is run from its own fund and most of Medicare is funded by the working class Americans that need it most.)

Patriots Are Fed Up With The Anti-Americanism of The Wall Street Journal and Conservative Stephen Moore

Patriots Are Fed Up With The Anti-Americanism of The Wall Street Journal and Conservative Stephen Moore

The Wall Street Journal editorial board's Stephen Moore falsely claimed that the drastic budget cuts known as sequestration have had "none of the anticipated negative consequences," when in reality economists have explained that the cuts have had devastating effects on economic growth, jobs, and programs for low-income Americans.

Wall Street Journal's Stephen MooreIn an August 11 op-ed, Moore called the automatic budget cuts enacted March 1 -- which were designed to be so severe they would force Congress to adopt a more balanced approach to spending reduction -- an "underappreciated success" because they had resulted in "amazing progress" in reducing the deficit. Moore applauded the further deficit reduction that would come from "any normal acceleration of economic growth," and concluded by claiming that cuts to "military, education, transportation and other discretionary programs have also been an underappreciated success, with none of the anticipated negative consequences."

But economists were predicting major economic consequences, as The American Prospect noted on March 6:

    Private forecasting firm Macroeconomic Advisers estimates "sequestration would cost roughly 700,000 jobs (including reductions in armed forces)," while Moody's Analytics predicts a hit to real gross domestic product of 0.5 percent, just a hair below Fed Chairman Ben Bernanke's prediction 0.6 percent fiscal drag.

And as predicted, the cuts are harming the economy. Sequestration is having a negative effect on GDP growth and causing job losses. According to a new analysis by the non-partisan Congressional Budget Office, canceling the sequestration cuts would raise GDP by 0.7 percent and increase employment by 900,000 new jobs by 2014, and would lead to greater output and higher employment in the next few years.

Furthermore, tens of thousands of individuals have already seen federal unemployment benefits cut by as much as 10.7 percent, Meals On Wheels programs have had to cut hundreds of meals from their regular service to low-income seniors, and Head Start programs have had to cancel sessions for at-risk children. According to the Department of Education, sequestration further cut $60 million from federal funding for schools that educate children who live on Indian reservations, military bases, or in low-income housing. In some cases, districts will be forced to close schools and reduce the number of courses offered.

Economist Jared Bernstein, former economic adviser to Vice President Biden, has tracked and documented the drastic effects that the cuts are having on everything from Medicare-funded cancer treatments and public safety, to scientific and medical research. Finally, Secretary of Defense Chuck Hagel announced on August 6 that furloughs to civilian defense workers caused by sequestration have created "a military whose readiness remains seriously degraded."

Most patriotic Americans know by now that anti-American Australian publisher Rupert Murdoch owns the Wall Street Journal, so the editorial page and his employees represent Murdoch's radical anti-democracy, anti-worker, anti-education and anti-American points of view. It is in their political interests for them and their conservative political friends to do as much damage to the economy as they can so they can use their newspaper, radio stations and television networks to blame it all on patriotic Democrats who care about the USA and American families.

RNC Chairman Reince Priebus Acts Like Soviet Propagandist, Spreads Wacky Death Panel Rumor

RNC Chairman Reince Priebus Acts Like Soviet Propagandist, Spreads Wacky Death Panel Rumor

On Sunday, CNN’s State of the Union invited Republican National Committee Chair Reince Priebus to offer what turned out to be little more than a dump of Republican talking points opposing the Affordable Care Act. Obamacare is “European, socialist style-type health care,” Priebus told CNN. He even claimed that Republicans — who have now voted to repeal Obamacare’s protections for people with preexisting conditions 40 different times — are the true defenders of people who are unable to obtain health insurance without health reform. And then he dropped the death panels line — “what people don’t want are government panels deciding whether something’s medically necessary.” Watch it:

Priebus’ decision to drop this line without any context whatsoever represents an innovation in Republican messaging against providing health care to millions of Americans. The “death panel” smear originally emerged on former half-term Gov. Sarah Palin’s (R-AK) Facebook page, and was widely viewed at the time as an attack on a bipartisan proposal to enable Medicare to cover voluntary end-of-life counseling. After that proposal was dropped from the bill that ultimately became the Affordable Care Act, several Republicans — including Palin once again — retconned the term “death panels” to refer to a cost-cutting measure known as the Independent Payment Advisory Board or IPAB.

Although the IPAB is empowered to take some measures to bring down Medicare costs if those costs grow faster than a certain rate, it is expressly forbidden to take any action that might qualify as rationing care. Under the Affordable Care Act, no proposal generated by the IPAB may include “any recommendation to ration health care, raise revenues or Medicare beneficiary premiums under section 1818, 1818A, or 1839, increase Medicare beneficiary cost sharing (including deductibles, coinsurance, and co-payments), or otherwise restrict benefits or modify eligibility criteria.” Moreover, it is not at all clear that the IPAB will do anything at all, because Medicare costs are currently not growing fast enough to trigger the IPAB’s authority.

So the first provision Republicans labeled as a “death panel” wasn’t actually a death panel, and it didn’t even make it into the law itself. The second provision they labeled a “death panel” also isn’t a death panel, and it may not actually do anything at all. Four years after Sarah Palin invented this canard, the Republican National Committee Chair is reduced to simply asserting, without context or explanation, that death panels exist — and hoping someone out there will still believe him.

It is difficult to say where Republican National Committee Chair Reince Priebus received his political education, from the old Soviet Communists or from read fascist literature. Either way disinformation campaigns like his, Sarah Palin and the Republican party are not American ideals. These radical conservatives will not be happy until they impose an Iranian style totalitarian theocracy on the USA. That is why they wear flag pins and talk about god and country so much, to cover their UnAmerican agenda. These wacko radicals believe that they can fool all the people all the time.

For Americans Who Need a Job, Conservatives Are Enemy Number One

For Americans Who Need a Job, Conservatives Are Enemy Number One

The August congressional recess is here, and many members of Congress will head home and touch base with their constituents. Some will have town halls. Others might conclude: better not.

Especially if you’re a House Republican. Because then you might have to answer: What have you been doing instead of trying to create jobs?

Two months ago, MSNBC’s Ari Melber tallied up [3] all 183 bills the House Republican leadership put on the floor, and found only one had anything to do with creating jobs. [3]And that was a bill to force the President to approve a single oil pipeline project that would create a few thousand jobs.

What’s happened since?

No jobs bills have been voted on that were serious attempts at reaching the president’s desk.

The most significant “jobs” bill was another attack at the President’s energy policies, this one challenging the President’s temerity to have tighter regulations on coastal oil drilling since the BP Gulf of Mexico oil spill. House Republicans claimed [4] their bill expanding coastal drilling would create 1.2 million jobs … over an unspecified time period. And that flimsy statistic came from an oil industry-backed “institute.” [5]

So House Republicans yet again didn’t try very hard to create any jobs. Surely they must have been busy with more pressing matters, right?

Judge for yourself. Which of these was more important than working with Democrats to create jobs?

* Voting for the 40th time [6] to repeal ObamaCare. (Real Americans love Obamacare)
* Voting to ban nearly all abortions after 20 weeks following conception [7], an explicitly unconstitutional standard that punishes women who need abortions for medical reasons.

* After failing to pass legislation to cut food stamp funding by $20 billion – five times greater than in the Senate version – proposing new legislation to cut food stamps by $40 billion. [8] ( many Americans need food assistance because conservative businesses like McDonalds, Walmart and Hobby Lobby do not pay a living wage)

* Voting to send major regulations – which are issued when the executive branch implements laws enacted by Congress – back to Congress for another vote, effectively nullifying the power of the executive branch to implement laws as designed by our nation’s founders.

Yes, those are the kind of junk bills that made it out of the House, only to be properly ignored by the Senate. That’s why we now have the  “least productive Congress ever [9]“ despite the lingering jobs crisis. That’s what your Republican leadership has been spending its time on, instead of trying to find a middle ground with Democrats on how to create more jobs.

To those Republicans who dare hold a town hall this month to explain this sorry record to their constitutions: Good luck with that.

[1] http://www.ourfuture.org
[2] http://www.alternet.org/authors/bill-scher-0
[3] http://tv.msnbc.com/2013/05/29/what-the-do-nothing-congress-has-actually-done/
[4] http://naturalresources.house.gov/legislation/hr2231/
[5] http://www.npr.org/blogs/secretmoney/2008/09/udall_radio_ad.html
[6] http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/08/02/gop-obamacare-vote_n_3695871.html
[7] http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2013/06/18/house-takes-up-bill-banning-most-abortions-after-20-week-mark/
[8] http://nbcpolitics.nbcnews.com/_news/2013/08/02/19831109-republicans-to-propose-40-billion-cut-over-decade-to-food-stamps-program?lite
[9] http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/the-fix/wp/2013/07/17/the-least-productive-congress-ever/

 Conservatives have created this fantasy world inside their heads where lazy exploiters for profit like Mitt Romney create jobs, instead of the very basic economic fact that workers with good wages create demand which creates jobs. Obamacare, while it may not be perfect will save the American people billions in health care costs over the next decade - so much for conservatives knowing or caring about saving money. 

This is So Cool, Erin Burnett and CNN Broadcast Benghazi Propaganda For Conservative Republicans

This is So Cool, Erin Burnett and CNN Broadcast Benghazi Propaganda For Conservative Republicans

CNN's special The Truth About Benghazi pushed long-debunked myths about the September 2012 attacks on U.S. diplomatic facilities in Benghazi, Libya, with host Erin Burnett and CNN correspondent John King asking questions that were answered months ago -- often by CNN itself -- and leaving important context out of many claims.

CNN: Was The Removal Of Terrorist Group Names From Benghazi Talking Points 'Nefarious'?

CNN: Couldn't U.S. Military Have Responded To Attacks More Quickly?

CNN: Why Didn't U.S. Heed Warnings Of Benghazi Attacks?
CNN: Was The Removal Of Terrorist Group Names From Benghazi Talking Points 'Nefarious'?

CNN Recklessly Speculated About Why Terrorist Groups Were Removed From Benghazi Talking Points. During The Truth About Benghazi special, CNN chief national correspondent John King questioned why the names of specific terrorist organizations were removed from the unclassified talking points on the Benghazi attacks that were provided to then-U.N. Ambassador Susan Rice. King asked whether the editing was done "to protect the investigation" or whether "it was done just politically to protect the department? Or more nefariously" to protect the State Department or President Obama. During a prepared video package, CNN played haunting music behind their description of the talking points edits before King noted that the first draft "referenced Islamic extremists with ties to Al Qaeda," but that former State Department spokeswoman Victoria Nuland "objected to naming terror groups" in an email discussion about the talking points without providing the reasoning behind her objection. [CNN, The Truth About Benghazi, 8/6/13]
Answer: Talking Points Altered For Security Purposes, As CNN Itself Has Reported

Former CIA Director David Petraeus: Names Of Terrorist Groups Were Removed To Avoid Tipping Them Off. In November, former CIA Director David Petraeus explained to lawmakers in congressional testimony that the names of terrorist organizations suspected of participating in the attacks "were removed from the public explanation of the attack immediately after the assault to avoiding alerting the militants that American intelligence and law enforcement agencies were tracking them." [The New York Times, 11/16/12]

Former State Department Spokeswoman Victoria Nuland Was Concerned Naming Terrorist Groups Could "Prejudice The Investigation." In emails exchanged between the CIA, State Department, and other administration officials concerning the drafting of the talking points on Benghazi -- emails made public by CNN in May -- Nuland expressed concern that publicly naming specific terrorist organizations could "prejudice the investigation" into who was behind the attacks. [Media Matters, 5/15/13]

CIA's General Counsel: FBI Instructions Said Not To Reveal Names Of Terror Groups Due To Criminal Investigation. In another email released by CNN in May, the general counsel of the CIA expressed concerns that naming terrorist organizations in the talking points could "conflict with express instructions from NSS/DOJ/FBI that, in light of the criminal investigation, we are not to generate statements with assessments as to who did this." [Media Matters, 5/15/13]
CNN: Couldn't U.S. Military Have Responded To Attacks More Quickly?

CNN Special Pushed Republican Claim That Military Could Have Responded To Attacks Faster, Ignores Initial Assistance Sent To Benghazi. During CNN's special, John King highlighted a Republican congressman's claims, contrary to testimony from military officials, that military responses could have responded to the first Benghazi attack in time to assist with the second attack hours later at a nearby compound:

    REP. ADAM SMITH (D-WA): The bottom line is there was not a force available that could get there in time. And that has been clearly and unequivocally established and answered over and over again.

    KING: Republican Jason Chaffetz begs to differ.

    CHAFFETZ: They're in Northern Libya, right there on the coast. That we couldn't get U.S. military there for 24 hours, that's embarrassing if it's true. But I really question whether or not that's the actual truth.

    KING (on camera): So essentially you're saying General Dempsey, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, the highest-ranking uniformed officer in the United States of America, isn't telling the truth?

    CHAFFETZ: I think there are other assets and other things that could have been put into motion. That cavalry never comes over the hill to help. That's just stunning to me.

Later, Erin Burnett expressed shock that the military could not respond faster:

    BURNETT: So John, the military says, right, they couldn't have gotten to Benghazi in time, but the United States has the greatest military in the world. So, that seems shocking.

    KING: It does seem shocking -- 24 hours for the first boots on the ground, for the fire department to first make it to Libya, and then only to Tripoli? I think a lot of Americans are stunned by that. [CNN, The Truth About Benghazi, 8/6/13]

Answer: Notion That U.S. Forces Could Have Assisted Sooner Shows "Cartoonish Impression" Of Military

Former Secretary Of Defense Robert Gates: Notion That Military Forces Could Have Assisted Sooner Shows A "Cartoonish Impression" Of U.S. Military. In an interview on CBS' Face the Nation in May, former Secretary of Defense Robert Gates explained that claims that the military response to the Benghazi attacks could have arrived sooner than it did "would have been very difficult if not impossible" and shows a "cartoonish impression of military capabilities and military forces." [Media Matters, 5/12/13]

Decision To Not Send Second Force From Tripoli Was Made By The Head Of The Military's Africa Command, Who Was Concerned About Security In Tripoli. The commander of U.S. Africa Command during the attacks was concerned about threats to the Tripoli embassy complex, and a Pentagon spokesperson confirmed that the assessment of Special Operations Command Africa leadership at the time was that "it was more important for those guys to be in Tripoli" for embassy security. [Media Matters, 5/9/13]

Deputy Chief Of Mission In Libya: Additional Reinforcements Would Not Have Been Able To Get To Benghazi Before The Second Attack Was Concluded. In an interview with congressional investigators, Gregory Hicks, deputy chief of mission in Libya at the time of the attacks, stated that while a team of special forces troops in Tripoli had been told to protect the embassy in Tripoli instead of traveling to Benghazi, the flight they would have taken to Benghazi was scheduled to take off after 6 a.m. local time -- approximately 45 minutes after the attack at the CIA annex that killed two people. Rep. Jason Chaffetz (R-UT), a member of the House Oversight Committee who has actively pursued investigations into the Benghazi attacks, also told The Washington Post that the special forces team that Hicks was referring to "would have arrived after the attack." [Media Matters, 5/7/13; The Washington Post, 5/6/13]
CNN: Why Didn't U.S. Heed Warnings Of Benghazi Attacks?

John King: U.S. Had "Warning After Warning That Benghazi Was A Disaster Waiting To Happen." King suggested that the U.S. had plenty of warning that the Benghazi attacks would occur, yet was caught unprepared:

    KING: Michael Hayden is the former CIA director.

    HAYDEN: Act one is, what were the intelligence estimates? What kind of warnings were given? What was the plan? Why do we have so few options in act two?

    KING: Act one is numbing, warning after warning that Benghazi was a disaster waiting to happen.

    [...]

    KING: The evidence was overwhelming: attacks that convinced the British, the Red Cross and the United Nations to leave Benghazi; two prior attacks on the U.S. mission; an IED thrown over the fence by former security guards in April and another IED in June that blew a huge hole in a compound gate; and detailed warnings, CNN is told, in 4,000 classified cables, including updates on new Al Qaeda training camps near Benghazi.

    CHAFFETZ: How come that didn't rise to the level where somebody said, "You know, we just can't operate in this environment"? It was a death trap. [CNN, The Truth About Benghazi, 8/6/13]

Answer: Experts Say There Is No Known Intelligence Warning Of The Attacks

GOP Intelligence Committee Chairman Mike Rogers: No Evidence U.S. Had Information To Prevent Attacks. During an interview on Fox News days after the Benghazi attacks, House Intelligence Committee Chairman Mike Rogers was asked whether the U.S. had knowledge that could have prevented the attacks. Rogers responded: "As chairman of the Intelligence Committee, I have seen nothing yet that indicates that they had information that could have prevented the event." [Fox News, Fox & Friends, 9/14/12]

NY Times: No Evidence Of "A Warning That The Diplomatic Compound Would Be Targeted And That Was Overlooked By Administration Officials." The New York Times reported in October that there was no evidence that the government knew of an attack in Benghazi and ignored it:

    Interviews with American officials and an examination of State Department documents do not reveal the kind of smoking gun Republicans have suggested would emerge in the attack's aftermath such as a warning that the diplomatic compound would be targeted and that was overlooked by administration officials.

    [...]

    State Department officials have asserted that there was no specific intelligence that warned of a large-scale attack on the diplomatic compound in Benghazi, which they asserted was unprecedented. The department said it was careful to weigh security with diplomats' need to meet with Libyan officials and citizens.

    "The lethality of an armed, massed attack by dozens of individuals is something greater than we've ever seen in Libya over the last period that we've been there," Patrick F. Kennedy, the State Department's under secretary for management, told reporters at a news conference on Oct. 10. [The New York Times, 10/29/12]

State Department Accountability Review Board: There Was "No Immediate, Specific Tactical Warning" Of Benghazi Attacks. The State Department's Accountability Review Board's unclassified findings about the Benghazi attacks found that there was no specific warning of the Benghazi attacks:

    The Board found that intelligence provided no immediate, specific tactical warning of the September 11 attacks. Known gaps existed in the intelligence community's understanding of extremist militias in Libya and the potential threat they posed to U.S. interests, although some threats were known to exist. [State.gov, accessed 8/7/13]

Part of the conservative conspiracy onslaught is simply blind hatred of President Obama. The other part is about the childish need to even the score. First let's remember that as CNN has correctly pointed out, the diplomatic mission in Benghazi was more of a CIA operation than what would be considered a normal embassy operation - there were over twenty armed and well trained CIA personnel at the compound. Anyway, as patriotic Americans well know, the conservative Bush administration was warned about the possibility of terror attacks in a Presidential Daily Brief and Bush/Cheney ignored those warning. Ooops, conservative said than and now they know what is best for our national security - turns out that just is not true. Conservatives lied and bullied the USA into a three trillion dollar war in Iraq - lying about connections to terrorism, 9-11 and al Qaeda. Conservative national security policies at this point have actually gotten more Americans killed than they have saved. So telling a pack of lies wrapped in conservative tin foil is hardly new.

Americans Are Getting The Economic Shaft and The Conservative God of Privatization Is To Blame

Most rational Americans know what conservatives and right-wing libertarians worship by now, and it is not morality or common decency, 8 Ways Privatization Has Failed America

Health Care

Our private health care system is by far the most expensive system in the developed world. Forty-two percent of sick Americans skipped doctor's visits and/or medication purchases in 2011 because of excessive costs. The price of common surgeries is anywhere from three to ten times higher in the U.S. than in Great Britain, Canada, France, or Germany. Some of the documented tales: a $15,000 charge for lab tests for which a Medicare patient would have paid a few hundred dollars; an $8,000 special stress test for which Medicare would have paid $554; and a $60,000 gall bladder operation, which was covered for $2,000 under a private policy.

As the examples begin to make clear, Medicare is more cost-effective. According to the Council for Affordable Health Insurance, Medicare administrative costs are about one-third that of private health insurance. More importantly, our ageing population has been staying healthy. While as a nation we have a shorter life expectancy than almost all other developed countries, Americans covered by Medicare INCREASED their life expectancy by 3.5 years from the 1960s to the turn of the century.

Free-market health care has been taking care of the CEOs. Ronald DePinho, president of MD Anderson Cancer Center in Texas, made $1,845,000 in 2012. That's over ten times as much as the $170,000 made by the federal Medicare Administrator in 2010. Stephen J. Hemsley, the CEO of United Health Group, made three hundred times as much, with most of his $48 million coming from stock gains.

Water

A Citigroup economist gushed, "Water as an asset class will, in my view, become eventually the single most important physical-commodity based asset class, dwarfing oil, copper, agricultural commodities and precious metals."

A 2009 analysis of water and sewer utilities by Food and Water Watch found that private companies charge up to 80 percent more for water and 100 percent more for sewer services. A more recent study confirms that privatization will generally "increase the long-term costs borne by the public." Privatization is "shortsighted, irresponsible and costly."

Numerous examples of water privatization abuses or failures have been documented in California, Georgia, Illinois, Indiana, New Jersey, Texas, Massachusetts, Rhode Island -- just about anywhere it's been tried. Meanwhile, corporations have been making outrageous profits on a commodity that should be almost free. Nestle buys water for about 1/100 of a penny per gallon, and sells it back for ten dollars. Their bottled water is not much different from tap water.

Worse yet, corporations profit from the very water they pollute. Dioxin-dumping Dow Chemicals is investing in water purification. Monsanto has been accused of privatizing its own pollution sites in order to sell filtered water back to the public.

Internet, TV, and Phone

It seems the whole world is leaving us behind on the Internet. According to the OECD, South Korea has Internet speeds up to 200 times faster than the average speed in the U.S., at about half the cost. Customers are charged about $30 a month in Hong Kong or Korea or parts of Europe for much faster service than in the U.S., while triple-play packages in other countries go for about half of our Comcast or AT&T charges.

Bloomberg notes that deregulators in the 1990s anticipated a market-based decline in phone and cable bills, an "invisible hand" that would steer competing companies to lower prices for all of us. Verizon and AT&T and Comcast and Time-Warner haven't let it happen.

Transportation

As Republicans continue to deride public transportation as 'socialist' and 'Soviet-style,' China surges ahead with a plan to create the world's most advanced high-speed rail transport network. Government-run high-speed rail systems have been successful in numerous other countries, and England and Brazil both lament industry privatization.

As a warning to wannabe Post Office privatizers, Greyhound and Trailways once provided service to remote locations in America, but deregulation intervened. The bus companies eliminated unprofitable routes, and cutbacks and salary decreases, all in the name of optimal profits, resulted in drivers working up to 100 hours a week -- a fact to consider any time each of us ride the bus.

With privatization comes automatic rate increases. Chicago surrendered its parking meters for 75 years and almost immediately faced a doubling of parking rates. California's experiments with roadway privatization resulted in cost overruns, public outrage, and a bankruptcy; equally disastrous was the state's foray into electric power privatization. In Pennsylvania, an analysis of school busing by the Keystone Research Center concluded that "Contracting out substantially increases state spending on transportation services."

Banking

The industry is bloated with deceit and depravity. Almost all of the big names have taken part. Goldman Sachs designed mortgage packages to lose money for everyone except Goldman. Countrywide and Wells Fargo targeted Blacks and Hispanics for unaffordable subprime loans. HSBC Bank laundered money for Mexican drug cartels. GE Capital skimmed billions of dollars from its customers. Dozens of hedge fund managers have been guilty of insider trading. Bank of America and JP Morgan Chase hid billions of dollars of bonuses and losses and loans from investors. Banks fixed interest rates in the LIBOR scandal. They illegally foreclosed on millions of homeowners in the robo-signing scandal.

Matt Taibbi explained to us how financial malfeasance led to the bubbles in dot-com stocks and housing and oil prices and commodities that extract trillions of dollars away from society.

This is all the result of free-market deregulated private business. The best-known public bank, on the other hand, is the Bank of North Dakota, which remains profitable while serving small business and the public at low cost relative to the financial industry.

Prisons

One would think it a worthy goal to rehabilitate prisoners and gradually empty the jails. But business is too good. With each prisoner generating up to $40,000 a year in revenue, it has apparently made economic sense to put over two million people behind bars.

The need to fill privatized prisons has contributed to mass jailings for drug offenses, with African Americans, who make up 13% of the population, accounting for 53.5 percent of all persons who entered prison because of a drug conviction. Yet marijuana usage rates are about the same for Blacks and whites.

Studies show that private prisons perform poorly in numerous ways: prevention of intra-prison violence, jail conditions, rehabilitation efforts. Investigations in Ohio and New Jersey revealed a familiar pattern of money-saving cutbacks and worsening conditions.

Education

The notion that charter schools outperform traditional public schools is not supported by the facts. An updated 2013 Stanford University CREDO study concluded that privatized schools were slightly better in reading and slightly worse in math, with little difference overall. Charter results have shown an improvement since 2009.

An independent study by Bold Approach found that "reforms deliver few benefits, often harm the students they purport to help, and divert attention from...policies with more promise to weaken the link between poverty and low educational attainment."

Just as with prisons and hospitals, cost-saving business strategies apply to the privatization of our children's education. Charter school teachers have fewer years of experience and a higher turnover rate. Non-teacher positions have insufficient retirement plans and health insurance, and much lower pay.

If big money has its way, our children may become high-tech symbols and objects. Bill Gates proposes quality control for the student assembly line, with video footage from the classrooms sent to evaluators to check off teaching skills.

Consumer Protection
Warning signs about unregulated privatization are becoming clearer and more deadly. The Texas fertilizer plant, where 14 people were killed in an explosion and fire, was last inspected by the Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) over 25 years ago. The U.S. Forest Service, stunned by the Prescott, Arizona fire that killed 19, was forced by the sequester to cut 500 firefighters. The rail disaster in Lac-Megantic, Quebec followed deregulation of Canadian railways.

Regulation is meant to protect all of us, but anti-government activists have worked hard to turn us against our own best interests. Among recommended Republican cuts is the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA), which rescued hundreds of people after Hurricane Sandy while serving millions more with meals and water. In another ominous note for the future, the House passed the Clean Water Cooperative Federalism Act of 2011, which would deny the Environmental Protection Agency the right to enforce the Clean Water Act.

Deregulation not only deprives Americans of protection, but it also endangers us with the persistent threat of corporate misconduct. As late as 2004 Monsanto had insisted that Agent Orange "is not the cause of serious long-term health effects." Dow Chemical, the co-manufacturer of Agent Orange, blamed the government. Halliburton pleaded guilty to destroying evidence after the Gulf of Mexico oil spill in 2010. Cleanups cost much more than the fines imposed on offending companies, as government costs can run into the billions, or even tens of billions, of dollars.

People vs. Profits

As summed up by US News, "Private industry is not going to step in and save people from drowning, or help them rebuild their homes without a solid profit." In order to stay afloat as a nation we need each other, not savvy businesspeople who presume to tell us all how to be rich. We can't all be rich. We just want to keep from drowning.
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 License

Paul Buchheit is a college teacher, an active member of US Uncut Chicago, founder and developer of social justice and educational websites (UsAgainstGreed.org, PayUpNow.org, RappingHistory.org), and the editor and main author of "American Wars: Illusions and Realities" (Clarity Press).

Imagine some very wealthy people - not just the top 1% we've heard about, but the top ten percent in a meeting wondering how they could steal billions or even trillions from the work or capital produced by American workers. If they used gun to take it a few dollars at a time everyone would be upset, angry, frustrated. Everyone has a strong reaction to some poor victim mugged for the few dollars in their pocket. So what the "free market" - unregulated, privatize everything zealots - the ten percent did, was use their money and power to buy politicians and legislation. That includes some Democrats, but it is largely conservative Republicans and the new libertarian "populist" like Paul Ryan (R-WI) and Rand Paul (R-KY). They've used the same old propaganda tools. Americans hate communism, who doesn't - even China has turned their economy into a crony capitalist one like ours. So conservatives called everyone who objected to their "free market freedom" ( stealing in disguise) a commie. As dumb as that strategy might sound, it has worked. Many of the American people would rather let conservatives and libertarians steal their money than be called a commie. In reality conservative opposition is largely composed of humanitarian capitalists: Keep things like water utilities public. Regulate telecoms and internet providers whose executives make more money in two weeks than most Americans make in a year. Regulate the poison industry like DuPont, Monsanto and Koch industries - they make Americans sick and than charge us to clean up the stuff that is making us sick and destroying our natural heritage as Americans.