Real Americans Like Obamacare So Conservatives Resort To Shameless Lies

Real Americans Like Obamacare So Conservatives Resort To Shameless Lies

Halloween is approaching and the hobgoblins of conservative media are already spinning nightmarish tales of the Affordable Care Act (aka ObamaCare). Actually, they have been doing it for quite some time, dating back to at least March 2010 when Tucker Carlson’s Daily Caller published an article headlined [3] “IRS looking to hire thousands of armed tax agents to enforce healthcare laws.” Fox News reposted the article on its community web site and Fib Factory, Fox Nation [4] despite the fact that it was a complete fabrication and was debunked [5] by the Annenberg Center’s FactCheck.org

This year the campaign to recast a program that makes health insurance accessible to millions of Americans as a plague of locusts has risen to fever pitch. The Republican Party and conservative media has pulled out all the stops in a strategy aimed at scaring people from signing up with the hope that low enrollment will collapse the system. President Obama had the same concerns last month when he said…

    “What you’ve had is an unprecedented effort that you’ve seen ramp up in the past month or so that those who have opposed the idea of universal health care in the first place — and have fought this thing tooth and nail through Congress and through the courts — trying to scare and discourage people from getting a good deal.”

These are not the hackneyed GOP talking points about death panels, job killers and government bureaucrats coming between patients and doctors. These are far more fanciful efforts that stretch the limits of credulity and appear to have more in common with satire than actual news reporting. But this is what it has come to as Obamacare has finally reached the consumer stage and conservatives are desperate to keep people from discovering its benefits.

1) Fox News Warns That If You Sign Up For ObamaCare Hackers Will Steal Your Life Savings [6]
On an episode of “The Real Story” on Fox News, host Gretchen Carlson introduced an ominous new strain of fear-mongering to demonize Obamacare. She interviewed John McAfee, the anti-virus software developer who is presently a fugitive from a murder investigation in Belize. He made a wild accusation that visitors to Healthcare.gov are going to be victimized by hackers who will steal their identities and/or drain their bank accounts.

Neither Carlson nor McAfee actually provided any evidence of such a threat. In fact, when directly asked about it, McAfee diverts from the question and lays out a completely different threat that has nothing whatsoever to do with the Obamacare website. He alleges that nefarious individuals could set up their own unaffiliated websites in the hopes of luring naive people to take advantage of. Of course, that is a threat that exists for every website, and has since the Internet began. Visiting Healthcare.gov does not expose anyone to these phony sites as implied by the fear-mongers at Fox.

2) WorldNetDaily Reports “Obama ‘Crashing Health-Care Site On Purpose’” [7]
This article asserts that the President is so afraid that insurance shoppers will learn that Obamacare is really more expensive than the old system that he deliberately caused the website to crash to keep people from seeing the rates. No one is defending the botched launch of the insurance exchanges. However, the notion that the technical glitches were intentionally caused by Obama is delusional.

WND’s argument (supported by links to Rush Limbaugh) that rates will increase leaves out the subsidies and tax credits that are available for many applicants. With these adjustments, premiums for most people will be substantially lower. The administration would, therefore, be anxious for consumers to have access to that information and would not be putting obstacles in their path.

3) Rand Paul: Take Obamacare Or Go To Jail [8]
Tea Party darling Rand Paul has made innumerable false statements about virtually every policy that has emanated from the White House. But none are more surreal than his comment, “They say take [Obamacare] or we will put people in jail. People say we aren’t going to put anybody in jail. The heck they won’t. You will get fined first. If you don’t pay your fines, you will go to jail.”

That’s interesting coming from someone who has frequently complained that no one in Congress has read the Affordable Care Act. If he had read it himself he would have known that the law explicitly prohibits criminal consequences for non-payment of fines. It states “In the case of any failure by a taxpayer to timely pay any penalty imposed by this section, such taxpayer shall not be subject to any criminal prosecution or penalty with respect to such failure.” It rarely gets more clear than that, but the mission to frighten the public exceeds the motivation for truth on the part of GOP scare-meisters.

4) Right-Wing Think Tank Mortified That Obamacare Website Links To Voter Registration Form [9]
This is a particularly curious horror story as it seeks to raise an alarm over something that ought to be regarded as a civic duty. Nevertheless, the conservative MacIver Institute (a Koch brothers-funded [10] operation) published an article [11] that implied there was some sort of heinous objective on the part of the Obama administration for having included a link to a voter registration form on the Obamacare website. This startling revelation is met with foreboding by MacIver and a flurry of right-wing media outlets that disseminated MacIver’s story, including National Review, Glenn Beck’s TheBlaze, Breitbart News, the Daily Caller, and Fox News. All of their reports agreed that this was a clandestine attempt to register only Democratic voters despite the absence of any partisan framing. MacIver even asks specifically “[W]hat does registering to vote have to do with signing up for Obamacare?”

The core of the right’s trepidation is rooted in a more fundamental aversion to the act of voting itself. It is why they are continually erecting new barriers to voting. Democrats, on the other hand, have sought to expand voter turnout with bills like the 1993 National Voter Registration Act [12] (aka Motor Voter) that mandates certain government agencies provide people with access to voter registration. In fact, that 20-year-old law requires that Obamacare administrators make voter registration available. MacIver, and similarly mortified conservative comrades, are either unaware of this, or are deliberately feigning ignorance in order to rile up their conspiracy-prone base.

5) Weekly Standard Finds Imaginary Threat On Obamacare Website [13]
The ultra-conservative Weekly Standard dispatched its crack reporters to ferret out what it portrayed [14] as an ominous security threat on the Healthcare.gov website. What it found were comments in the site’s source code that said that “You have no reasonable expectation of privacy regarding any communication or data transiting or stored on this information system.” The Standard notes that these comments were not visible to users and were not part of the site’s terms and conditions. But that didn’t stop them from implying that users would be still be bound by it because “the language is nevertheless a part of the underlying code.” Not really. It’s only a part of some inoperative text that carries no more obligation than some discarded notes.

This is another situation where you have to wonder whether these people are embarrassingly stupid or brazenly dishonest. There is a reason this language was not visible. It was deliberately removed with the use of HTML comment tags by the site’s programmers. It was undoubtedly edited out because it was not an accurate expression of the site’s privacy policy. It does not mean that users are agreeing to a secret clause permitting the government to spy on them as the Standard implied. If any of these “reporters” had a 14-year-old at home they could have learned what this is about. But that would have interfered with their goal, which is to leave Americans with the false impression that some hidden danger lurks beneath the surface of Obamacare.

6) Fox News Fears ACORN Is Back To Push ObamaCare [15]
The Curvy Couch Potatoes over at Fox & Friends had a jolly old time resurrecting their fear of a community organizing enterprise that no longer exists. ACORN was wrongly hounded out of business by right-wing opponents after pseudo-journalist and convicted criminal James O’Keefe distributed some deceitfully edited and libelous videos. But that hasn’t stopped conservative media from exhuming the corpse whenever they are in need of a sensationalist story, as demonstrated by Fox co-host Elisabeth Hasselbeck, who announced that “We’re getting information that ACORN operatives are trying to sign people up for the Affordable Care Act.”

While ACORN was never found to have engaged in any unlawful activity, there was a bill passed that prohibited them from receiving federal funds. However, there is nothing in the law that prevents organizations with former ACORN staff from getting federal grants. In fact, there isn’t even any current law that prevents ACORN from getting grants as the previous ban was not included in the latest Continuing Resolution. Fox is brazenly misrepresenting the facts in an attempt to reignite fears of the old ACORN bogeyman. They upped the terror ante by further alleging that ACORN would use your personal medical and financial information against you politically. They never revealed how that would occur, or to what end, but that isn’t the point. Their only interest is spreading fear, no matter how irrational and unsupported.

Conclusion

The zealousness with which these right-wing propagandists pursue their disinformation campaign is evidence of their own fear that Americans will come to appreciate having access to affordable healthcare. Therefore, they see their mission as derailing the program before that eventuality unfolds. Their tactics get more extreme and absurd the closer the program gets to gaining acceptance. A particular target of their attack is young people whose participation is important for the program to succeed. Consequently, opponents have launched a well-funded campaign (thanks to the Koch brothers) to scare off young consumers. Generation Opportunity has already released the now notorious “Creepy Uncle Sam” videos that make false implications of government intrusion into medical care. Next they are embarking on a 20-city college tour to mislead students.

PolitiFact has reviewed 16 claims made by Obamacare detractors and found all of them false. Twelve of those were designated “Pants On Fire” lies [16]. If there is one question that begs to be asked, it is this: If Obamacare is so terrible, why do opponents have to tell so many lies about it?

Obamacare is a free market solution - you buy insurance from privately owned insurance companies to health care cost that were raising 14% a year. Which meant that many patriotic hard working Americans either could not get insurance or they were going bankrupt trying to pay big medical corporations for their medical care. We could have just made Medicare, a government run socialized health insurance program available for everyone over 18, but conservatives did not want that either. Reality check: conservative Republicans thought it was moral to lie the country into a war in Iraq that cost $3 trillion dollars, but think it is immoral for patriots to have health care insurance. No wonder most of the nation thinks conservatism is just another name for wacky nutbars. 

Conservative Republicans And The Perfection of Private Enterprise

Conservative Republicans And The Perfection of Private Enterprise

Private systems are focused on making profits for a few well-positioned people. Public systems, when sufficiently supported by taxes, work for everyone in a generally equitable manner.

The following are six specific reasons why privatization simply doesn't work.

1. The Profit Motive Moves Most of the Money to the Top

The federal Medicare Administrator made $170,000 in 2010. The president of MD Anderson Cancer Center in Texas made over ten times as much in 2012. Stephen J. Hemsley, the CEO of United Health Group, made almost 300 times as much in one year, $48 million, most of it from company stock.

In part because of such inequities in compensation, our private health care system is the most expensive system in the developed world. 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. Two of the documented examples: an $8,000 special stress test for which Medicare would have paid $554; and a $60,000 gall bladder operation, for which a private insurance company was willing to pay $2,000.

Medicare, on the other hand, which is largely without the profit motive and the competing sources of billing, is efficiently run, for all eligible Americans. According to the Council for Affordable Health Insurance and other sources, medical administrative costs are much higher for private insurance than for Medicare.

But the privatizers keep encroaching on the public sector. Our government reimburses the CEOs of private contractors at a rate approximately double what we pay the President. Overall, we pay the corporate bosses over $7 billion a year.

Many Americans don't realize that the privatization of Social Security and Medicare would transfer much of our money to yet another group of CEOs.

2. Privatization Serves People with Money, the Public Sector Serves Everyone

A good example is the U.S. Postal Service (USPS), which is legally required to serve every home in the country. Fedex and United Parcel Service (UPS) can't serve unprofitable locations. Yet the USPS is much cheaper for small packages. An online comparison revealed the following for the two-day shipment of a similarly-sized envelope to another state:

-- USPS 2-Day $5.68 (46 cents without the 2-day restriction)
-- FedEx 2-Day $19.28
-- UPS, 2 Day $24.09

USPS is so inexpensive, in fact, that Fedex actually uses the U.S. Post Office for about 30 percent of its ground shipments.

Another example is education. A recent ProPublica report found that in the past twenty years four-year state colleges have been serving a diminishing portion of the country's lowest-income students. At the K-12 level, cost-saving business strategies apply to the privatization of our children's education. Charter schools are less likely to accept students with disabilities. Charter 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.

Finally, with regard to health care, 43 percent of sick Americans skipped doctor's visits and/or medication purchases in 2011 because of excessive costs. It's estimated that over 40,000 Americans die every year because they can't afford health insurance.

3. Privatization Turns Essential Human Needs into Products

Big business would like to privatize our water. A Citigroup economist exulted, "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."

They want our federal land. Attempts at privatization were made by the Reagan administration in the 1980s and the Republican-controlled Congress in the 1990s. In 2006, President Bush proposed auctioning off 300,000 acres of national forest in 41 states. Paul Ryan's Path to Prosperity was based in part on Republican Jason Chaffetz' "Disposal of Excess Federal Lands Act of 2011," which would unload millions of acres of land in America's west.

They want our cities. A privatization expert told the Detroit Free Press that the real money is in urban assets with a "revenue stream." So Detroit's most valuable resource, its Water & Sewerage Department (DWSD), is the collateral for a loan of $350 million to pay off the banks handling the litigation. Bloomberg estimates a cost of almost half a billion dollars, in a city where homeowners can barely afford the water services.

And they want our bodies. One-fifth of the human genome is privately owned through patents. Strains of influenza and hepatitis have been claimed by corporate and university labs, and because of this researchers can't use the patented life forms to perform cancer research.

4. Public Systems Promote a Strong Middle Class

Part of free-market mythology is that public employees and union workers are greedy takers, enjoying benefits that average private sector workers are denied. But the facts show that government and union workers are not overpaid. According to the Census Bureau, state and local government employees make up 14.5% of the U.S. workforce and receive 14.3% of the total compensation. Union members make up about 12% of the workforce, but their total pay amounts to just 10% of adjusted gross income as reported to the IRS.

The average private sector worker makes about the same salary as a state or local government worker. But the median salary for U.S. workers, 83% of whom are in the private sector, was $18,000 less in 2009, at $26,261. Inequality is much more pervasive in the private sector.

5. The Private Sector Has Incentive To Fail, or No Incentive At All

The most obvious incentive to fail is in the private prison industry. 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, the number of prisoners in private facilities has increased from 1990 to 2009 by more than 1600%, from about 7,000 to over 125,000 inmates. Corrections Corporation of America recently offered to run the prison system in any state willing to guarantee that jails stay 90% full.

Nor do privatizers have incentive to maintain infrastructure. David Cay Johnston describes the deteriorating state of America's structural foundation, with grids and pipelines neglected by monopolistic industries that cut costs rather than provide maintenance. Meanwhile, they achieve profit margins of over 50%, eight times the corporate average.

As for public safety, 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. At the other extreme is the public sector, and the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA), which rescued hundreds of people after Hurricane Sandy while serving millions more with meals and water.

The lack of private incentive for human betterment is evident throughout the world. The World Hunger Education Service states that "Harmful economic systems are the principal cause of poverty and hunger." And according to Nicholas Stern, the chief economist for the World Bank, climate change is "the greatest market failure the world has seen."

6. With Public Systems, We Don't Have to Listen To "Individual Initiative" Rantings

Back in the Reagan years, a stunning claim was made by Margaret Thatcher: "There is no such thing as society. There are individual men and women, and there are families." More recently, Paul Ryan complained that government support "drains individual initiative and personal responsibility."

That's easy to say for people with good jobs.

Individual initiative? Our publicly supported communications infrastructure allows the richest 10% of Americans to manipulate their 80% share of the stock market. CEOs rely on roads and seaports and airports to ship their products, the FAA and TSA and Coast Guard and Department of Transportation to safeguard them, a nationwide energy grid to power their factories, and communications towers and satellites to conduct online business. Perhaps most important to business, even as it focuses on short-term profits, is the long-term basic research that is largely conducted with government money. As of 2009 universities were still receiving ten times more science & engineering funding from government than from industry.

Public beats private in almost every way. Only the hype of the free-market media keeps much of America believing that "winner-take-all" is preferable to working together as a community.

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).

Private enterprise is not an inherently bad system, but it relies on something terribly lacking in today's largely Conservative economy, moral responsibility. That's right. Our systems would work better and keep more money in the pockets of people who do actual work and have real ideas if our economy was not structured in a way that redistributes the capital created by workers to filthy rich CEOs and Wall Street gamblers. That used to be the grand bargain - OK you corporate cronies can make a lot of money, but in return you cannot take advantage of or steal from workers. The elite top 10% have taken a butcher knife to that bargain and made over half of America into wage slaves - who no matter how hard they work will never get ahead - a good recent example. .

Paul Ryan (R-WI) is holding the government hostage in exchange for control of every uterus in America

Paul Ryan (R-WI) is holding the government hostage in exchange for control of every uterus in America

Since negotiations to avert a national default on the debt have shifted from the House to the Senate, Republicans in the lower chamber are still hoping to use the talks as “leverage” to limit women’s access to contraception.

According to the Washington Post, in a private meeting with House Republicans Rep. Paul Ryan (R-WI) — who earlier this weak floated a compromise that would raise the debt ceiling in exchange for cuts to entitlement programs — railed against emerging Senate proposals and argued that the “House could not accept either a debt-limit bill or a government-funding measure that would delay the next fight until the new year”:

    According to two Republicans familiar with the exchange, Ryan argued that the House would need those deadlines as “leverage” for delaying the health-care law’s individual mandate and adding a “conscience clause” — allowing employers and insurers to opt out of birth-control coverage if they find it objectionable on moral or religious grounds — and mentioned tax and entitlement goals Ryan had focused on in a recent op-ed in the Wall Street Journal.

    Ryan’s speech appeared only to further rile up the conservative wing of the GOP conference, which has been agitating the shutdown strategy to try to tear apart the health-care law.

The Affordable Care Act stipulates that employers and insurers must provide no-cost contraception coverage as part of their health care plans and exempts churches and religious nonprofits that primarily employ people of the same faith from the requirement. In a compromise between Catholic groups and the White House, religiously affiliated colleges, universities, and hospitals that wish to avoid providing birth control can also opt out of offering the benefits, while their employees receive contraception coverage at no additional cost sharing directly from the insurer.

Republicans, however, are not satisfied with the accommodation and have tried to expand the so-called conscience clause, permitting any employer or insurance plan to exclude health services, no matter how essential, from coverage if they morally object to it.

In the last week of budget negotiations, some in the GOP have walked back their demand to fully defund the Affordable Care Act and have instead offered relatively small changes to the Affordable Care Act. But Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-NV), who is now leading the negotiations with Sen. Mitch McConnell (R-KY) and the White House, insists that changes to the health care law are off the table.

By all means let's have a “conscience clause” for everything: you're vegetarian, then using the conservative view on conscience you can deny your employees that part of their paycheck they spend on meat. If you are a catholic employer you can pay your Protestant and Jewish employees less because their religion is morally objectionable. According to conservative "conscience" if you do not approve of drinking beer, you can refuse to insure anyone who drinks beer. When conservatives say they're for "personal "freedom" they're just joking. What they believe in is the freedom to impose every weirdo freaky thing they believe in on everyone else - kind of like the Communist party in China or the rulers of Iran.

Google's motto used to be do no evil, now they have joined evil central, ALEC

Google's motto used to be do no evil, now they have joined evil central ALEC

Quietly, Google has joined ALEC -- the American Legislative Exchange Council -- the shadowy corporate alliance that pushes odious laws through state legislatures.

In the process, Google has signed onto an organization that promotes such regressive measures as tax cuts for tobacco companies, school privatization to help for-profit education firms, repeal of state taxes for the wealthy and opposition to renewable energy disliked by oil companies.

ALEC’s reactionary efforts -- thoroughly documented by the Center for Media and Democracy -- are shameful assaults on democratic principles. And Google is now among the hundreds of companies in ALEC. Many people who’ve admired Google are now wondering: how could this be?

Well, in his recent book “Digital Disconnect: How Capitalism Is Turning the Internet Against Democracy,” Robert W. McChesney provides vital context. “It is true that with the advent of the Internet many of the successful giants -- Apple and Google come to mind -- were begun by idealists who may have been uncertain whether they really wanted to be old-fashioned capitalists,” he writes. “The system in short order has whipped them into shape.”

McChesney adds: “Any qualms about privacy, commercialism, avoiding taxes, or paying low wages to Third World factory workers were quickly forgotten. It is not that the managers are particularly bad and greedy people -- indeed their individual moral makeup is mostly irrelevant -- but rather that the system sharply rewards some types of behavior and penalizes other types of behavior so that people either get with the program and internalize the necessary values or they fail.”

Google has widely mythologized itself as some kind of humanistic techno-pioneer. Obscured in a fog of digital legend is the agenda that more than ever is transfixed with maximizing profits while capitalizing on anti-democratic leverage of corporate power. Google’s involvement in ALEC is consistent with the company’s mega-business model that relentlessly exploits rigorous data-mining of emails, online searches and so much more.

Yet image-conscious companies can be skittish about public pressure. That helps to explain why dozens of firms withdrew from ALEC during the last year.

A few days ago -- when my colleagues at RootsAction.org sent out an email alert about news of ALEC’s connection with Google as well as with Facebook and Yelp -- more than 25,000 people quickly signed a petition urging those companies to “stop funding ALEC.” Several thousand of the petition signers added comments that can be read online along with the petition.

Those comments reflect widening comprehension of Google and the significance of its alignment with ALEC. Here’s a sampling:

“I expected better. Maybe that was naive.”  James C., San Jose, CA

“What happened to your big pledge? ‘Don't be evil’? Guess it was just words...”  Lois W., Sun City, AZ

“Better check your definition of EVIL -- look it up on Google…”  Armando A., Vista, CA

“Please don't fund tyranny. You were supposed to be one of the good guys.”  Ernest W., Easthampton, MA

“Your credibility is fading associating with this kind of scum.”  John B., Easton, CT

 “You are subverting the wishes of your clients/users while undermining democracy.”  Vincent G., Sioux Falls, SD

“Shame on you. Think about what the majority of your users want instead of the ‘rich’ guys.”  Karen B., Westminster, CO

For those who are not familiar with ALEC (American Legislative Exchange Council) these are some starter articles, ALEC Exposed ( they are a militant proto-fascist anti-American organization that truly hates democracy) and they promote the control of the economy by elite plutocrats and the personal lives of Americans, Conservative Nonprofit Acts as a Stealth Business Lobbyist.

Three Things Patriotic Americans Should Know About The Government Shut-down

Three Things Patriotic Americans Should Know About The Government Shut-down

1. Conservative Money from radical anti-American conservative groups is behind the shut-down. There is no blame to spread around, conservative Republicans are completely responsible for the shut-down and any consequences suffered by any American from park visitors to families of veterans killed in action, The Money Behind the Shutdown Crisis

Representative Aaron Schock is a conservative Republican from Illinois, but not conservative enough for the hard-right activist group Club for Growth, which is seeking someone to run against him in next year’s primary.

His crime? In 2011, he voted to increase the debt ceiling, and, in 2012, he voted for a stopgap spending bill that prevented a government shutdown. In neither case did he demand the defunding of health care reform.

Club for Growth and other extremist groups consider a record like his an unforgivable failure, and they are raising and spending millions to make sure that no Republicans will take similar positions in the next few weeks when the fiscal year ends and the debt limit expires.

If you’re wondering why so many House Republicans seem to believe they can force President Obama to accept a “defunding” of the health care reform law by threatening a government shutdown or a default, it’s because these groups have promised to inflict political pain on any Republican official who doesn’t go along.

Heritage Action and the Senate Conservatives Fund have each released scorecards showing which lawmakers have pledged to “defund Obamacare.”

2. Conservative Republicans have been planning the shut-down for months, 

Shortly after President Obama started his second term, a loose-knit coalition of conservative activists led by former Attorney General Edwin Meese III gathered in the capital to plot strategy. Their push to repeal Mr. Obama’s health care law was going nowhere, and they desperately needed a new plan.

Out of that session, held one morning in a location the members insist on keeping secret, came a little-noticed “blueprint to defunding Obamacare,” signed by Mr. Meese and leaders of more than three dozen conservative groups.

It articulated a take-no-prisoners legislative strategy that had long percolated in conservative circles: that Republicans could derail the health care overhaul if conservative lawmakers were willing to push fellow Republicans — including their cautious leaders — into cutting off financing for the entire federal government.

“We felt very strongly at the start of this year that the House needed to use the power of the purse,” said one coalition member, Michael A. Needham, who runs Heritage Action for America, the political arm of the Heritage Foundation. “At least at Heritage Action, we felt very strongly from the start that this was a fight that we were going to pick.”

Last week the country witnessed the fallout from that strategy: a standoff that has shuttered much of the federal bureaucracy and unsettled the nation.

To many Americans, the shutdown came out of nowhere. But interviews with a wide array of conservatives show that the confrontation that precipitated the crisis was the outgrowth of a long-running effort to undo the law, the Affordable Care Act, since its passage in 2010 — waged by a galaxy of conservative groups with more money, organized tactics and interconnections than is commonly known.

With polls showing Americans deeply divided over the law, conservatives believe that the public is behind them. Although the law’s opponents say that shutting down the government was not their objective, the activists anticipated that a shutdown could occur — and worked with members of the Tea Party caucus in Congress who were excited about drawing a red line against a law they despise.

A defunding “tool kit” created in early September included talking points for the question, “What happens when you shut down the government and you are blamed for it?” The suggested answer was the one House Republicans give today: “We are simply calling to fund the entire government except for the Affordable Care Act/Obamacare.”

The current budget brinkmanship is just the latest development in a well-financed, broad-based assault on the health law, Mr. Obama’s signature legislative initiative. Groups like Tea Party Patriots, Americans for Prosperity and FreedomWorks are all immersed in the fight, as is Club for Growth, a business-backed nonprofit organization. Some, like Generation Opportunity and Young Americans for Liberty, both aimed at young adults, are upstarts. Heritage Action is new, too, founded in 2010 to advance the policy prescriptions of its sister group, the Heritage Foundation.

The billionaire Koch brothers, Charles and David, have been deeply involved with financing the overall effort. A group linked to the Kochs, Freedom Partners Chamber of Commerce, disbursed more than $200 million last year to nonprofit organizations involved in the fight. Included was $5 million to Generation Opportunity, which created a buzz last month with an Internet advertisement showing a menacing Uncle Sam figure popping up between a woman’s legs during a gynecological exam.

The Kochs and Freedom Partners Chamber of Commerce want to mold the USA into something that resembles feudal lordships, with average American workers earning slave wages, powerless and without health care insurance. That is how they define freedom, a USA that looks like a few feudal lords having all the power, throwing the concept of government by and for the people in the trash.

3. Conservative Republicans claim they are acting out of principles, that the deficit is out of hand. That is a baldfaced, shameless lie, Obama has done a remarkable job of getting the debts George Bush and conservatives ran up ( see chart at top) under control, False Equivalence That Leans on Public Opinion Is Still False Equivalence. Here's a fact: The deficit is falling. Here's another fact: Americans don't know the deficit is falling.

Watch Out Patriots, The Conservative Wall Street Plutocrats Are Coming After Your Pension

Watch Out Patriots, The Conservative Wall Street Plutocrats Are Coming After Your Pension

Lips are smacking on Wall Street. Today’s tasty treat? The pensions of hard-working people across America. Financial hustlers have been working overtime to convince the population that we are in the midst of an “unfunded liability crisis” in which states and cities can no longer afford to pay pensions to public workers. Here’s the truth: Wall Street predators have had their hands in the pension cookie jar for decades, and now they’re poised to gobble up the retirements of teachers and firefighters in yet another orgy of greed.

Unknown to much of the public, Wall Street has been soaking state and municipal coffers with derivatives schemes and various frauds for years [3]. As Alexander Arapoglou and Jerri-Lynn Scofield have explained, not only have Wall Street banks screwed public finances with fancy credit default swaps and other "innovative" financial products that blow up in the faces of cities and states, they have also been engaged in widespread frauds that squeeze pension yields. This happened in the LIBOR rate-rigging scandal [4], in which big banks were found to be manipulating interest rates, which has resulted in lower returns on pension fund investments and has caused shortfalls in pension plans. The lack of actions from authorities means this kind of hustling will surely continue.

Rolling Stone’s Matt Taibbi has just published an article [5] outlining how this gigantic heist is going down. While Wall Street has been on its scam-a-licious rampage, no-good politicians have been taking taxpayer money meant for pensions and spending it on whatever they wanted, depleting funds. (This is actually securities fraud, but the nearly toothless SEC has barely lifted a finger to address it.) Even so, pensions were still in fairly decent shape when the crash of 2008 came and wrecked budgets across America. The Wall Street-driven financial crisis crushed state and local revenues, and the financiers decided this was the perfect moment to dive in for yet another helping of public money by seizing control of public pensions.

In Taibbi’s colorful words: “This is the third act in an improbable triple-fucking of ordinary people that Wall Street is seeking to pull off as a shocker epilogue to the crisis era.”

Wall Street has plenty of politicians in its pockets to grease the wheels. Taibbi hones in on the notorious example of Rhode Island treasurer Gina Raimondo, a former venture capitalist who made the war against pensions her raison d’etre and handed over a billion in pension funds to hedge funds that could charge the strapped state boatloads of hidden fees to manage them. Firms like Goldman Sachs and Bain Capital, along with predators like billionaire John Arnolds, formerly of Enron, are overwhelmed with joy and have filled Raimondo’s coffers for a 2014 gubernatorial run. They know a good thing when they see it.

Wall Street’s PR message? The country’s financial woes were the fault of hard-working elementary school teachers and cops. It’s an audacious, shockingly cynical lie, but with enough money thrown behind it, the lie has spread like a cancer through the media and the political world. Rapacious bankers have successfully pitted private sector workers who have been losing their pensions against public sector folks who were still hanging on to theirs—a tried and true divide-and-conquer tactic that means big money for criminal banksters.

The villains who have helped spread this lie include the folks at Pew Charitable Trusts, an organization known for its centrism and number-crunching. Starting in 2007, Pew started rolling out studies suggesting that pensions were unsustainable, and found an eager accomplice in the form of noxious billionaire John Arnold, a right-winger and former Enron commodities trader who, as Taibbi reports, was “helping himself to an $8 million bonus while the company's pension fund was vaporizing.”

Arnold created a foundation named after himself to focus on “reforming” pensions, and got some big-name Republicans and Tea Partiers, like Dick Armey and Orrin Hatch, to get the game going. “Arnold and Pew struck up a relationship,” writes Taibbi, “and both have since been proselytizing pension reform all over America, including California, Florida, Kansas, Arizona, Kentucky and Montana.” Over and over, they cited an “unfunded liability crisis” conveniently overlooking the glaring fact that the financial crisis and various Wall Street investment schemes are the reason states and cities are having a hard time paying workers what they were owed. They pretend the problem is that worker pensions are too expensive—a big fat whopper that blames the victims of Wall Street’s own shenanigans.

Meanwhile, hedge funds continue to take over state pension funds with guarantees that their fees and hustling will be kept hidden from the public, all the while delivering underperforming returns on shitty investments. (Now it becomes clear why Wall Street had a massive freak-out at the idea that Eliot Spitzer, who understands their tricks, was nearly put in charge of managing New York City’s pensions in his recent run for comptroller.)

As Taibbi correctly concludes, the "unfunded liability" is largely a fiction. There are legitimate issues with pensions, “but the idea that these benefit packages are causing the fiscal crises in our states is almost entirely a fabrication crafted by the very people who actually caused the problem.”

And let’s just add a final twist to this tortuous story: Even if you’re not a public sector worker, Wall Street is determined to get its hands on your retirement, too, and it has got politicians in Washington, including President Obama, talking about cuts to Social Security [6] in the name of a phony debt ceiling crisis. It's the wet dream of Wall Street to weaken Social Security and take hold of American retirement money so that scam artists can charge outrageous fees and continue their rampage of thievery against people who work hard serving their communities and simply want to retire with some modicum of dignity.

To be fair president Obama has offered the possibility of making future increase in Social Security tied to an inflation mechanism called chained  CPI. While probably not a good idea since it fails to take into account prices for some items that cannot be bought at discount or have generic substitutes, it is not thief. The rest is the usual story - anything, any kind of greed, abhorrent behavior is OK for Wall Street because they're doing it in the name of capitalism. They're giving capitalism a really bad reputation at this point since it seems to mean stealing from the middle-class and working poor to give to millionaires..

Patriotic Americans Like Obamacare So It Figures The Anti-American Conservative Media Lies About It

Patriotic Americans Like Obamacare So It Figures The Anti-American Conservative Media Lies About It

Time Warner's Charlotte News 14 omitted critical information about health care premium prices in a report leading up to state-based insurance exchanges opening on October 1 by only reporting average premium prices while omitting the subsidized prices many North Carolina residents would receive under the Affordable Care Act.

The September 25 report relied on data from the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) which listed average subsidized prices for North Carolina residents:

    New estimates show people in North Carolina who shop for health insurance coverage on the federally run, online marketplace could pay more and have fewer choices than the national average.

    The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services said premiums for a mid-range plan sold on the health exchange will be $379/month on average. The average cost for that same plan across 48 states will be $328 when the new health insurance markets start.

The figures provided by News 14 represents unsubsidized averages of all people under age 65 but does not tell the entire story for many North Carolina residents. A report by Families USA found that, if Medicaid had been expanded in North Carolina, 868,520 residents would be eligible for tax credits under the exchanges. Yet, as Kathleen Stoll, director of health policy for Families USA explained, this figure is a low estimate because the report assumed the state would expand Medicaid.

Of the more than 850,000 residents eligible for subsidized insurance, younger customers can expect to pay less and will have access to low-cost "catastrophic plans" that provides emergency coverage for people under 30.

Even without the catastrophic coverage plans, premium prices for young adults in North Carolina would be drastically lower than the average price for most individuals purchasing insurance, and they can choose from a variety of "bronze, silver, gold, and platinum plans in the Health Insurance Marketplace." According to an HHS release, a 27-year-old in the state making $25,000 a year can be covered for just $88 dollars a year after applying the tax credit. The same 27-year-old could get a "silver" plan for $145 a month.

Low-income families benefit even more from subsidies. A "bronze" level plan for a family of four making $50,000 can be purchased for $74 dollars a month after applying tax credits, with a "silver" plan costing $282 -- both well under the average price stated in the article.

Nationally, tax credits will allow 6.4 million people to purchase insurance for less than $100 each month. Including the subsidized prices for plans bought on the exchanges is critical to understanding true insurance costs because many of the new shoppers will be low-income uninsured, meaning they are most likely to be eligible for subsidies. As the Kaiser Family Foundation explained in a primer on the makeup of the uninsured:

    Most people without health coverage are in working families and have low incomes. Adults make up a disproportionate share of the uninsured population because they are less likely than children to be eligible for Medicaid. While a plurality of uninsured people are White non-Hispanic, racial/ethnic minorities are at especially high risk of being uninsured.

    [...]

    Health insurance makes a difference in whether and when people get necessary medical care, where they get their care, and ultimately, how healthy people are. The consequences of reduced access to care over time can be serious, including preventable hospitalizations, poor overall health, disability, and premature death.

These low- to mid-income individuals and families will be able to access subsidies based on 2013 poverty guidelines, which according the Miami Herald could mean subsidies for families as high as $10,000 a year:

    When the marketplace open enrollment period under the new health care law begins on Oct. 1, the tax credits will be ready and waiting for eligible citizens and legal residents who earn between 100 percent and 400 percent of the federal poverty level.

    In 2013, that includes individuals earning from $11,490 to $46,000, two-person families earning between $19,530 and $78,120, and four-person families earning between $23,550 and $94,200 a year. Tax credit eligibility will be based on the 2013 federal poverty guidelines until the 2014 guidelines are determined.

    [...]

    The size of the tax credit for a person receiving insurance coverage under Obamacare could range from a few hundred dollars to more than $10,000, based on family size, income and the cost of coverage in an individual's area.

    The amount will become known after submitting an online coverage application through the insurance marketplaces, which will be operated by either the states or the federal government. Once a person signs up for a marketplace health plan, the tax credit will be sent directly to the insurance company and applied to the plan member's monthly premiums in 2014.

Conservatives do not believe that patriots should have the freedom to have health insurance or even the right to live. That is not in any way an exaggeration. They say the right to health care is not in the constitution, but somewhere in their special copy it does say that patriots have the right to be miserable, in constant pain and die. In other words, conservatives believe in the same things a death cult believes in.

If Democrats Are Socialists How Come The Wealthy Plutocrats Are Wealthier Than Ever

According to the radical Anti-American pundits at Fox News and anti-American conservative sites around the internet, Democrats ( who are a small majority in the Senate and are in the White House - are commies or socialists. Sure it is a bunch of hateful ignorant nutbars say these things, but shouldn't even a nutbar be able to tell the difference between their fetid radical fantasies and the reality that is all around them, If Democrats Are Socialists How Come The Wealthy Plutocrats Are Wealthier Than Ever

Two weeks ago, Forbes released its 2013 list of the richest 400 Americans. And the not-so-surprising news: The fortunes of those at the top continue to rise while Americans across the country continue to suffer. What is surprising though is that they have now regained "all" of the losses from the economic collapse.

    "Five years after the financial crisis sent the fortunes of many in the U.S. and around the world tumbling, the wealthiest as a group have finally gained back all that they lost. The 400 wealthiest Americans are worth just over $2 trillion, roughly equivalent to the GDP of Russia. That is a gain of $300 billion from a year ago, and more than double a decade ago. The average net worth of list members is a staggering $5 billion, $800 million more than a year ago and also a record. The minimum net worth needed to make the 400 list was $1.3 billion. The last time it was that high was in 2007 and 2008, before property and stock market values began sliding. Because the bar is so high, 61 American billionaires didn’t make the cut."

Half of those who dropped off the Forbes list didn't do so because their fortunes' declined. They "fell off the list" because others passed them up. As Forbes notes, "The rest simply couldn't keep up with the rising tide." It's an economic bonanza for the rich.

In glorifying and idolizing the superrich, what Forbes and much of our popular culture fails to acknowledge is the role that inherited wealth, race, gender, and public policy have played in shaping who is and who is not on the list. But last year, United for a Fair Economy (UFE) took a closer, more critical look at the list with the release of our "Born on Third Base" report, which analyzed the 2011 Forbes 400 list. Here’s what we learned:

    At least 40% of those on the 2011 Forbes 400 list inherited a medium-sized business or substantial wealth from a spouse or family member.
    Over 20% – including many Walton family members – inherited enough to place them on the Forbes 400 list with their inheritance alone. It's like they were born on home plate.
    Only a small number can be said to truly come from modest means, and even they had help.

America's long history of race and gender bias also shape who is and is not on the list. Women and people of color make up only a tiny sliver of the overwhelmingly white, male Forbes 400. Even in 2013, the Forbes list includes only one African-America: Oprah Winfrey.

In UFE's 2006 book, The Color of Wealth, we examine the history of these disparities, including the way that women and people of color have been systematically excluded from the wealth-building public programs that helped create the white middle class. These wealth disparities have been passed on to each successive generation through the power of inheritance.

It's not just the birthright, there are public policies that give an unnecessary "leg up" to those at the top. One of the more egregious tax breaks we give to the wealthiest Americans is the reduced tax rate on investment income. We tax investment income from capital gains and appreciated stock at nearly half the top rate at which we tax income from wages earned through actual work.

Who does that special tax break benefit? No great mystery here. 60% of the income made by the Forbes 400 billionaires comes from capital gains, i.e. investment income. Together with the rest of their compatriots in the top 0.1%, they capture half of all capital gains income in the country. At the very least, we need to "tax wealth like work" and end this special tax break that disproportionately benefits those at the top.

By ignoring the role of inherited wealth, race, gender, and public policy advantages, Forbes describes many of the richest Americans as "self-made." This is an assertion that UFE challenged, both in our "Born on Third Base" report and in our 2012 book, The Self-Made Myth.

Attributing the success of those at the top entirely to their own efforts, by implication, also insinuates that those who are poor, are poor by their own efforts. Such an incomplete, black-and-white narrative distorts our views on the merits of a host of public policies—through this lens, progressive taxes become akin to "punishing success," and public policies aimed at correcting past injustices become "hand outs." The list goes on.

Instead of falling over ourselves in gleeful adulation of the superrich, let's honor the labors of all hard-working people across the country, and not overlook all the nuances. At the very least, it will be a more honest dialogue.
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 License

Sorry to disappointithe venal minions of anti-American conservatism, but we do not live in, nor or we teetering on the edge of a socialist economy. On the contrary we are living in the plutocratic crony corporate economy that conservatives have been shoving down our throats for years - an economy that rewards wealth because, you know, the wealthier are just better human beings than the rest of us and workers should be grateful for what trickles down.

Seven Venal Anti-American Moments From Conservatives

Seven Venal Anti-American Moments From Conservatives

1. Christian radio hosts says Colorado floods caused by homosexual activity.

However much he excels at it, Pat Robertson is far from the only televangelist who blames natural and unnatural disasters on gay people; plenty of young, up-and-coming, ultra-right, impervious-to-science bible-thumpers agree. So it was that this week, Christian pastor and radio host Kevin Swanson said abortion, marijuana legalization and “decadent homosexual activity” were the causes of the catastrophic flooding in Colorado.

Especially that last one. It just so happens that the Denver Postfeatured Colorado state House Speaker Mark Ferrandino kissing his gay partner not too long ago, and Swanson sees a connection.

 “Is it a coincidence that this was the worst year politically in the history of Colorado, at least if you use God’s law as a means of determining human ethics?” he asked the listeners of his "Generations With Vision" show. “So here we have the very worst year in Colorado’s year in terms of let’s kill as many babies as possible, let’s make sure we encourage as much decadent homosexual activity as possible, let’s break God’s law with impudence at every single level. Let’s make sure that we offend whoever wrote the Bible, so we have the worst year possible politically in the state of Colorado and it happens to be the worst year ever in terms of flood and fire damage in Colorado’s history.”

Co-host Dave Buehner chimed in, paraphrasing a Bible verse, saying, "this last year we walked in lewdness, lust, drunkenness, revelries, drinking parties.”

“Marijuana,” Swanson added, though the Bible fails to mention it.

Before there were floods, there was fire. Earlier this year, Swanson said Ferrandino’s gay kiss and women wearing pants were the causes of forest fires in Colorado.

2. Louie Gohmert: Guns...spoons...same thing.
The depressingly familiar spectacle of gun nuts spewing illogical nonsense was in evidence again this week after the mass shooting at the Washington Navy Yard Monday. The part of the script that never changes is that gun violence can only be solved by more guns. But Tea Partying Texas Rep. Louie Gohmert got a little creative with his metaphors when he said that blaming guns for gun violence was on a par with blaming obesity on “too many spoons.” The difference, of course, is that the spoon industry does not call for more spoons every time someone breaks the Guinness Book of World Records weight record.

Interestingly, though, Gohmert was willing to throw the video game industry under the bus, noting that shooters like Aaron Alexis often play them, probably because the video game lobby is not as well organized, or well-funded as the gun lobby. And speaking of the NRA, you might think that the Washington shootings would knock the teeth out of the argument that the shooting of innocents would happen less often with armed guards around, since Navy Yards have those, but no, the NRA is standing its ground, so to speak, because, as spokesman Wayne La Pierre headscratchingly said, “The Navy Yard shooting happened because of gun control.”

Huh?

3. Koch brothers: Cervical cancer is a small price to pay to defeat Obamacare.

In their abject desperation to forestall the implementation of Obamacare, right-wing zealots released some ads this week that are bound to go down in history as some of the most absurd pieces of political video ever created.

The ad campaign created by Generation Opportunity [3], which is funded by the ultra-conservative Koch brothers, specifically targets young people with the rather irresponsible message that they really don’t need health insurance. Better to “opt out,” pay the fine, it’s cheaper. Also, for young women, it avoids those uncomfortable gynecological exams, the ones that might save you from cervical cancer. The somewhat deranged looking advertisement features the legs of a woman in stirrups, presumably ready for her potentially life-saving pap smear, when all of sudden a wooden marionette Uncle Sam pops up between her legs. Uncle Sam apparently wants her. In the final scene, Uncle Sam is shown holding a speculum.

Young men can also get in on the invasive healthcare action with Obamacare. Another ad features a young man about to receive a prostate exam. He is told to take off his pants, and Uncle Sam appears behind him.

We knew right-wing Republicans had an unhealthy obsession with our orifices, from advocating mandatory vaginal probes for abortion seekers to seeking reinstatement of anti-sodomy laws, but these ads are truly hitting a new low. The good news is that the young people seeing them are not so easily fooled.

Caution: If you see the ads you might make the mistake of thinking you are watching "Saturday Night Live" parodies, even if it is the middle of the day on Tuesday.

4. Fox News’ Todd Starnes has a racist reaction to the new Miss America.

Usually a ridiculous, outdated exercise in mere sexism, this year’s Miss America pageant managed to spark a conversation about ethnicity and nationality when it bestowed the coveted tiara on Nina Davuluri, a native of Syracuse, New York who is of Indian descent. This apparent triumph for diversity quickly degenerated into a carnival of hate speech in the twitterverse, where idiots naturally assumed Davuluri was an Arab or a Muslim, and therefore a terrorist.

Not to be outdone in ill-informed racism, Fox News radio host [4] Todd Starnes said the American-born Davuluri doesn’t “represent American values.” The American values purveyor in the contest was Theresa Vail, a blonde-haired, blue-eyed Kansan, who spent five year in the Kansas National Guard. Starnes' theory: Vail lost because, “the liberal Miss America judges were not interested in a gun-toting, deer-hunting, military veteran.”

5. He’s back. Steve “cantaloupe calves” King opines some more on undocumented immigrants.

Saying irresponsible, racist things about immigrants is Iowa Tea Party Rep. Steve King’s brand, and he continues to hone and promote it. At a recent anti-immigration rally in Omaha, he out and out called “illegal immigrants” a murderous mob. King recounted to the already-converted-to-hate audience a conversation he had recently with INS agent Mike Cutler at a congressional hearing. “How many Americans have died at the hands of illegal immigrants? What’s the price Americans are paying for an open door policy?” King asked Cutler.

To which, King claims Cutler helpfully replied: “‘I don’t know the answer to that, but I can tell you it will be in multiples of the victims of September 11th."

Good at math King, randomly multiplied 9/11’s death toll of about 3,000 by four and told the hate rally that 12,000 murders were likely committed by these out-of-control immigrants, who would be crashing planes into our buildings if they could, but sometimes just have to settle for raping and murdering us.

6. Ken Cuccinelli supporter at a rally: Did you hear the one about the rabbi?

Normally, Virginia’s Republican gubernatorial hopeful can handle making his own offensive comments — like the time he compared immigrants to vermin in need of extermination. But at a recent rally for Cuccinelli, it was Virginia Republican leader John Whitbeck who trotted out the off-color joke.

Whitbeck is the Republican leader in Virginia's 10th congressional District, and he is also a Catholic, he wanted the crowd to know. His hilarious joke concerned an incident in which the “head of the Jewish faith” (FYI, there is no head of the Jewish faith) hands a "ceremonial piece of paper" to the pope. And the pope says, “that was a bill for the Last Supper.”

Okay, we don’t exactly get it either.

Alienating Jewish voters is poor campaign strategy. Cuccinelli has already alienated women with his anti-choice rhetoric, and alienated modern people by advocating reinstatement of anti-sodomy laws. So the Cuccinelli team quickly tried to distance their candidate from the anti-Semitic joke. One campaign strategist even told the Washington Post he did not even know who Whitbeck was.

When in doubt, deny, deny, deny.

7. Idaho Republican proposes license to discriminate against same-sex couples.

Not content to simply deny food stamps to poor people this week, busy House Republicans also continued their fight to deny equal rights to married same-sex couples. A group led by Rep. Raúl Labrador of Idaho proposed a new bill that would provide a nationwide “license to discriminate” against them, although of course Labrador claims the bill is about protecting “religious liberty.” The logic with these attempts is always this: It discriminates against Christians (or other religious people, but really Christians) not to be able to discriminate against gays. The draft of the bill says there would be no consequences for any organization, business or individual who refuses to recognize same-sex marriage. Exact words:

    “The Federal Government shall not take an adverse action against a person, on the basis that such person acts in accordance with a religious belief that marriage is or should be recognized as the union of one man and one woman, or that sexual relations are properly reserved to such a marriage.”

Such prudish legislation could have far-reaching consequences: Businesses could refuse benefits to same-sex partners, hospitals could refuse visitation rights, anyone at all could refuse services to LGBT people—pretty much all of the civil rights that legalizing same-sex marriage were meant to protect would vaporize.

Unsurprisingly, in the up-is-down world of rabid conservative thinking, the Heritage Foundation and National Organization of Marriage heartily endorsed the proposed legislation for “encouraging tolerance.”

Conservatism is a form of fascism - though fascism is not something that started around the mid 20th century - fascism and it's ugly twin conservatism is descended from the days of kings, peasants and slaves. Even then the kings, the princes - the landowners told the regular folks that what they were doing was for the glory of the kingdom and God. Pretty much what conservatives do today - claim that the anti-American agenda they shove down our throats is good for the country and what their freaky interpretation of God's will. Conservatism ( the Republican partay in the U.S.) really stands for what conservatism sounds like - to be very conservative, to keep things the way they were back in the day - all the power, money, pledges and rights for the elite, and everyone else better get down on their knees and be grateful for our modern day King Louies and John Galts.

Patriotic American Veterans and Seniors have No Reason To Support The Radical Conservative Agenda

Patriotic American Seniors have No Reason To Support The Radical Conservative Agenda

Heritage Foundation president and former Senator Jim DeMint suggested to a town hall audience in Wilmington, Delaware, Thursday that health care programs like Medicare and Medicaid are “un-American” and built on the principles of “socialism and collectivism.”

“I cannot think of anything that’s more un-American than national government-run health care,” DeMint said. “Those who believe in those principles of socialism and collectivism we’ve seen over the centuries, they see as their holy grail taking control of the health care system.”

Though DeMint was referring specifically to the Affordable Care Act, a law the Heritage Foundation is urging Congress to defund in next month’s continuing resolution, his comments could also apply to existing programs that have more direct government involvement than the ACA.

While the federal government does establish the rules and guidelines private insurers must follow in offering coverage for the uninsured though reform and directly finances insurance expansion for lower-income Americans who are eligible for Medicaid — often by contracting with private insurers — numerous other popular government programs like Medicare, the Veterans Health Administration and even the Federal Employees Health Benefits Plan (FEHBP) (which DeMint himself relied on for health care coverage as a member of the Senate) are operated by the government.

Public health comprises more than 40 percent [2] of the nation’s health care spending and that percentage will remain stable [3] as the Affordable Care Act is implemented. By 2014,“private health insurance is anticipated to account forroughly 31 percent [4]of national health spending, or about the same share as was expected without enactment of the Affordable Care Act,” actuaries at the Center for Medicare and Medicaid estimate.

DeMint warned his town hall audience that the system threatens Americans’ freedoms. “[Health care is] such a personal service, it’s such a big part of the economy,” he said. “If [Democrats] can control that, they can control most areas of our lives.”

Nothing could be more American than Americans taking care of Americans. What is Medicare? It is an insurance program that Americans pay into to help ourselves, our families and our neighbors. And if any kind of public program is anti-American socialism as freaky radical conservative Jim DeMint says, than every veteran who has ever received any benefits from government health care is a socialist. Why can't seniors, vets and the disabled pay their own way. Well, the fact is they do. One way or another they contribute money, work or economic activity to the system, run by and for the people. What could be more democratic about that. DeMint and the increasingly radical conservative movement are preaching a dangerous UnAmerican philosophy called social-darwinism. It is time to stop being fooled by conservative doubletalk that wraps deeply radical UnAmerican ideas in the flag and the Bible.

This Week's Links For True Blue Patriots

This Week's Links For True Blue Patriots

Good News: Gilberton Police Chief  and Neo-Confederate Conservative Mark Kessler Suspended Indefinitely

 GOP’s destructive grifter: Super Conservative America Hater Jim DeMint peddles political poison - Republicans are starting to realize that Jim DeMint's “Defund Obamacare” campaign is all about funding his empire

National Right to Kill Children member and draft dodging America hater Ted Nugent: Great Society "Responsible For More Destruction To Black America" Than Slavery, KKK

In fact, the President Lyndon Johnson's Great Society initiative -- which included Medicare, Medicaid and a variety of other anti-poverty programs -- was responsible for significant and lasting reductions in poverty. As Washington Post reporter Dylan Matthews noted, "the best evidence indicates that the War on Poverty made a real and lasting difference"

Health Insurance "Coverage Gap" Coming to a Red State Near You

Roughly 260 million Americans (roughly 85 percent) already have health insurance provided by their employers, the government or through individual policies they purchased. In places like Oregon, Colorado, New York, California and other, mostly Democratic states, governors and state legislators accepted the expansion of Medicaid to provide free health insurance for those earning up to 138 percent of the federal poverty (FPL). For those earning between 138 and 400 percent of the FPL, the Affordable Care Act's subsidies will help them purchase insurance in the private market. But in the states where Republicans said "no" to the expansion of Medicaid, the picture is much different. As the AP explained the coverage gap:

    Nearly 2 in 3 uninsured people who would qualify for health coverage under an expansion of Medicaid live in states which won't broaden the program or have not yet decided on expansion.

The resulting Republican body count is staggering. Thanks to the GOP's rejection of Medicaid expansion, 1.3 million people in Texas, 1 million in Florida, 534,000 in Georgia and 267,000 in Missouri will be ensnared in the coverage gap.

How can this be, the conservative movement claims to be pro-life. It truns out they mean they only care about clumps of cells.

National Public Radio, which the wacky conservative movement claims has a pro-American liberal bias, Pushes Myth That Raising Minimum Wage Would Kill Jobs. These large corporations are making historic profits and paying their executives historically high wages and bonuses. They could pay themselves something reasonable for not doing much except seating at a desk and going to meetings, take the money saved and pay it to the people who do the actual work that makes these companies have a profit.

In Effort To Woo Female Voters, The UnAmerican plastic patriot from Kentucky Sen. Mitch McConnell(R) Touts Women’s Law He Voted Against

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.