You really cannot fix stupid

Washington was recently visited by Tea Party members rallying to urge Congress to “Defund Obamacare.” Here is the most interesting (and ironic) thing about the Defund Obamacare effort: Even if Congressional Republicans hold America’s budget hostage and shut down the government, it won’t defund Obamacare; but it would defund America by stopping the funding of critical programs.

A government shutdown will not defund or shut down Obamacare. That is what the Congressional Research Service reported when asked by Sen. Tom Coburn, R-OK.  How is that possible? Obamacare is funded by multiyear, mandatory funding. Such funding is unaffected by the annual appropriations that the Tea Party wants House Speaker John Boehner to shut down. The state marketplaces set up by Obamacare (known more commonly as “exchanges”), the subsidies for low-income people to buy insurance, the individual mandate and all the new rules prohibiting insurance company discriminations and abuses (remember the days of pre-existing conditions?) will all go forward even if the Tea Party succeeds in disrupting this year’s federal budget.

The Tea Party’s rationale is not valid – and its goal is not possible. Nevertheless, whether or not Boehner will cave to the Tea Party’s demands remains very much in question. Boehner may indeed try to defund Obamacare and end up defunding America instead. After all, his speakership rests in part on his ability to keep the extremists in his caucus supporting him – not always easy with Eric Cantor circling overhead like a vulture.

No wonder Senator Richard Burr, R-NC, called the defund plan “the dumbest idea” he ever heard, and why Sen. John McCain, R-AZ, called it “Shenanigans.”

Okay, so shutting down Obamacare is not possible. The Tea Party is all confused (ignoramuses). They claim the reason to “exempt America” from the Affordable Care Act is that Congress is already exempted from it and because large employers are, too.  Neither point is true.

First, the federal Office of Personnel Management ruled a few weeks ago that members of Congress and their staffs will, indeed, receive their insurance through the state Marketplaces. But, Tea Party leaders apparently figure people have not heard the OPM news – and they are probably correct about that.  The majority of Americans do not bother to keep up with what’s going on in Washington.  Among those who do, too many watch Faux News (“We Deceive. You Believe.”)  Tea Party leaders feel that there is no need to tell the truth. Why let facts get in the way?

Second, 96 percent of large employers already offer health insurance because that is what the market demands. Only 4 percent of employers do not offer insurance.  They did not get an “exemption” as the Tea Party contends; they simply got a temporary delay in having to provide insurance so that they have more time to get their act together. Obama decided he didn’t need to fight with a tiny handful of businesses if they honestly needed a few more months to get organized to offer insurance.

So it is a lie to say that Congress and big business is permanently “exempt” from Obamacare.

What would happen if the Tea Party “won” and shut the government down? What impact would they have? Here are some examples of who would get hurt if Republicans defund America:

• Recent veterans returning from Afghanistan, who try to file new claims with the VA. Although VA hospitals would presumably remain open in a shutdown, the staff (who normally handle new claims) would not be at their desks.
• Parents sending their kids back to school, who want to know that federal food inspectors will be on the job making sure peanut butter and hamburgers are not contaminated.
• College students who have questions about federal student loans, including vets using the GI Bill (which is often late or incorrect in its disbursement) – but who will find no staff at the Department of Education or VA desks to answer their questions.
• Grandparents who are finally old enough for Social Security and want to file a new claim will find that there is not Social Security staff around to get them started. Social Security will continue to be sent out on time – that is, unless the tea party also succeeds in convincing the GOP to push America into a default crisis at the beginning of October, when the credit card payments come due that Congress has racked up; then nobody knows what will happen.
• Americans of all ages who get hit by the flu season or an outbreak of whooping cough, because there won’t be Centers for Disease Control and Prevention staff at their desks to track and warn us about the flu or any other disease.
• Government workers will be sent home, including those who process your tax refund.
• Grandma will not be able to have her surgery because the Medicare people will not be there to process her claim. 

But they cannot defund Obamacare by shutting down the government.  It is impossible.  It also cannot be repealed (although the House R’s have tried to do so over 40 times).  It is the law of the land.  It is here to stay.

One Tea Party leader recently wrote in USA Today that she is “undeterred by the consequences” of a government shutdown. Oh, really? Doesn’t she care who gets hurt?  Or does she only care about making a political statement? No wonder only 7% of Americans side with the Tea Party’s idea of shutting down the government over Obamacare. The other 93% do not want to defund America.

If the Republicans go ahead with their plan to shut down the government – causing Americans to not receive their Social Security checks, Military pay, etc – it will not take long before Congress’ phones will be ringing off the hook from constituents angry that the shutdown affected them.  Obama will not be blamed for this (except on Faux News), the Teapublicans in the House will be blamed (and Boehner).  It will become a Republican kamikaze mission – perhaps even causing the party to lose in 2014 and then self-destruct. (Oh boy! Wouldn’t that be wonderful!)

Damn…these Teapublicans are incredibly stupid – and you cannot fix them – you truly cannot fix “stupid.”  These fools are beyond repair.  I think they left what little brains they had at the schoolhouse door.

What really threatens our country

There appears to be a huge and growing hatred among the Republicans towards the poor (considered to be lazy), the sick (they must have done something to cause it), anything science related (science is not of God), anyone who is not a “real” American (not white or Christian), and a hatred for any kind of compromise with the other half of America (as if democracy could exist without compromise). There is an abiding love of money; and worship of wealth is the running theme throughout American society. Last, too many Americans treat their “love of country” the same as they love a football team: us against them. USA! USA! USA!

Yet we have an even greater problem – a national sickness – a fetish for guns and a propensity for spectacular violence.

James Holmes killed 12 people and wounded 59 others in a movie theater in Aurora, Colorado.  In one of the worst mass shootings in American history, Adam Lanza, 20, fatally shot twenty children and six adult staff members in a mass murder at Sandy Hook Elementary School in the village of Sandy Hook in Newtown, Connecticut. Before driving to the school, Lanza had shot and killed his mother Nancy at their Newtown home. As first responders arrived, he committed suicide by shooting himself in the head.

This is a depressingly familiar tale of modern American life – the massacre of innocent people with guns and ammunition legally acquired with relative ease. Unfortunately, while such mass killings are all too prevalent, so too is the muted response of policymakers.

The Sandy Hook shooting bleakly follows this pattern: liberals call for more gun control measures while conservatives argue that we need more not less armed Americans to keep us safe. And even if a great majority of Americans want stronger background check rules, Republicans would rather more Americans die than to give Obama a "victory."

The result is that the United States has the weakest gun control laws in the developed world.

Look to the Trayvon Martin murder.  Zimmerman is a vigilante carrying a special gun that has no safety so the gun would fire faster. He stalked Trayvon with the intent to kill if Trayvon made any move against him.  He did not think Trayvon had the right to stand his ground – that being a law for white (or in Zimmerman's case, half-white, half Hispanic) men only to use as they please. The all-white jury (with one Hispanic) felt the same way.

Now imagine these scenarios with a different protagonist. Imagine if the killer was a young jihadist, trained in the wilds of Pakistan's FATA region, or Yemen. Imagine if the atrocity was replicated in other theaters or schools around the country as a coordinated mass killing. How would the reaction to this crime differ? It is not hard to imagine at all. For example, after the so-called underwear bomber failed to blow up an American plane in December 2009, the US ramped up its drone operations against Al Qaeda in Yemen. Or go further back to September 11 when 3,000 Americans were killed in the worst terrorist attack in American history. In response, the US spent more than $3 trillion in direct and indirect costs. In addition, subsequent invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq led to more Americans being killed or maimed than died on 11 September itself.

But the larger point here is that the country's political leaders activated resources to deal with the perceived threat that came from terrorism – military and intelligence budgets were significantly increased; foreign wars were started; homeland security was tightened up. Twelve years after 9/11, the US is still waging wars in Afghanistan, Pakistan, Yemen and Somalia to defeat terrorists who were, last year, responsible for the deaths of 17 Americans. And now we will possibly "surgically" strike Syria even though our country is not threatened by that civil war. We are looking to "punish" the Assad regime for using chemical weapons, although we did not do so when Saddam used these weapons against the Kurds or when the Egyptian government used them. Efforts to lower defense spending simply to the unjustifiably high levels of a mere five years ago have been met with criticisms from both Republicans and Democrats. In short, even as the obvious threat from terrorism against our country has decreased, the U.S. continues to squander blood and treasure in fighting it.

Contrast this mobilization against terrorism with efforts to save the lives of those Americans who die from lack of healthcare coverage. From 2000 to 2006 – a time when the war on terrorism was operating at full speed – 137,000 Americans died prematurely because they did not have health insurance. The vast majority of Americans die from one of four ailments: cardiovascular disease, cancer, diabetes and chronic lung disease. Each of these is primarily caused by risk factors that are quite preventable: smoking, diet, lack of physical activity and alcohol.

Then there is the creeping reality of global warming, denied by too many on the right, which has the potential to threaten the homes and livelihoods of millions. And then of course, there is America's high rate of gun-related deaths.

The cynical might argue that the lack of a major response to the Aurora shooting is a result of the powerful influence of the gun lobby in Washington, and the reluctance of politicians to risk their wrath – and that is certainly part of it. But the lack of action on minimizing gun-related violence in the US is actually very much consistent with how Americans deal with the many domestic threats in our midst.

Though all of the issues mentioned above qualify as genuine national emergencies, little has been done to confront them. Instead, in just the past few weeks, Republicans in the House, for the 40th time, passed a repeal of the healthcare law that provides 30 million Americans with access to health insurance and have even sought to eliminate preventative healthcare initiatives.

There are many reasons for this odd situation in which Americans overreact to foreign challenges and barely react to real and growing domestic threats. Some of it is psychological: the unknown can seem scarier than the known. There is the often knee-jerk anti-federal-government reaction of many Americans – an iron-clad belief that expansion of government to deal with serious national challenges will inevitably lead to a loss of freedom (except when fighting foreign enemies of course). There are the failures of not just the country's political leaders, but also its political system. Or perhaps it is simply a refusal by Americans to realize our own limitations and faults as a nation. (Oh, you are saying we have faults? How dare you deny American exceptionalism!)

Whatever the reason, the result is the same – a nation that sees itself as the greatest force for good in the world but is rotting from the inside because it has yet to come to grips with its own domestic sicknesses. The response (or lack thereof) to each American tragedy speaks to a national denial about that which really threatens us from within our borders (and I do not mean the illegal immigrants).

We will be our own undoing.

KKK and GOP are the same

The modern day Republican Party’s policies align with the KKK on many issues. The Ku Klux Klan (KKK) is a far right organization that advocates white supremacy, white nationalism, subordination of women, and anti-immigration, and anti-union. Their main goal was, is, and always has been racial subordination. Since their founding, they have fought against voting rights of black people and the right to keep and bear arms for black people. They are now using issues of illegal immigration, urban crime, civil unions and same-sex marriage to recruit new members. 

Republicans don’t like being called out on their Jim Crow voting laws or their Stand Your Ground gun laws that frequently do not get interpreted the same for black people or women as they do for the whitest man in the room. (Look at the Trayvon Martin case as an example, where the white jury did not understand that Trayvon had a right to stand his ground – or that Zimmerman was the perpetrator of the altercation that resulted in his murdering Trayvon.) And since they know it is “bad” to be a racist, they will deny their true beliefs while hiding under the deflection that Democrats were racist way back in the late 1860s when the KKK was founded by six veterans of the Confederate Army. This is the “they did it first” routine that children use. It is true that Democrats founded the original KKK over 150 years ago, but the Democratic Party switched sides in 1948 with the addition of a civil rights campaign plank.  It was the Democrat Party fighting for Civil Rights in the 1960s that lost the Southern white voters to the Republican Party. So, the Republican Party is now the party of the KKK – not the Democrats.

Why did the racists switch to the GOP? Many reasons, but we can attribute a lot of that shift to Nixon’s Southern Strategy and the current attempts to disguise the racism inherent in the strategy.  Lee Atwater, the architect of the Southern Strategy, explained in an infamous interview that took place as he was serving under Reagan:

 “You start out in 1954 by saying, ‘N*****, n*****, n*****.’ By 1968 you can’t say ‘n*****’ – that hurts you, backfires – so you say stuff like forced busing, states’ rights, and all that…. You’re talking about cutting taxes, and all these things you’re talking about are totally economic things and a byproduct of them is, blacks get hurt worse than whites.”   

The Republican’s Tea Party base gobbles up this type of coded language – they know exactly what it means.  Racists love the Republican policies that hurt and subordinate minorities and women. It makes them furious to think of the non-white population taking good paying jobs and daring to vote.  It makes them furious that women are no longer staying home, barefoot and pregnant. They are denying their racism – and sexism – and accusing the Democrats of it. But they are speaking to their shrinking base; no one else listens to them or believes what they say.

Many voters now see the GOP as obstructing Obama because he is black. Republicans can deny this all they want, but the numbers don’t lie.  Even as they scream at the top of their lungs that they are not racist, their strategy is beginning to backfire on them. There are many former Republicans and real independents who did not vote Republican in the last few elections because they could not morally do so, due to the rampant racism. What matters to voters is where each party stands TODAY, not 150 years ago. The racist people left the Democratic Party over the issue of Civil Rights and joined today’s White Hood party; aka the Republican Party.

Because the KKK still exists and aligns with the Republican Party issues-wise, attracting the racists in this country, you cannot spell KKK without the letters G-O-P.

This is a summary of:  Educating Republicans – Why You Can’t Spell KKK Without the Letters G-O-P, By Sarah Jones Aug. 15th, 2013

http://www.politicususa.com/2013/08/15/klan-members-democrats-desperate-deflections-racist-party.html

Why the United States is no longer number 1

America is the richest country on Earth. We have the most millionaires, the most billionaires and our wealthiest citizens have garnered more of the planet's riches than any other group in the world. We even have hedge fund managers who make in one hour as much as the average family makes in 21 years!

This opulence is supposed to trickle down to the rest of us, improving the lives of everyday Americans. At least that is what free-market cheerleaders repeatedly promise us.  Unfortunately, it's a lie, one of the biggest ever perpetrated on the American people. Our middle class is falling further and further behind in comparison to the rest of the world. We keep hearing that America is number one. Well, when it comes to middle-class wealth, we are number 27!

The most telling comparative measurement is median wealth (per adult). It describes the amount of wealth accumulated by the person precisely in the middle of the wealth distribution – 50 percent of the adult population has more wealth, while 50 percent has less. You can't get more middle than that.

Wealth is measured by the total sum of all our assets (homes, bank accounts, stocks, bonds etc.) minus our liabilities (outstanding loans and other debts). It the best indicator we have for individual and family prosperity. While the never-ending accumulation of wealth may be wrecking the planet, wealth also provides basic security, especially in a country like ours with such skimpy social programs. Wealth allows us to survive periods of economic turmoil. Wealth allows our children to go to college without incurring crippling debts, or to get help for the down payment on their first homes. As Billie Holiday sings, "God bless the child that's got his own."

There are 26 other countries with a median wealth higher than ours. Why?

• Weak labor laws undermine unions and give large corporations more power to keep wages and benefits down. Unions now represent less than 7 percent of all private sector workers, the lowest ever recorded.
• Our minimum wage is pathetic, especially in comparison to other developed nations. (We're # 13.) Nobody can live decently on $7.25 an hour. Our poverty-level minimum wage puts downward pressure on the wages of all working people. And while we secure important victories for a few unpaid sick days, most other developed nations provide a month of guaranteed paid vacations as well as many paid sick days.
• Wall Street is out of control. Once deregulation started 30 years ago, money has gushed to the top as Wall Street was free to find more and more unethical ways to fleece us.  These people do not contribute anything to society.  They make nothing tangible – they are takers.  They feed on our financial structure, sucking our country’s wealth and resources to the top.
• Higher education puts our kids into debt. In most other countries higher education is practically tuition-free. Indebted students are not likely to accumulate wealth anytime soon.  
• The wealthy dominate politics. Nowhere else in the developed world are the rich and their corporations able to buy elections with such impunity.
• Big Money dominates the media. The real story about how we're getting ripped off is hidden in a blizzard of BS that comes from all the major media outlets...brought to you by....corporations.
• America encourages globalization of production so that workers here are in constant competition with the lower-wage workers all over the world as well as with highly automated technologies.

Our tax structures favor the rich and their corporations that no longer pay their fair share. They move money to foreign tax havens, they create and use tax loopholes, and they fight to make sure the source of most of their wealth – capital gains – is taxed at low rates. Meanwhile the rest of us are pressed to make up the difference or suffer deteriorating public services.

Read more here: Big Lie – America Doesn't Have #1 Richest Middle-Class in the World...We're Ranked 27th! By Les Leopold

http://www.alternet.org/economy/americas-middle-class-27th-richest?paging=off

 

GOP is killing American exceptionalism

America is near the end of its thirty year slide into second-rate status. it is all due to the Republican drive to give most of this country's wealth to the richest one-percent. It began with Republican deregulation of the financial industry that gave Wall Street power to transfer wealth from the middle class into the coffers of the wealthy. Then they hide their money offshore to avoid paying taxes to support the country that made them wealthy.

 

The final blow was the 2008 crash caused by Wall Street's and Big Banks' derivative trading – gambling with mortgage securities. Derivative trading is what caused tens-of-millions of Americans to lose their jobs, bankrupted retirement accounts, and millions of middle class Americans to lose their greatest asset, their homes.

In many citizens’ minds, America is extraordinary, special, and the best place on the planet to live. Among those in the GOP, this perception is based on absolutist ideology and gross lack of knowledge of circumstances in other countries. Yes, there was a time when America was exceptional – over thirty years ago when people had the opportunity to attain the American dream of a middle class income through hard work and perseverance. However, about thirty years ago a b-movie actor ushered in the era of America’s decline when his directors gave him a script to convince ignorant citizens that handing over the nation’s wealth and assets to the rich and their corporations was the key to middle class success.

Trickle down economics is not working. The only thing that has trickled down is hardship. Middle class income has stagnated and even lost ground in many cases. The results have been that America is no longer exceptional and is rapidly deteriorating into an inferior second-rate status compared to the rest of the developed world.

Yes, America is the richest nation on Earth. It is home to the most millionaires and billionaires of any country on the planet. But that is where the exceptionalism ends. In just about every other category, America is very behind the rest of the world. Many Americans are led to believe the country’s “great middle class” is proof positive the nation is exceptional, but according to the “Global Wealth Data Book 2012″ America’s middle class ranks 27^th in wealth – behind poorer nations such as Spain, Ireland, France, and Cyprus. And to top it off, due to thirty years of Republican policies, the American middle class is watching what little they have left transferred to the richest one-percent.

The U.S. has fallen behind the rest of the western world in standard of living. The problem is the weak labor laws that give corporations and big business the ability to pay poverty wages with few benefits. In nearly every other industrialized country, every country provides healthcare, every job provides at least a month of guaranteed paid vacation, and as many paid sick days as one needs to recover from illness or injury. Republicans are now busy passing laws making it illegal to provide paid sick leave. The Republican House of Representative just passed legislation eliminating overtime pay. They are also trying to eliminate worker compensation rules for on-the-job injuries and have said that they would like to abolish the minimum wage. America’s inadequate minimum wage is 13^th among developed nations. Abolishing the minimum wage would put American labor on par with peasants in third-world countries.

ALEC’s Republican right-to-work states have more poverty-level residents than do other states while their corporations haul in record profits. Yet, these states actually get more federal dollars given to them than they pay into the national coffer.

America has the WORST healthcare system among modern nations because few can afford it, and even if they can, this country’s people have the worst health outcomes of all other industrialized countries on Earth. In the event of a serious health issue or injury, Americans are guaranteed to join the poverty ranks making the Republican drive to destroy the Affordable Care Act all the more Draconian. In many Republican states, at the behest of the Koch brothers’ Americans for Prosperity organization, the GOP is desperate to make senior citizens’ Medicare and Social Security a thing of the past regardless of the fact they paid into it their entire working lives.

In nearly every country on Earth a college education is virtually tuition-free and yet in America, Republicans decry spending on any education and are driving college students into life-long unsustainable debt to enrich the banking industry. In most Republican states, ALEC templates are diverting public school funds to private religious schools to enrich corporations and create the next generation of ignorant Americans claiming the nation is exceptional.

America’s social programs and safety nets are among the worst in the world.  Instead of bolstering them to help Americans climb out of poverty, Republicans slash them to provide tax breaks for the rich and corporations. Because of this, nearly a quarter of America’s children are living in poverty with millions of Americans earning insufficient wages to put nutritious food on the table. The idea of ever achieving anything more is being thwarted by Republicans in all areas of government, but particularly in the states. Right to work laws, banning minimum wage, eliminating Medicaid, eliminating Medicare and Social Security, prohibiting paid sick leave, robbing food and housing assistance for seniors and the poor to provide more of the nation’s wealth for the rich and their corporations are all part of the Republicans’ three decade effort to destroy the middle class.

America was once an exceptional nation due to the rise of the great middle class. This rise happened after WWII under Democratic policies. Since Reagan, Republicans’ thirty year effort to destroy the middle class is reaching fruition as we slide into a nation of peasants with a ruling wealthy class.

President Obama said, “…our country cannot succeed when a shrinking few do very well and a growing number barely make it. America’s prosperity must rest upon the broad shoulders of a rising middle class. We know that America thrives when every person can find independence and pride in their work; when the wages of honest labor liberate families from the brink of hardship. We are true to our creed when a little girl born into the bleakest poverty knows that she has the same chance to succeed as anybody else, because she is an American, she is free, and she is equal, not just in the eyes of God but also in our own.”

Another one bites the dust

Republicans have a penchant for lying in order to get their way.  One of their biggest lies – that Social Security is going broke – was dealt a blow by the latest Social Security trustees report which found that the program will be able to pay every benefit from tax money coming in until 2033 – and after 2033, if Congress does nothing, there is enough in reserve to pay three-quarters of future benefits for a long time.

The report is basically the same as last year. Social Security is fine for the next twenty years. The report also contained good news for Medicare, as it is now projected to be solvent until 2026. In a statement, Senator Bernie Sanders stressed that these findings confirmed what the reality based political world already knew. Senator Sanders said, “The report from the Social Security trustees confirms what many of us have known, that Social Security is not ‘going broke,’ that it can pay every benefit owed to every eligible American for the next 20 years and that after 2033 there is enough in reserve to pay three-quarters of future benefits.”

Republicans have been claiming that Social Security is going broke for years in order to justify the privatization of the program. The right has also argued that Medicare needs to be replaced with a voucher system because it is going broke. It turns out that both of these claims are absurdly false. While this report is bad news for those Republicans who are trying to sell privatization, it is also bad news for President Obama. The president has made the argument in the past that cost of living adjustments need to be cut by moving to a chained CPI. Today’s report illustrates that there is no need for impulsive steps in the name of getting a deal on entitlements.  The program simply needs tweaking, such as raising the ceiling on how much income can be taxed.

Do not get me wrong, Medicare and Social Security both have revenue problems, but these problems are not imminent. There is still a long term systemic problem looming. Some action will have to be taken in order to shore up the two beloved programs. However, there is a huge difference between tweaking the programs and what Republicans want to do, privatize both programs. Contrary to what Republicans have been saying, there is no need to gut and privatize the programs. Social Security is not going broke, and Medicare is not in immediate danger.

There is one simple solution out there that could keep Social Security strong for decades to come. The cap on the payroll tax should be raised or eliminated so that the wealthy are paying more into the Social Security Trust Fund. As long as millionaires and billionaires continue to pay payroll tax only on only the first $113,700 that they earn, Social Security will always be just a decade or two away from crisis.  Let's raise the cap to $250,000.

Senate Democrats are on the record as opposing any cuts to Social Security.  Today’s report should strengthen their resolve. This has not stopped Republicans from trying to spin the report by exaggerating the potential future problems, but their cries of “we must privatize and put the money with Wall Street” have been largely discredited.

Republicans lie, but the numbers do not. Social Security is not going broke.

Voting against Obama even if it kills us

Pat Toomey (R-PA) has admitted in an interview that the bill for expanded background checks for gun purchases was defeated because Republicans opposed the bill out of a desire to deny the president a victory.  This is regardless of the fact that over 90% of Americans want stronger background checks. Here is what Toomey said, according to a write-up in the Times Herald:

“In the end it didn’t pass because we’re so politicized. There were some on my side who did not want to be seen helping the president do something he wanted to get done, just because the president wanted to do it.” In subsequent comments, he tried to walk that remark part-way back by noting he meant to say Republicans across the nation in general, not just those in the Senate. “The toughest thing to do in politics is to do the right thing when your supporters think the right thing is something else.”

According to Toomey, what doomed Manchin-Toomey is that Republicans across the country opposed it because the president supported it. Having a Republican on record confirming this is useful. As Steve Benen notes, it makes the accusations that Obama needs to “lead” and “twist arms” look ridiculous – in fact, it makes those who say this look ignorant.

Toomey’s concession is particularly relevant to the ongoing debate over Obama’s remarks at his latest press conference. He said:

“…Their base thinks that compromise with me is somehow a betrayal. They’re worried about primaries. And I understand all that. And we’re going to try to do everything we can to create a permission structure for them to be able to do what’s going to be best for the country. But it’s going to take some time.”This is no different from what Toomey said about his own party.

Toomey took a very big political risk by entering into negotiations on a proposal to expand background checks. He knew would it rile up the “gun rights” portion of the GOP base. Toomey and Joe Manchin — both Senators from states with deep gun cultures – negotiated a compromise that went to great lengths to show deference to the gun culture and gun owners. It exempted private transfers through non-commercial portals, so transfers among family members, friends, gun hobbyists and hunters would not be touched, and strengthened prohibitions against the national gun registry conservatives claimed to fear. The idea underlying the proposal was backed by over 80% of Americans. It had the support of a majority of the Senate – including Republicans like John McCain.

Toomey spent weeks trying to talk fellow Republicans – officials and voters alike – into accepting this compromise. But it did not work – virtually all Republican Senators voted against it.  And there is no mystery as to why.  According to Toomey, Republican voters across the country would not support this common sense effort to address a problem that is killing thousands of Americans every year simply because Obama supported it. 

Speaking of biting off your own nose to spite your face…that is just what Republicans are doing.  They will vote against Obama to keep from giving him any type of victory, even if it kills the rest of us.

Destroying public schools will destroy democracy

Free-market conservatives view government schools (public education) as a socialist experiment. They want public schools privatized in the same way they support privatization of Medicare and Social Security. They believe that the private sector does everything well and governments do everything badly. They also believe that the masses should not be educated. An educated population demands better wages and working conditions, skewing the free market.  They also do not want a true democracy where the people have a say in how the country (company) is run.  They believe the old adage that what is good for General Motors is good for the country – meaning what is good for corporations is good for the country.

There are two groups aligned with the free-market conservatives.  Religious fundamentalists – who resent secular education – want public schools to let religion, including prayers, back into schools. Otherwise, they want to see public schools destroyed.  More disturbing are the legislators who proclaim their support for public schools.  They show up at school events, work their way into photo-ops with students and shower praise on teachers.  And all the while, these two-faced liars sponsor ALEC bills and cast votes that undermine public education. 

Through ALEC, the corporate-funded American Legislative Exchange Council, behind closed doors, these corporations hand state legislators fully written out laws they desire to be passed in each state. These laws directly benefit the corporate bottom line. Both legislatures and corporations have membership in ALEC.  Corporations sit on all nine ALEC task forces and vote with legislators to approve “model” bills. They have their own corporate governing board which meets jointly with the legislative board. Corporations fund almost all of ALEC's operations. Participating legislators, overwhelmingly conservative Republicans, then bring those proposals home and introduce them in statehouses as their own brilliant ideas – without disclosing that corporations crafted the bills.

Let's look at Alabama as an example:

Recently, the Decatur Daily – one of the few independent newspapers left in the state – included two stories that were a reminder of the insidious attack on public education. One story was about local stores that, like others around the state, are losing ground to online retailers. The state sales tax goes to the Educational Trust Fund, which finances K-12 schools as well as colleges and universities. An exception to that rule, passed in the 2012 legislative session, instead directs 75 percent of Internet sales taxes to the General Fund. Not a big deal, it seemed, because not many people pay sales tax on their Internet purchases.

But after the law passed, however, Alabama Governor Robert Bentley supported a bill in Congress that would require the largest Internet retailers to withhold sales taxes and remit them to the state of the purchaser. It was a surprisingly pro-tax position for a governor that consistently opposes tax increases. The Marketplace Fairness Act would send up to $200 million in sales taxes to Alabama, Bentley predicted. This would be huge for the state’s perpetually underfunded school system if it were not for the 2012 law redirecting Internet sales taxes to the General Fund.

The second story in the Decatur Daily was about increasing support among Republican lawmakers, who hold a super-majority in both houses, for an increase in the tobacco tax. Showing unusual 'concern' for the poor, they tied their support to an elimination of sales taxes on groceries. Here’s the problem: They want the tobacco tax to go to the General Fund. Currently, the sales tax on groceries goes to the Education Trust Fund. The revenue-neutral financial impact, therefore, would be to transfer money from the ETF to the General Fund. This is a devious scheme to divide those who believe it is immoral both to tax the poor on food and to deprive children of a solid education. And as if not enough damage has been done, the State budget passed would saddle the ETF with $16 million in mental health spending previously included in the General Fund budget, while cutting $10 million from the nationally respected Alabama Reading Initiative. 

All this comes, of course, after last month’s passage of the Alabama Accountability Act, an act of legislative gamesmanship that duped the superintendent of the state Department of Education. He supported a school 'flexibility' bill. At the last minute, the bill tripled in size and morphed into a scheme to provide tax credits – paid for by the Education Trust Fund – to any citizen to send their children to private schools. Budget estimates make clear that legislators expect the only significant impact of the law will be to provide tax credits to families whose children already are enrolled in private schools. If they are correct, the law will slice about $60 million from public schools. If they are wrong, it will reduce funding by much more - upwards of $300 million.

  

Both the Accountability Act passed this years and a school 'grading' law passed last year penalize schools whose students perform poorly on standardized tests, an odd policy for a state Legislature that for years has griped about the emphasis on standardized tests imposed by the federal No Child Left Behind law. 

Former President John Adams, in 1785, wrote:

“The whole people must take upon themselves the education of the whole people and be willing to bear the expenses of it. There should not be a district of one mile square, without a school in it, not founded by a charitable individual, but maintained at the public expense of the people themselves.” 

Lawmakers are persistently and aggressively decreasing the resources that public schools have at their disposal. And very little of the public knows about this because the state’s three largest newspapers are run by a right leaning corporation out of New York City.  I often find that many important issues are left out of these three newspapers – and many legislative issues that are written about are whitewashed.  The Alabama public remains ignorant as to what these Republican scoundrels are doing to education in this state.

The public schools in Alabama are much worse off because of this Republican dominated, ALEC-affiliated legislature. If lawmakers continue without public resistance – if voters continue to be ignorant of the consequences due to lack of locally-run newspapers in the major metropolitan areas of the state – then public education will be destroyed.

I may be biased on the value of public schools. I attended public schools, taught in public school for 25 years, and I have family members that work for them or are retired from them. I do not see them as a socialist entitlement but as a cornerstone of opportunity and of effective democracy. 

But, of course, Republicans do not really want an 'effective democracy' where all citizens get to participate, but instead prefer to establish a plutocracy – rule by the wealthy, or power provided by wealth. Destroying public schools ought to do it just fine.

 

Being the Family Scapegoat

I am back from my sabbatical. I am still learning to live with Celiac Disease, but I am no longer in terrible pain.  I am actually staying out of bed now, and doing some mild daily activities.  I have learned what products contain hidden gluten; and the gluten-free bread that I have learned to bake for myself is no longer failing.  Yea!

So here is my first post of the year.  It is about being the family scapegoat – which I have been since the day I was born.  My very first memory from age two is one of extreme fear because my little brother had just fallen and was screaming. Already, at age two, I knew I would be blamed and get a beating.

Being the Family Scapegoat

Scapegoating is a seriously insidious dysfunctional family problem where one child in the family is blamed for everything that goes wrong – where this one child is picked on, constantly put down, and too often physically ‘punished’ (abused) for an imagined wrongdoing. In scapegoating, one of the authority figures has made a subconscious decision that somebody in the family is the bad girl or boy. The mother or father makes one child bad and then looks for things (sometimes real, but most often imagined) that are wrong in order to punish or belittle the child.

The scapegoat, the outcast of the dysfunctional family, is made to carry the hidden blame and shame of relatives who refuse to acknowledge their own problems. Dysfunctional families are steeped in shame, and cannot look at their own issues. They have poor insight into their own behaviors and problems, and will do anything to appear normal or exceptional to outsiders, despite the fact that in reality, they are terribly crippled by their fears, addictions, mental disorders, abuse, neglect and insecurities.

While dysfunctional parents dance around the obvious real problems right before their eyes, they play a toxic game with the scapegoated child. The game is called, “You are the reason for anything and everything that is bad or wrong in my life.” The scapegoat cannot escape this role, which is typically assigned by the dysfunctional parent during the child’s first years, long before a child can think objectively about messages given to them.

Some Examples of Scapegoating in the Home:
• A parent who systematically singles out one child for blame when things go wrong in the family.
• A parent who punishes one child more severely than the siblings.
• A parent who assigns undesirable responsibilities and chores to just one child in the family.
• A parent who humiliates the child in front of the child’s friends.
• A parent who routinely speaks more negatively to or about one child in the family.

There are different reasons one child is singled out to be scapegoated. Perhaps the child is vulnerable – or the child is hyperactive or noncompliant or questions authority or reminds the parent of someone he/she hates. Sometimes the scapegoated child is viewed as weak – one who cannot defend herself. At times the parent heaps on the blame because he cannot stand the child who has traits and characteristics that are similar to his own or personality traits similar to a disliked relative. Other children in the family eventually pick up the scapegoating pattern and join in taunting and hurting the scapegoated child – even throughout adulthood. In extremely dysfunctional families, the parent may goad the other children to pick on the disfavored one – or, at the very least, brainwash the siblings to see the child in the same way the parent(s) does.

Sometimes one child is favored and given special status by the parent. This child can do no wrong. So, if the favored child does something ‘wrong’ it is laughed at as funny, whereas, if the scapegoat were to do the exact same thing, punishment is swift and fierce. All members of the family are affected. Children who are scapegoated often feel insecure and develop a victim mentality. They learn that they are at the bottom of the pecking order in the family and often automatically gravitate to that role at school or at work. Meanwhile, the child who is favored often develops her own form of pathology in that she grows up feeling special and entitled. One woman told me, "For years I resented my sister who my mother adored. I wished I had been special to my mother. Now I see how messed up my sister is and I'm glad I was not the chosen one of a very emotionally ill mother and/or father."

This dynamic of making one child "good" and another child "bad" in the family is a vicious generational theme learned and passed down from parents to children.

Scapegoating is manifested in abuse. Often an insecure parent will be aggressive with one of the children to vent his own sense of frustration at not doing well in life or at having made terrible mistakes at one point in time. Aggression in families creates poor self-esteem in the children – and not just the one being picked on and abused. Aggression, the use of force against another human being, is always present in scapegoating, usually in the form of extreme beatings with an object such as a belt, enabling self-righteous discharge of aggression and blame towards another.

Some humans need someone to take their anger out on and make that person the reason for anything that goes wrong. The aggressive person, the one doing the blaming, is one who tries to dominate others – often the father. But if the mother is treated cruelly by a domineering father, she will often become emotionally and physically aggressive toward the same child the father is abusing. Aggressiveness can take several forms. The aggressive person is frequently rude and humiliating, ("What do you mean, you aren't going to do it?"), or the aggressive person can become self-righteous ("I am only insisting on this for your own good."), or she/he can resort to being manipulative ("If you refuse, what will everyone think of you?")." Scapegoaters tend to have extra-punitive characteristics. Often it is insisted that a beating hurts the parent more than the child getting the beating – which, of course, is not true. The parent actually gets a perverse satisfaction from beating the child.

Scapegoating is a hostile social/psychological discrediting routine by which people move blame and responsibility away from themselves for their own failures and towards the targeted person or group. It is also a practice by which angry feelings of hostility toward an inaccessible person is projected, via inappropriate accusation, toward a child or other accessible person. The abuser is an insecure people driven to raise his or her own status by lowering the status of their target. The target receives misplaced vilification, blame and criticism; she is likely to suffer rejection from others whom the perpetrator is able to influence such as her siblings.

Bullying is always scapegoating. Physical and emotional abuse is always scapegoating. In scapegoating, feelings of guilt, aggression, blame and suffering are transferred away from the scapegoating bully so as to fulfill an unconscious drive to resolve or avoid bad feelings about oneself or one’s failures in life. This is done by the displacement of responsibility and blame onto another who serves as a target for both for the scapegoater and his supporters (the rest of family members). Scapegoating is the projection of a parent’s bad feelings about him or herself or about a hated relative onto the targeted child. It provides narcissistic gratification to him or her. It is the abuser saying:

"If I can put the blame on you, I don't have to recognize and take responsibility for the negative qualities in myself. What I can't stand about myself, I really hate in you and have to attack you for it in order to deny that I have the same quality." This distortion is always a feature of scapegoating. The displaced negative characteristics are blown out of proportion into something horribly bad.

The perpetrator's drive to displace and transfer responsibility away from him or her is not done with full consciousness – self-deception and denial are often features. In so far as the process is subconscious, it is more likely to be denied by the perpetrator if approached about what is being done. In such cases, any bad feelings – such as the perpetrator's own shame and guilt – are also likely to be denied.

The dysfunctional family cannot allow the role of scapegoat to go unfulfilled, because it serves an important purpose – it gives them a place to toss their unwanted psychological garbage. If they did relinquish the need for the role, they would have to face the problems they have found impossible to accept and address. In time, the role eventually becomes the scapegoat’s internalized false identity: “I am bad; I am wrong; I am the reason people are unhappy; I am worthless; and I am at fault for everything…” all too often become the scapegoat’s deeply-held beliefs. These self-depreciating beliefs are carried throughout their lifetime causing problems in decisions, relationships, and physical health (such as PTSD). Only counseling with a therapist trained specially in PTSD and working with adult survivors of child abuse can help alleviate some of the suffering.

The scapegoat experiences exclusion from family social events, ostracism, constant criticism, and embarrassing putdowns in front of outsiders. The scapegoat is often negatively gossiped and complained about even when not around. Children who grow up as the family scapegoat are likely to develop trust issues, resentment and low self-esteem. Children often blame themselves for such treatment and look for rationalizations for the way they are treated. They may begin to feel worthless, ugly, stupid or incompetent. They may do the opposite of overachieving and, instead, struggle academically and avoid opportunities which are deemed competitive. Adult children who have been scapegoated may struggle with explosive anger, pessimism and resentment in relationships, employment, and peer friendships.

Some children who are victims of scapegoating may try to prove their worth by becoming over-achievers in whatever the parent wants them to do, often to the detriment of their own aspirations and interests in life. Children who are victims of parental scapegoating are somewhat vulnerable to predatory groups and individuals who seek to take advantage of them. Religious cults, criminal gangs, terrorist organizations and thieves and violent or sexual predators often lure their victims by initially offering validation to people who have low self-worth.

The target's knowledge that she is being scapegoated usually builds slowly – over a lifetime. Complete realization of what has been happening usually does not occur until well into adulthood.

What Should You Do if You Are/Were the Family Scapegoat?

If you were designated the black sheep of the family, then studying this dynamic is the way to release yourself from its poison. Learn to recognize the negative family patterns of blame and shame and vow to stop doing them in this generation! Stop trying to win the favor of a parent who did not like you when you were growing up. A parent who rejects their child has some severe personality disturbance and is not likely to change. Don't expect the parent to "own" up to their mistreatment. Most likely, they will only deny and blame you again for being ungrateful.

In the case where a parent or parents refuse to own up to what they did (or possibly are still doing), children who were scapegoated should have as little to do with the abusive parent as they can when they grow up. In fact, moving many hours away to a different part of the country or to a different country altogether will enable the scapegoated child to build a better life as an adult. The ‘scapegoat’ should get into therapy and talk out her problems that have developed from being constantly abused and belittled. Therapy will help the scapegoat to learn to believe she is a valuable person in her own right. If therapy is not utilized, scapegoated children often end up in abusive relationships and possibly repeat the hateful pattern with their own child.

Even if the scapegoat eventually leaves the family, they are usually still considered the cause of all the family’s difficulties, no matter how much time has passed since they last saw the designated black sheep family member, because the family’s need to place blame and project shame onto another person still exists. They typically continue to carry the disdain and disgust toward the original scapegoat for decades – until death actually.

The role of scapegoat/black sheep/whipping boy/fall guy is a timeless classic that is typical of virtually all dysfunctional families. Parents with addictions and parents with personality disorders usually scapegoat at least one child.

Coping with Scapegoating - What NOT to Do:

• Don't blame yourself or assume that you did anything to deserve the way a person with a personality disorder treats you.
• Don't accept scapegoating as normal or allow it just to "go with the flow".
• Don't persecute someone else who is being scapegoated. That is participating in the abuse.
• Don't ignore it when someone else is being scapegoated. That is condoning abuse.
• Don't try to justify your worth by becoming an over-achiever. Don't work yourself harder to earn the love of a parent or family member. Real love is a free gift; it doesn't require people to jump through hoops.
• Don't immediately trust everybody or every organization who offers you validation. Save your trust for people who will treat you well and don't have a hidden agenda of their own.
• Don't waste your time and energy trying to change another person's opinion of you. That will only lead to circular conversations. As painful as it is to admit, you have no power or control over another person's thoughts, words and actions.
• Don't retaliate or try to hurt a person who scapegoats you. Try, as best you can, to disengage from them. Remove them from your life.

Coping with Scapegoating - What To Do:

• End the conversation and remove yourself from the house whenever anybody treats you badly. Leave.
• Call the police if anybody hurts you physically. If you are young, report it to a responsible caring adult.
• Try to base your own opinion of yourself on your good qualities – learned through counseling – not on other people's negative emotions.
• Get support. Find validating and healthy friendships and relationships where people will appreciate your worth, show grace and love toward you, and encourage you to be the best that you can be.
• Escaping the family’s toxic blame through removing oneself from the family – possibly by moving away to a new town or state – is best.
• If you choose to return to visit the family after therapy and years of distance – if you believe you have healed and can handle your family’s negativity – then do so. But keep your eyes wide open since your family members will not have changed. Their treatment of you will be the same – possibly worse.

What I have done to help myself heal

After years of therapy due to a childhood full of abuse and scapegoating, I still kept finding myself in the position of scapegoat whenever I visited with my family. Whenever this happened, I felt a primal sense of desperation and pain that seemed to threaten my emotional survival. I didn't understand that when I found myself in an old familiar situation (being around my parents and siblings) I kept reacting just as I did as a child.

I looked outward to my husband for relief rather than inward to myself, because I viewed my scapegoat mantel as something only my family and/or others could undo. I was frantic to get them to see this – to get my family to love and accept me. I didn’t realize that it was something that cannot be done. It took me a long time to realize that by becoming defensive and engaging in old arguments, I was wearing my scapegoat mantle every time I went ‘home’. It wasn’t until I put time and space between myself and my family that I could heal enough to stand confidently in my own experience and extricate myself from the scapegoat role. Putting time and space between me and them – basically divorcing myself from my family – was not easy to do.

Finding a good counselor with whom I could talk about my childhood abuse (which still continues) was extremely important. Validation of me as a good person from my counselor and my husband was the key to ridding myself from a wide array of childhood traumas. The trick is to differentiate from those who are supportive and those whom we want to be supportive and are not.

Whenever anyone suggested that I was wholly responsible for my childhood abuse or family estrangement (such as my sisters), or told me that I needed to be accepting and forgiving toward them, I learned to not accept what they said and changed the subject. Over a period of many years, with the aid of supportive individuals – who did “get it” – I learned to set and guard my boundaries. I learned that I wasn't responsible for my mistreatment by my family – it was undeserved. Nor was I responsible for the dysfunction of my family.

Eventually, I realized I had to break things off with my parents and siblings in order to heal. They will never stop scapegoating me. The constant criticism, blame, and belittling will never stop. So, I have removed myself from their lives. I have built a life without them. I have found love, grace, and acceptance with my husband’s family. My husband’s family is now my family, too. As far as I am concerned they are my only family.

I believe that I have now found my path to healing and finding peace if I can only be strong enough to walk it to the end and not look back.

Taking a break

I need a break. I need to rest.

I was recently diagnosed with Celiac Disease (a genetic disease) and cannot have wheat, barley, rye or oats. Yes, that not only means no bread, but all the products that contain any wheat, such as Campbells soup. I am overwhelmed with the changes I must make to my diet -- but I am so glad to know why I have been plagued with numerous illnesses all my life. They are all rooted in Celiac Disease -- from my asthma to the osteoporosis to the chronic fatigue to the debilitating stomach problems, and perhaps the fibromyalgia, too.

I never realized how many packaged products have gluten in them -- from Campbell Soup to ketchup to tuna. Often it is the added "flavorings" and the msg. Sometimes it is hidden -- and I have not yet learned the many, many names it is hidden under. It took forever to learn to recognize all things derived from corn. Now I must learn the names of gluten derivatives, too.

Everything gluten-free offered in the stores is high in calories (like I really need to gain more weight), full of soy or corn (terrible allergy to both), or full of salt (instant blood pressure rise). So, I am having to learn to bake gluten-free bread and re-learn how to shop. So far, every gluten-free bread recipe has been a flop.

Anyway, as I said above, I am overwhelmed with it all. I already have had a plate overflowing with life's difficulties. 

I will probably be back blogging by summer when I have hopefully resolved my own situation and the political season is in full swing. Until then:

‘Happy trails to you, until we meet again.’

Broken bootstraps

A Washington Post-ABC News poll reveals what we have all sensed, that most Americans are increasingly concerned about the growing gap between rich and poor in this country. The issue quickly divides along partisan lines, as do so many, with liberals urging government to do more to reduce this gap and conservatives opposing such measures. (Overall, when you include independents, a significant majority does favor government action.)

But on an issue even more significant than income inequality, there appears to be agreement with both conservatives and liberals: the importance of social mobility. Indiana Gov. Mitch Daniels (R) accurately noted that “upward mobility from the bottom is the basis of the American promise.”

Some believe we are still doing fine. In his address to the Heritage Foundation last month, Rep. Paul Ryan (R-WI) declared, “Class is not a fixed designation in this country. We are an upwardly mobile society with a lot of movement between income groups.” Ryan contrasted social mobility in the United States with that in Europe, where “top-heavy welfare states have replaced the traditional aristocracies, and masses of the long-term unemployed are locked into the new lower class.”

But Ryan is wrong.

In fact, over the past decade, growing evidence shows conclusively that social mobility has stalled in this country. Time Magazine asked, “Can You Still Move Up in America?” The answer, citing a series of academic studies was, “NO...not as much as you could in the past and not as much as you can in Europe.”

In other words, you have a better chance of moving upward in income and class in one of those European "socialist" countries.

The most comprehensive comparative study, done last year by the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development, found that “upward mobility from the bottom” was significantly lower in the United States than in most major European countries, including Germany, Sweden, the Netherlands, and Denmark. Another study, by the Institute for the Study of Labor in Germany in 2006, concludes that "the U.S. appears to be exceptional in having less rather than more upward mobility."

A 2010 Economic Mobility Project study found that in almost every respect, the United States has a more rigid socioeconomic class structure than Canada. Sons of fathers in the bottom tenth of earners are more likely to remain in the bottom tenth of earners as adults than are Canadian sons (22 percent vs. 16 percent). And U.S. sons of fathers in the bottom third of earnings distribution are less likely to make it into the top half as adults than are sons of low-earning Canadian fathers.

Surveying all the evidence, Scott Winship, a fellow at the Brookings Institution, concludes in the National Review: “What is clear is that in at least one regard American mobility is exceptional…in our limited upward mobility from the bottom.”

When you think about it, these results should not be so surprising. European countries, perhaps haunted by their past as class-ridden societies, have made serious investments to create equality of opportunity for all. They typically have extremely good childhood health and nutrition programs, and they have far better public education systems than the United States does. As a result, poor children compete on a more equal footing against the rich.

In the United States, however, if you are born into poverty, you are highly likely to have malnutrition, childhood sicknesses, and a bad education. The dirty little secret about the U.S. welfare state is that it spends very little on the poor – who don’t vote much – lavishing attention instead on the middle class.

The result is clear. A student interviewed by Opportunity Nation, a bipartisan group founded to address these issues, put it succinctly, “The ZIP code you’re born in shouldn’t determine your destiny, but too often it does.”

Tackling income inequality is a very difficult challenge. Tax increases on the rich will do relatively little to change the basic trend, which is fueled by globalization, technology and the increasing gains conferred by education. (Getting back to the 1990 levels of income distribution in the United States, for example, would mean hundreds of billions of dollars of redistribution every year, which is exponentially larger than the biggest tax hikes anyone is proposing.)

But we do know how to create social mobility – because we used to do it. In addition, we can learn from those countries that do it so well, particularly in Northern Europe and Canada. The ingredients are obvious: decent health care, nutrition for children, good public education, high-quality infrastructure – including broadband Internet – to connect all regions and all people to market opportunities, and a flexible and competitive free economy. That will get America moving again – and all Americans moving again.



Taken from: The downward path of upward mobility, by Fareed Zakaria

Are you paying attention?

The GOP made the decision to react to the news of Obama working with NATO to help Libyan revolutionaries fight for their freedom – precipitating Qaddafi’s death – as the small minded, spiteful people that they are. Two Republican senators stepped up to the microphones to express their gratitude to our French and British allies – well deserved by the way – each taking great care to avoid crediting the Obama strategy for any part in this success.

Appearing on Fox, Sen. Graham (R-SC) had this to say when discussing the future of Libya: “We can go over there and help them build their infrastructure up.”

What?! (…I say with my head spinning around…)

On the very day that Senate Republicans – including Graham – voted down a proposal to authorize money that would keep teachers teaching and firefighters ready to fight fires and policemen policing, Graham said that we need to spend taxpayer money to build up Libyan infrastructure.  Graham has a perfect voting record in blocking badly needed infrastructure investment here in the United States, such as repairs to schools and bridges. Yet he declares his enthusiasm for spending a bunch of money to engage in another nation building exercise.

Why? Why is Graham so eager to invest in Libya’s infrastructure while gladly allowing his own nation to crumble in ruin?

The answer is… wait….wait for it…. drum roll… because there is lots of money for the United States to make in building the future in Libya!

Oh, yesssss…you read that right. Senator Graham’s position could not have been expressed any more clearly.

Onward contractors! Onward oil companies!

Who needs to provide American children with an education or rebuild bridges and roads to save American lives when you can use taxpayer money to set things up for the U.S. oil barons to steal huge supplies of oil that belong to the Libyan people? So what if a few folks in Minneapolis fall to their death when the bridge collapses. We are talking billions in profits lying around in the African desert just waiting to be lapped up.

The most important thing to note here is that Republicans want to spend taxpayer cash to make the oil producing investments that they do not want to ask the oil companies to do on their own. Let's use taxpayer money to make millions of dollars for the oil companies and their shareholders.

Now that the French and English (let’s not give Obama any credit here) have succeeded in helping to free the Libyan people, the Libyans must now submit to America’s oil monopoly – or else. There is no surprise in learning that McCain and Graham, along with that DINO, Joe Lieberman – who never met a Muslin nation they do not wish to invade – would respond to being proven strategically wrong by attempting to pretend Obama’s clever plan to bring down Qaddafi never happened. Graham openly and boldly pitched the idea of spending taxpayer money to grab Libya’s oil without so much as saying one word about the importance of having helped the Libyan people achieve their freedom.

Now, I realize that this horrible Republican behavior will never register on the millions of Americans who cannot be bothered with paying attention to the greedy leaders they have chosen to get behind, no matter how shocking their decisions may be. They are too busy watching American Idol.

But to the many Independent voters – the ones who actually decide the elections in this country – I ask:

Are you paying attention to this? 

We are not islands

Time and again we are told that we have to pick ourselves up by our bootstraps, by ourselves, for ourselves, yet that is the exact same system that has been in place for decades and is in fact not working. The ideas put forth by the Republican Party are based on feeling no loyalty to anyone or anything; do only for yourself in everything all the time and let everyone else fall by the wayside. Within this “pull yourself up by your own bootstraps” belief system, the person who fails is considered lazy – therefore it is okay if he starves to death or dies from disease if he cannot afford healthcare.

That is a grim picture of the world – a dog eat dog viewpoint – one that is full of suffering and strife for millions of our citizens.

Middle class spending is the engine of our economy. But the middle class is losing ground with the typical family's take-home pay now at 1996 levels. Businesses are tied to the middle class, whether through direct sales and services or indirectly through government contracts paid for with our tax money. If the middle class is squeezed and refuses to spend what little resources they have left, then business profits will fall. It becomes a non-ending downward cycle.

Instead of trying to reach your business goals using people as stepping stones within a mountain of suffering humanity, what would it be like to realize how connected to one another we truly are – and how connected businesses are to the general welfare of the public. It is time for small businesses to hire people in a concerted effort to bring down the unemployment numbers so the middle class will feel secure enough to start spending again. No matter which party is in power, government can only do so much with tax cuts, small stimulus packages, etc.

It is businesses, both big and small, that will pull this economy out of the doldrums by their willingness to stop sitting on trillions of dollars of cash and, instead, investing it in American workers.

We are not islands within our own nation; nor is our nation an island within the world. We are all tied together and integral to each other’s survival. Only when we act in a manner where we acknowledge, strengthen, and participate in that connection will we fix the "middle class squeeze."

The killing was justified

All this upset about the rule of law over the killing of Anwar al-Awlaki is nonsense. How does the rule of law require that we deal with a Yemen-based terrorist who is waging war on us and is a U.S. citizen any differently than how we deal with a Yemen-based terrorist who is waging war on us and is not a U.S. citizen?

Answer: A non-citizen terrorist and a citizen terrorist get treated the same. If they both have operational roles in waging war against the U.S., they are both potential targets. What is substantively true and important about Awlaki is not that he was a United States citizen, but that he was an enemy of the United States!

Anwar al-Awlaki was more than just someone with an opposing political viewpoint. He wanted to destroy the United States. In his many online sermons (Youtube), he declared war against the U.S. He was actively engaged in waging war against the U.S. – as shown in the several plots he was involved in: the attempted Times Sq bombing, the attempted Detroit Christmas bombing, and the Ft Hood shooting where 13 Americans were killed and 29 wounded on American soil. Investigations before and after the shooting discovered e-mail communications between Hasan, the Ft. Hood shooter, and the Yemen-based cleric, Anwar al-Awlaki, who quickly declared Hasan a hero for "fighting against the U.S. army – an Islamic duty."

To those who say that just sending email back and forth with Hassan does not make Anwar al-Awlaki guilty of murdering Americans: Bin Laden did not ‘pull the trigger’ either. He was not in those airplanes that hit the World Trade Center. The emails show Major Hassan asking permission to kill American soldiers on American soil and Anwar al-Awlaki giving the permission. This is no different than what Bin Laden did – just on a different scale (for now).

Since the Ft. Hood shooting, the U.S. classified Anwar al-Awlaki as a Specially Designated Global Terrorist; and the UN considered Awlaki to be associated with al-Qaeda. As such he was an enemy combatant and could be designated as “capture or kill.”

When you cast your lot with our enemies, you become our enemy and should expect to be treated the same as them. We have the right to defend ourselves. The President was carrying out one of the most fundamental obligations in his post: to defend America against all enemies foreign and domestic.

To those who say the killing was not legal: The government did not just "think" this guy was a danger. Anwar al-Awlaki happily announced, admitted, and took great pride in plotting against America. This man went on Youtube and admitted to being a terrorist – not once, not twice, but over and over. He admitted his role in Major Hassan shooting many tens of Americans at Fort Hood – and openly admitted that he would like to see more killings. He provided material support to make that happen. How many times does it take for someone to say "I'm going to kill Americans" and prove out their words with actions until our killing them is justified? Was he ever going to stop unless he was killed? No.

Drone-based killings of jihadists have been going on steadily since the start of the Obama administration – hundreds more than under Bush. Did you ever complain about these killings before? No. The killing of Awlaki (plus the unplanned but welcome killing of his jihadist pal and fellow U.S. citizen Samir Kahn) is simply a part of that campaign which presumably most Americans have welcomed and supported. So, again, what relevance does Awlaki's U.S. citizenship have to this issue? None. He was an enemy waging war on us and seeking to mass murder us.

Our government has not suddenly started "killing U.S. citizens," which is the way those who are against this killing are painting it; rather, the government is continuing to do what it has been doing all along, which is killing Al-Qaeda jihadists.

I am not going to lose sleep over the death of a traitorous man who made terrorist threats and took terrorist actions against our country. Yes, he was an American citizen – but there was an imminent danger of Anwar al-Awlaki contributing to further attacks on U.S. citizens around the world and on American soil. Killing him was clearly justified in an act of American self-defense – to protect thousands of American lives.

Ron Paul is wrong. The killing of Anwar al-Awlaki was justified.

Case closed.

Saving the dream?

Conservative columnist Cal Thomas published an article on September 7 in which he advocated adoption of a plan developed by the Heritage Foundation to amend the tax system, reform government spending, and balance the federal budget.

I read through this very complicated document. The section regarding federal spending on healthcare is so bad that it requires comment. The plan advocates the provision of tax credits that families can use to buy insurance instead of employer-purchased plans, whether they are working or not.

The consequences of such actions would be disastrous!

Here’s why:

Currently, people who are employed and are lucky enough to have a group health plan supplied by their employer are insured regardless of their health history or that of their dependents. The same is true of governmental employees. The same goes for people who are able to obtain Medicaid (which is becoming increasingly difficult) and for people who are able to obtain Medicare.

Private insurance companies operate to make a profit, which is certainly understandable. They use the premiums collected to pay for medical services used by their customers. To the extent that they can collect premiums and not pay for services, they increase their profits. When they provide insurance to members of large groups, they are able to spread the risk of large payouts across many individuals and increase their chances of operating profitably.

For the vast numbers of people who are not eligible for such coverage, individual or family plans are extremely expensive; and if there is any negative health history, these plans are either unaffordable, the relevant health problem is excluded, or the plan provides minimal coverage. Private plans costing more than $1,000 per month all too often pay for essentially nothing. And anyone who has employer-based insurance is subject to the same problem. If they become sick and can no longer work, they lose their employer-based insurance – and if their family is dependent on this insurance, all will become uninsured.

The Heritage Foundation plan addresses none of these problems. It is a ‘you are on your own, sucker’ plan that saves the government money but puts a majority of Americans at risk. Without Medicaid and Medicare, those with significant medical problems would be unable to obtain coverage. The relatively small tax credit or voucher offered by the Republican Heritage Foundation would not fix the problem.

Furthermore, unlike “Obamacare,” no one is mandated to have healthcare insurance. This will reduce the pool of healthy people paying into the system. It leaves people with serious problems – who cannot afford insurance – to use emergency rooms to obtain acute care and no way to pay for chronic treatment.

The devil is in the details! The plan is posted on a website called “Saving the Dream’. Saving the dream? I don’t think so!


Heritage Foundation Healthcare Plan (touted by Congressional Republicans): www.savingthedream.com