So in the completely snow-covered global warming convention, Obama was supposed to be a rock star. President Bush, we were told, had so damaged our nation’s prestige in the world (particularly on the environment) that only a political deity like Obama could dig us out of this negative avalanche.
Yet, the great hope of Saul Alinsky has fallen flat on his face. It seems the world is souring on Obama nearly as quickly as America is. The U.K.’s Guardian reports that Obama "looked visibly frustrated as he appeared before world leaders."
Fringe gaggle of environmental freaks known as "Friends of Earth" claimed that Obama had "disappointed the whole world." Another observer remarked candidly that perhaps "Copenhagen isn’t Mr. Obama’s city" after his other failed visit here in an attempt to score an Olympic hosting job for Chicago. Then of course there was the fore-mentioned attack by his pal Chavez and an accompanying one from Castro.
Perhaps the "citizen of the world" -- returning to America with his tail between his legs and a non-binding yet somehow "meaningful" agreement -- can muster the strength to put aside his "hurt feelings" that people have rejected his supreme deity over mankind long enough to handle the little incident in Iraq, where peace-loving Iran has capturing an Iraqi oil field (no doubt simply for peaceful energy production similar to their nuclear program that Obama fails to see a problem with.) Probably not. It will simply be noted in a future speech as another positive contribution to America by Muslims.
The Federal Government has been taken over by Elitist Globalists (Global Corporations, Global Banks, etc.)
Nation Building, is a Globalist's Agenda
National Building is Anti-Taxpayer
9/11 Was a Pretext, for the Elite Gloalists to Commence their Mid-East Nation Building and further Globalization of the Planet
My Son is turning 18 years old soon
I will FIGHT the Elitist Globalist SCUMBAGS, before they take my Son and send him to Afghanistan, or any other Islamic Neanderthal Country, in the name of Nation Building.
To be clear: Bush/Clinton/Bush/Obama are ALL under the Control of Global Corporation and Global Bank's Globalization.
The Globalist SCUMBAGS are also Treasonous, as they allow millions of Poverty Immigrants to infultrate our borders.
You DIRTY RAT BASTARD Globalists will not get my Son (in a draft) without a fight.
The Tax Grabbers expect the Politicians to go after the "rich", or what's left of the Middle Class.
- KaptainAmericana
.........................................................................................................................................................................
WAKE UP! TAX-A-CHUS- SUCKS (USA)
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Date: 2009-12-19, 2:24AM EST
Reply to: mcsweeney10@verizon.net [Errors when replying to ads?]
WE ARE SO BLIND TO THE FACT WE LIVE IN A ONE PARTY STATE THAT HAS CREATED AN ARISTOCRACY ONTO ITSELF! WITH IT'S OWN POLICE STATE TO ENFORCE THIER WILL, KING GEORGE MUST BE LAUGHING IN HIS GRAVE. BUT,THEY CAN ONLY HAVE THIS POWER FOR AS LONG AS THE MASSES CONDONE IT. THATS WHAT THOMAS PAINE SAID OF THE BRITISH RULE. IN HIS PHAMLET COMMON SENSE. WE SHOULD USE OURS(COMMONSENCE) TO VOTE THEM OUT AND PUT POEPLE IN OFFICE THAT WILL REDUCE THE SIZE OF GOV'T ,CONTROL SPENDING&TAXES ,DEFEND OUR CONSTITUTIONS FEDERAL&STATE AND DE-REGULATE THE PEOPLE WITH REVENUE ENHANCING FINES&FEES WHEN WILL THEY REALIZE THE HAVE TAKEN OUR PURSUIT OF HAPPINESS AWAY FROM US! IT'S NOT THERE JOB TO JUST THINK OF MORE WAYS TO TAX,FINE&FEE US TO DEATH .GODS GIFT TO US IS OUR BRAIN TO REASON WITH, WE DON'T NEED GOV'T TO LEGISTLATE COMMON SENSE ,THATS IMPOSSIBLE. AND IF THE PEOPLE HAVE IT, THEY WOULD VOTE ALLOF YOU HACKS OUT INTO THE REAL WORLD TO SHOW HOW YOU'VE PUT US ALL IN ECONORMIC BONDAGE TO BIG GOV'T. BEWARE! THE MASSES ARE WAKING UP!
BEDFORD – U.S. Senate candidate Scott Brown today received the endorsement of veterans, including that of retired Navy captain and Congressional Medal of Honor recipient Tom Hudner and others who make up the “Veterans for Brown” coalition.
Brown used the event to blast his opponent Martha Coakley for her approach to prosecuting enemy combatants in the civilian court system.
“In dealing with terrorists, our tax dollars should pay for weapons to stop them, not lawyers to defend them,” said Brown. “Martha Coakley believes enemy combatants deserve a civilian trial in our court system instead of before a military tribunal. Her view is that the war on terror is principally a law enforcement matter. I disagree. Our Constitution and laws exist to protect this nation and its citizens -- they do not grant rights and privileges to enemies in war time.”
“Scott Brown offers the people of Massachusetts a different point of view. He believes that all Americans should have health care coverage but doesn’t support an expensive government takeover of the health care system. He supports energy alternatives to cut our dependence on foreign oil but knows that families and businesses would suffer under cap and trade,” said Hudner. “He has been steadfast in his support of veterans, understands what is important to us and will go to bat for us in Washington, D.C.” Hudner is a former commissioner of the Massachusetts Department of Veterans’ Services.
“I support Scott Brown because we need someone in Washington who understands Massachusetts and the needs of veterans,” said Bob Fairbairn, a former national committeeman and state commander of the military order of the Purple Heart. “He also understands the threats facing America and that we need to win the war in Afghanistan while doing everything we can to bring the troops home safely.”
In the Legislature, Brown has made veterans’ issues a priority. He is a member of the Public Safety and Homeland Security Committee, the Veterans & Federal Affairs Committee, the Governor’s Advisory Council on Veterans’ Services, and the Hidden Wounds of War Commission. Brown successfully argued to add a check-off box to the state income tax form so that more veterans could receive the Welcome Home Bonus to which they were entitled. He has spoken out against recent cuts to the Soldiers’ Homes in Chelsea and Holyoke.
Riddled with Taxes: This legislation is riddled with tax hikes. They start by taxing those
earning over $10,831 year who don’t buy health insurance $750—a tax that escalates to
$3,800 as income rises. Health insurance, health care devices and drugs are also taxed,
adding to the cost of health care, and decreasing the competitiveness of these businesses.
Medicare Cuts: The bill cuts $500 billion in Medicare spending, including over $130
billion in cuts to Medicare Advantage and nearly $120 billion in Medicare cuts for hospitals
that care for seniors. The Congressional Budget Office (CBO) says they “expected the
Medicare Advantage plans to lose 2.7 million enrollees over the next decade” as a result.
Raises Insurance Prices: CBO also finds “premiums in the new insurance exchanges
would tend to be higher than the average premiums in the current-law individual market…”
Force, Not Choice: This legislation includes an “individual mandate” forcing all Americans
to purchase health insurance, like the Massachusetts law. Taxpayer subsidies will be given
to those earning up to three times the federal poverty level. Those not qualifying for
subsides will be taxed up to $3,800 if they do not buy insurance. The experience in
Massachusetts has left those caught inbetween unable to afford insurance and having to pay
the tax.
Big Insurance Boondoggle: Forcing all the uninsured into insurance could bring as much as
$200 billion a year in new premiums to insurance companies, including $465 billion in
subsidies over 10 years.
Privacy Violation: This legislation would allow law enforcement agencies such as the FBI
and the Department of Justice unprecedented unfettered access to medical records.
No Lawsuit Reform: This bill fails to curb junk lawsuits. It doesn’t even implement the
“demonstrations projects” on reform the President called for (despite the fact that states like
Mississippi have already done so and seen medical malpractice insurance premiums drop 42
percent). Instead, it will “express the Sense of the Senate that health care reform presents an
opportunity to address issues related to medical malpractice and medical liability insurance.”
Bipartisan Opposition: The only thing bipartisan about this bill is the opposition to it.
A vote for cloture on this legislation is a vote in favor of government-run health care.
We will be watching your vote closely. VOTE NO!
Oppose a government takeover of healthcare!
-No Government Plan: American's can't afford the trillions of dollars in new taxes that would be required to pay for Obamacare.
-No Individual Mandate: Forcing people to buy insurance and then fining them or even putting them in jail if they don't is wrong.
-No Tax Hikes: Tax increases to pay for a new government program will only slow economic recovery and keep unemployment high.
In the USA, the single people and childless couples subsidize major costs of the families who have children. Those who decide to not have children are frequently accused of being selfish, yet their real estate taxes help pay for your children's schooling and sports. Couples who remain childless don't get workplace benefits like maternity leave or paternity leave. Those who remain childless do not get tax discounts for "additional dependents."
If anyone wanted to change the laws to "heavily tax" those who have more than one child, all they have to do is to remove all the tax breaks and other benefits that people with children currently receive.
If you are worried about people with children getting penalized, better watch out for the libertarians. Libertarians want government out of our private lives. If they get their way, you won't have to pay real estate taxes to fund for your local public schools, and the schools' sports programs. In fact, those with children will have to pay tuition for every child they have. Five children = five times the tuition rate. The more children you have, the more it will cost you personally when the state no longer subsidizes your brood. If you can't afford it, you may homeschool your children, but one of the parents will have to stay home to manage this--no dual incomes for you. Don't you childbearing people prefer to have the childless ones and single people subsidizing some of your children's expenses?
Better find a parent who has the time and energy to create a sports program for your homeschooled children, too, when the state no longer provides these programs. Or hire someone to create a local league for your children. You will have to pay your share for the league management, and the childless couples and single people will not be contributing to those costs either, if this were a true libertarian scenario.
Both of her parents, liberal Democrats, were standing there, so I asked her, “If you were President what would be the first thing you would do?”
She replied, “I'd give food and houses to all the homeless people.” Her parents beamed.
“Wow...what a worthy goal.” I told her, “But you don't have to wait until you're President to do that. You can come over to my house and mow the lawn, pull weeds, and sweep my driveway, and I'll pay you $50. Then I'll take you over to the grocery store where the homeless guy hangs out, and you can give him the $50 to use toward food and a new house.”
She thought that over for a few seconds, then she looked me straight in the eye and asked, “'Why doesn't the homeless guy come over and do the work, and you can just pay him the $50?”
"That decision has to be made by our leaders and our members," Lodes said. The event with the AARP and the other groups was scheduled before Reid made changes to the bill.
The SEIU executive board will hold what Lodes described as an "emergency" meeting Wednesday night to decide how to move forward. "Right now, they don't have the information they need to make this decision," said Lodes, who added that the SEIU informed the other organizations on Tuesday they would not be joining the press conference.
The board meeting likely will not produce a final determination by the union about whether to support advancing the Senate healthcare bill, which not only lacks a public option and the Medicare buy-in but also would levy an excise tax on so-called Cadillac health insurance plans that some union members have, Lodes said.
"We will not have an absolute decision coming," largely because Reid has not released the final language of the healthcare bill, she said.
A lot of us who consider ourselves "Birthers" are ridiculed by Obama's worshippers. Let them. There's still no concrete evidence he was born in Hawaii as he claims. I believe he was born to an underaged mother in Kenya and has never been an American citizen. The "Certificate of Live Birth" the Obama campaign released is un questionably a fraud. There's no mention of a hospital or physician name on it.
If Obama is Hawaiian born, there's a good chance he's not the son of the Kenyan Obama. His birth father is most likely his maternal granparent's friend and his mentor, Frank Marsahll Davis. Google image his picture and judge for yourself. Barack Obama, Jr. looks like Davis, not Obama, Sr.
Even if Barack Obama was born in Hawaii, there's the issue of his adoption by his mother's' second husband, Lolo Soetero, that made him an Indonesian citizen. The Indonesian school records have been released and he had to have been recognized as an Indonesian citizen to have attended.
Obama's spent well over a million dollars on teams of lawyers to keep his college records hidden. Most likely he was enrolled as an Indonesian national and got scholarship funding from that country. He may also have had an Indonesian passport. If he did, plain and simple, he's not legally entitled to be president.
Who paid for obama's college and grad school education? I have had Democrats actually answer this with - well everybody knows that answer. But nobody can tell it to me.
re: Truly Remarkable (Massachuasetts)
Date: 2009-12-17, 1:36PM EST
Reply to: comm-gumnq-1514500036@craigslist.org [Errors when replying to ads?]
IT'S REMARKABLE THAT THE PRESS CAN FIND EVERY WOMAN WITH WHOM TIGER WOODS HAS HAD AN AFFAIR IN THE LAST FEW YEARS, WITH PHOTOS, TEXT MESSAGES, RECORDED PHONE CALLS, ETC.
THEY KNOW NOT ONLY THE CAUSE OF THE FAMILY FIGHT, BUT THEY EVEN KNOW IT WAS A WEDGE FROM HIS GOLF BAG THAT SHE USED TO BREAK OUT THE WINDOWS IN THE ESCALADE. NOT ONLY THAT, THEY KNOW WHICH WEDGE!!!
THIS IS THE SAME PRESS (OR IS IT?) THAT CAN'T LOCATE OBAMA'S BIRTH CERTIFICATE... OR ANY OF HIS PAPERS WHILE IN COLLEGE.
THEY KNOW NOT ONLY THE CAUSE OF THE FAMILY FIGHT, BUT THEY EVEN KNOW IT WAS A WEDGE FROM HIS GOLF BAG THAT SHE USED TO BREAK OUT THE WINDOWS IN THE ESCALADE. NOT ONLY THAT, THEY KNOW WHICH WEDGE!!!
THIS IS THE SAME PRESS (OR IS IT?) THAT CAN'T LOCATE OBAMA'S BIRTH CERTIFICATE... OR ANY OF HIS PAPERS WHILE IN COLLEGE.
She is an excellent Bolshevick, and will do a tremendous job in foisting Multiculturalism, erasing the Middle Class, and strengthening the Central Government.
Please get out and Vote for Coakley, in order that we may enable a larger Utopian Central Government.
Clinton/Bush/Obama/Harvard Economics Professors, etc.: are either ignorant, misinformed or liars when they say "free trade".
The container ships are leaving the US ports EMPTY for the return trip to China, after they drop off the Chinese goods, in the ports of LA, and Long Beach CA.
There is only ONE-way trade. That is Chinese manufactured goods (Global Corporations) coming into the USA.
Some Bush Repugnant is going to say that "GE" is making money in China by building the infrastructure. BIG DEAL!!!!.......How does that help workers in the USA? It only serves those tied to GE in the Investor Class (Wall St.).
Do you know how difficult it is to sell, even a pair of socks in Japan and China?............Good luck!! You'll never get your goods on store shelves, unless you are closely connected to the leading bureaucrats like Global Corporations are.
What is so hard to understand? The USA has no real "Middle Class" anymore. It's the Investor Class, and the working poor. VIRTUAL Slaves working with aprons on at Home Depot.
Many of you in the Investor Class cannot figure out, that you need a Middle Class to BUY YOUR products that you are invested in. Your stocks will always be in danger, because there is NO more Middle Class consumers to purchase the goods you are invested in............WHAT IS SO FUNKING HARD to understand about this basic economic fact????
Wall Street IDIOTS have fear of "rising" wages. The MORONS cannot figure out that, "rising" wages build up "consumer confidence". You NEED a Middle Class consumer to purchase the goods and services, that you want your vested company to sell..........WHAT IS SO FUNKING HARD for the Investor Class to figure out??????
No wonder the "experts" on Wall Street have burned Average Joe Investor so many times. They are over educated IDIOTS, (and LYING Global Economy Zealots) !!!!
The New York Times' Nicholas Kristof recently wrote a column about John Brodniak of Oregon, who developed a cavernous hemangioma, causing him great pain as blood leaks into his brain.
According to Kristof, Brodniak can't get medical help because we don't have universal health care. Senators who vote against ObamaCare, Kristof said, are morally equivalent to someone who would walk past a man "writhing in pain on the sidewalk."
In another article in the Times, William Yardley wrote about Melvin Tsosies -- also of Oregon -- who ended up with $200,000 in medical bills after having a heart attack.
As of March 2008, Yardley reported, Tsosies was waiting to find out if he would win the Oregon lottery for health insurance. But with 600,000 uninsured state residents and a "universal" health care program with only enough money to pay for about 24,000 of them, Tsosies is more likely to win a Powerball lottery.
How can this be happening? Oregon already has "universal health care"! (Probably just a coincidence, but isn't Oregon also the only state with physician-assisted suicide?)
Once again forgetting about the existence of the Internet, the Times neglects to mention its own erstwhile enthusiasm for Oregon's universal health care plan, introduced back in 1990.
Back then, the Times published an editorial titled "Oregon's Brave Medical Experiment," hailing this technocratic monstrosity as an example of "hardheaded compassion" designed to make "health coverage available to many more families."
Ron Wyden -- then a congressman from Oregon, now a U.S. senator at the forefront of pushing "universal health care" onto the nation -- said: "This is a strong dramatic step toward universal access of health care." He predicted, "[T]his is going to be copied everywhere."
No wonder Wyden is such an ardent proponent of national health care -- it will force states that didn't adopt these idiotic universal health care schemes to bail out the ones that did.
Liberals cite medical horror stories from the very states they once cheered for enacting universal health care in order to argue for a national health care plan that will wreck the entire nation's medical care the same way liberal states already wrecked their own medical care.
Only Democrats could propose fixing one Bernie Madoff-style scam with an even bigger Bernie Madoff-style scam.
Maybe when national universal health care fails, we'll be able to go international. Then interplanetary -- then interstellar! Why should I pay for my gall bladder surgery when some Venusian could?
Eighty-five percent of Americans are happy with their health care, but Democrats have a plan to make it worse for more money. As a bonus, national health care will add trillions of dollars to the national debt, and your insurance rates will skyrocket.
Democrats are being utterly disingenuous to say that you won't have to leave your current plan under national health care. Maybe, but it won't be your choice: Your employer will be making that decision for you.
Recall that one of the big selling points of national health care is that it is supposed to reduce costs for American businesses. The only way national health care will make American companies "more competitive" is if they dump their employees into the public health care system.
It's so weird! We expected X number of people to show up for health care and instead 75X showed up! Yeah, just like every other government program in the history of the world.
Ten years from now, we'll be talking about cost overruns of $6 trillion -- but by then, national health care will be an untouchable "third rail" of politics, just as Medicare is now. (Ironically, injuries sustained from actually touching the third rail won't be covered under ObamaCare.)
As with Medicare, voters will be terrified to go back to even the wisp of a free market system we have now, afraid that they'll never be able to get health insurance without the government providing it. Having been dragged unwillingly into the government plan, how will a 58-year-old be able to leave the public system and get insurance on the free market?
Speaking of which, how many of you are planning to retire on your Social Security benefits? Just you there, with the shopping cart full of cans?
The only solution will be for the government to keep running up gigantic deficits and raising taxes on "the rich," which, in turn, will stifle job creation and economic growth in a phenomenon known to economists as "the Carter years."
In addition to forcing Americans into dealing with surly government workers in order to obtain medical care, sooner or later, there's no free lunch. (And if government X-rays are anything like the photos the DMV takes for your license, count me out. I don't want my lungs looking like they had a bad hair day.)
Even if national health care puts the screws to doctors and pharmaceutical companies by reimbursing them below cost -- so all future doctors will soon resemble DMV employees and no new drugs will ever be invented -- the government is still going to have to cut services and pay for the system with massive tax hikes.
Which is exactly what happened with Oregon's "Brave Medical Experiment."
Somerville, MA- Over 400 textile workers of Angelica Textile Services in Somerville initiated a strike on Thursday, December 10th at 11:00 am.
A national corporation, Angelica provides laundry and linen services to area hospitals and health care facilities through its Somerville facilities located across the street from the offices of Centro Presente on Inner Belt Road in East Somerville.
The strikers had been working without a contract since December 1st. Negotiations between the United Food and Commercial Workers Union (UFCW) Local 1445, representing the workers, and the company stalled on the provision of a living wage and improved benefits, including parental leave and affordable healthcare. Of the 450 workers, mostly immigrants, only 23 did not join the strike on the first day.
Beginning at 6:00 a.m. the strike continued into the frigid evening until midnight and resumes today at 6:00 am. Centro Presente will maintain its doors open to the workers for the entire time period to provide a respite from the frigid temperatures. The staff of Centro Presente have also literally stood with the workers on the picket line. Today, Friday December 11th there will be a larger rally at 11:00 a.m. in front of the offices of Angelica at 30 Inner Belt Road at noon, come and show support for these brave workers as they fight for Justice!
TAKE ACTION in Solidarity with Striking Immigrant Workers
Come and support the workers on the picket line. We are keeping the offices of Centro Presente open during the extent of the picket which has been from 6 am until midnight daily. We need volunteers to staff our office. If you are able to spend an hour or two in our office in support of these workers' struggle for a fair wage and health benefits.
Census Bureau figures released Wednesday update last year's prediction that white children would become a minority in 2023 and the overall white population would follow in 2042. The earlier estimate did not take into account a drop in the number of people moving into the U.S. because of the economic crisis and the immigration policies imposed after the Sept. 11, 2001, terror attacks.
The 2050 estimate is one of four projections released that is based on rates for births and deaths and a scenario in which immigration continues its more recent, slower pace of adding nearly 1 million new foreigners each year. Demographers said that scenario offers the best look for now at the future demographic makeup based on current conditions, rather than other models which assume higher rates of immigration.
The United States has 308 million people today; two-thirds are non-Hispanic whites.
The total population should climb to 399 million by 2050, under the new projection, with whites making up 49.9 percent of the population. Blacks will make up 12.2 percent, virtually unchanged from today. Hispanics, currently 15 percent of the population, will rise to 28 percent in 2050.
Asians are expected to increase from 4.4 percent of the population to 6 percent.
The point when minority children become the majority is expected to have a similar delay of roughly eight years, moving from 2023 to 2031.
The population 85 and older is projected to more than triple by 2050, to 18.6 million.
The actual shift in demographics will be influenced by a host of factors that can't be accurately forecast — the pace of the economic recovery, cultural changes, natural or manmade disasters, as well as an overhaul of immigration law, which may be debated in Congress as early as next year.
As a result, the Census Bureau said the projections should be used mostly as a guide.
The agency also released numbers showing projections based on "high" rates of immigration — more likely if more-flexible government policies and a booming U.S. economy attract large numbers of foreigners — as well as "low" immigration, a possible scenario if U.S. policies don't change much while the economy substantially improves.
_With high immigration, the minority "tipping point" is moved up to 2040, two years earlier than the previous estimate. At that time, Asians would have a much larger share, at 8 percent, since their population growth is more dependent on immigration than birth rates.
_With low immigration, the "tipping point" arrives by 2045.
Under a purely theoretical "zero immigration" scenario in which the U.S. effectively does not take in any immigrants, whites would remain the majority in 2050, making up a solid 58 percent of the U.S. population. In such a case, the share of Hispanics would increase to 21 percent because of high fertility rates and a younger population.
Under a "zero immigration" model, the 65 and older population also grows substantially faster, comprising nearly 1 in 4 Americans.
The strikers had been working without a contract since December 1st. Negotiations between the United Food and Commercial Workers Union (UFCW) Local 1445, representing the workers, and the company stalled on the provision of a living wage and improved benefits, including parental leave and affordable healthcare. Of the 450 workers, mostly immigrants, only 23 did not join the strike on the first day.
Beginning at 6:00 a.m. the strike continued into the frigid evening until midnight and resumes today at 6:00 am. Centro Presente will maintain its doors open to the workers for the entire time period to provide a respite from the frigid temperatures. The staff of Centro Presente have also literally stood with the workers on the picket line. Today, Friday December 11th there will be a larger rally at 11:00 a.m. in front of the offices of Angelica at 30 Inner Belt Road at noon, come and show support for these brave workers as they fight for Justice!
TAKE ACTION in Solidarity with Striking Immigrant Workers
Come and support the workers on the picket line. We are keeping the offices of Centro Presente open during the extent of the picket which has been from 6 am until midnight daily. We need volunteers to staff our office. If you are able to spend an hour or two in our office in support of these workers' struggle for a fair wage and health benefits.
"One school of thought says lowering the minimum wage will actually create more jobs," she continued, without mentioning any counterargument.
Laws enacted by Congress following the Democratic takeover in 2007 have increased the federal minimum wage to $7.25 an hour as of this July. Prior to that, the minimum wage hadn't been raised since 1997.
Inviting Fox News correspondent James Rosen to discuss the issue, Huddy first asked him: "Why don't we often hear about lowering the minimum wage?" Rosen said the recent minimum wage hike has set off "a furious debate" over its efficacy, and cited a 2008 paper called "Minimum Wages" by David Neumark and William Wascher that argued against the minimum wage. He called it a "landmark study."
To bolster his case, Rosen quoted Washington Post editorial writer Charles Lane as recently saying that cutting the minimum wage "would create some jobs for those who need them most."
Rosen said it's unlikely to happen because of Democratic lawmakers who oppose it for reasons of "social justice." Republicans who favor it, he said, do so because of "macroeconomics."
Fox then played a clip of Rep. Emanuel Cleaver (D-MO) dubbing the minimum wage "a minimum level of justice," along with one of Rep. Dave Camp (R-MI) saying it will "artificially raise the cost of hiring people."
At no point in the segment did either Huddy or Rosen mention an academic case in favor of the minimum wage -- they merely reduced that side of the argument to the nebulous concept of "social justice."
There are, however, accredited economic cases in favor of a strong minimum wage.
One famous study by David Card and Alan B. Krueger called "Minimum Wages and Employment" illustrated various ways by which increasing the minimum wage could decrease unemployment. Its research methods and conclusions have been endorsed by Nobel Laureates Paul Krugman and Joseph Stiglitz.
Another is a 2004 research paper by the Economic Policy Institute called "No Longer Getting By," which finds, among other things, that a robust minimum wage helps mitigate poverty and strengthens consumer purchasing power through periods of inflation.
Although the economy has picked up, job growth remains meek and unemployment is at 10 percent. Americans are anxious for solutions that would create jobs and mitigate their financial woes. According to Fox News, cutting the minimum wage is one answer to their problems
It seems that there has been a clear breach of the Separation of Powers designed into the US constitution - on the part of the current Executive Branch (President) and the Legislative Branch (Senators that met privately with the Pres), for the overt purpose of influencing the creation of a Law.
Hello, why no uproar from the members of the Legislative branch excluded from the meeting, the press and the citizenry? Not even from McCain?
So why do we absolutely have to have a health care bill before year end? Things have been this way for decades in this county.
Abuse of power - trying to influence and control the Congress - Actions that the founders intended to prevent!
If Obama wants to control the senate, he never should have taken an oath to be president. Read the footnotes to the on-line constitution in the link above, they are very informative about actions the president can not engage in like he seems to have done this week.
He could easily have gotten things going a year ago. he has the gift of giving great speeches. Instead he has used his rhetoric to spread gloom and doom to business people who just hunkered down to weather the long and brutal obama storm - will be over 10 years.
re: New poll reveals human cost of US unemployment (The Capitalist Paradise)
Date: 2009-12-16, 8:57AM EST
Reply to: see below
A new New York Times/CBS News poll offers a glimpse of the devastating human impact of the US unemployment crisis.
As massive bank bonuses are due to be announced this month, millions of people have been thrown out of their homes, find it impossible to pay for basic necessities, have depleted limited retirement savings or have lost their health care due to the unemployment crisis. The survey of over 700 unemployed adults was conducted between December 5 and December 10. Accompanying the survey on the Times web site were self-made computer videos of unemployed workers discussing their problems.
The poll and interviews illustrate some of the measures taken by unemployed workers to survive. About one quarter of those surveyed have relied on food stamps and one fifth have received help from food charities. Half said that their spouse has taken on extra hours or another job to supplement family income, and 53 percent have borrowed money from family members in order to make ends meet. Sixty percent have liquidated money from savings and retirement accounts. Among these is Lee Daves, 54, who worked as a machinist making $13 an hour in Springfield, Missouri, until he was laid off in January. His unemployment benefits, which are soon to expire, are not enough to pay for his modest lifestyle. To pay bills, he was forced to sell off his 401(k) retirement account.
One of the survey's more striking revelations is that nearly half of the unemployed workers in its sample have received no unemployment benefits through the nation's restrictive jobless insurance system. Among those who have, 61 percent say that this has not been enough money to pay for mortgages, health insurance, food and other expenditures. Fifty-four percent of those polled by the Times/CBS say they have cut back on medical treatment or visits to the doctor, and forty-seven percent are without health care coverage.
Bill Grierson, of Dayton, Ohio, worked at auto parts maker Delphi for nearly 20 years. He is now jobless and without health insurance for his family. "To have some sort of ailment and not be able to go to the doctor or just wait and hope things get better," is a new experience for his family, Grierson said. After losing health care coverage, Grierson's daughter fell at school and hurt her head. The resulting emergency room bill was $8,000, a sum the family was unable to pay. "Watching them play sports," Grierson says of his children, "you say play your hardest, but please don't get hurt because we can't do anything about it."
Howard Watley, 63, is a laid off construction project manager from North Texas. He is without health insurance for himself and his wife, and his unemployment benefits are set to expire. "We can't afford our medicines sometimes and can't afford our doctors visits," he says. One fourth of those surveyed said they had been threatened with foreclosure or eviction.
Vicky Newton of Mount Pleasant, Michigan, lost her job in March "and from there on, everything went downhill,” she told the Times. She abandoned her house in Flint, Michigan, went on food stamps to feed her daughter, and moved into a rental house owned by her father. Unemployment is causing anxiety, stress, and other mental disorders, the poll finds. Nearly 70 percent of respondents reported being "stressed more than usual," while 55 percent reported suffering from insomnia. A quarter have sought help from mental health professionals. Forty percent say that as a result of unemployment they have noticed changes in the behavior of their children.
“Every time I think about money, I shut down because there is none,” said Tammy Linville, 29, of Louisville, Kentucky, the mother of two small children. “I get major panic attacks. I just don’t know what we’re going to do.” After losing her job, Linville underwent counseling for depression, but was forced to quit after she was unable to afford repairs on her car. Nancy Perry, who lost her job at a Florida child care center and has no unemployment insurance, said that she suffers from insomnia, headaches and depression. "Knowing that it's the holiday season has made it worse." Perry said. "For me there's not going to be a holiday this year."
In response to unemployment, 40 percent of those surveyed said they have considered moving to a different part of the country, two-thirds have pondered switching careers, and 44 percent have tried job retraining or other educational possibilities. These often desperate individual responses, as well as much of the emotional suffering caused by unemployment, result from the lack of a social and political response to the crisis.
But there is also an understanding among unemployed workers that the jobs crisis is not their fault.
“We grow up with the impression there’s a correlation between effort and the fruits of your labor,” said Evan Gutierrez, 29, who lost his job working for a church charity in Los Angeles after its endowment collapsed. “To be honest with you, I have very little confidence I’m going to be able to turn this around. It just feels completely, completely out of my control.” Indeed, mass unemployment arises from the economic crisis, which was set into motion by the predatory financial speculation of the American ruling class. Since then every measure put in place by the Bush and Obama administrations has had as its overriding concern the defense of the biggest banks and the enormous personal wealth of the financial elite.
The Obama administration has taken no serious steps to address mass unemployment, finding in it an important tool in driving down wages and reducing “overconsumption.“ Obama administration officials openly warn the population to expect years of high unemployment. The Times/CBS poll found evidence that many unemployed workers blame some aspect of the political and economic setup for their predicament. Of those surveyed, 26 percent blamed former president George W. Bush, 12 percent blamed the banking industry, and 8 percent attributed unemployment to jobs moving overseas.
Only 3 percent of the sample blamed President Obama, who has ruled out any government jobs program or public works programs to put people to work. On the other hand, 44 percent expressed disapproval over Obama's efforts at job creation. Tuesday found Obama in suburban Virginia at a Home Depot building and repair mega-store, touting his "cash for caulkers" proposal which would offer cash rebates to homeowners able to come up with the money to change windows, put in insulation, and similar "energy saving" schemes. This is, to say the least, a derisory response to an economic crisis in which more than one in six workers are unemployed or underemployed.
It is not only the unemployed who are suffering. A separate Times/CBS poll, also conducted in early December, found that about one third of US workers say that their pay was cut last year as a result of the economic crisis. And a recent Zogby International poll found that an astonishing 72 percent of Americans already consider themselves poor or can imagine themselves becoming poor (20 percent and 50 percent, respectively). And about half of Americans say they worry about money "most or all of the time."
"What they're saying is that they're one, two or three paychecks away from poverty," said John Zogby, the CEO of the polling company. "This has a huge implication." Dennis Jacobe, chief economist of polling firm Gallup, said "people do not feel safe." Workers "compare the stock market rally to the economy they are experiencing, there is an atmosphere of unreality," Jacobe said. "Wall Street gets theirs and the average American doesn't. There is a sense of unfairness and confusion
Huffington, who was also a guest on This Week, reacted with scorn: “he’s the wrong man to be heading the President’s economic team. His response is so lackadaisical, no sense of urgency. This is meaningless; Larry Summers’ accelerating his forecast [on job creation] is so utterly meaningless. I don’t even know why we’re talking about it. All his [other] forecasts have been completely wrong.” Huffington’s tongue lashing was one of the few breaths of fresh air in a constant barrage of political and media propaganda that promises the end of the economic crisis is near.
Summers is technically accurate in claiming that the recession is over- if recession is defined as two consecutive quarters or more of negative growth. Data from the U.S. Bureau of Economic Analysis indicates that national changes in the value of National Gross Domestic Product for the last two quarters of 2008 were -2.7 and -5.4 percent respectively, while the figures for the first three quarters of 2009 were: -6.4, -.7, and 2.8 percent. Since the third quarter of 2009 saw limited economic growth, the U.S. economy cannot, by definition, be in a recession. What was most dishonest about Summers’ portrayal, however, is the implication that the U.S. is emerging from the economic crisis. This promise is highly suspect considering that many economists are predicting an increase in unemployment to 11 percent nationwide by next year.
Summers’ promise of economic redemption seems dubious in light of other current economic indicators, which suggest that the economy is in worse shape now than at any other point in recent decades. Unemployment still stood in November 2009 at 10 percent, a drop of a meager .2 percent from the October 2009 high of 10.2 percent. U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics figures indicate that the November unemployment rate is more than two percent higher than it was in February 2009. Unemployment is currently higher than at any other point in the last ten years, and remains more than twice as high as it was from March of 2007 to February 2008 (when unemployment ranged from 4.4 to 4.8 percent). When put into context, the .2 percent drop in unemployment last month hardly symbolizes an end to the economic crisis. Quite the contrary, the jobless recovery is continuing in light of the high unemployment rate, accompanied by the continued profits posted by major Wall Street banks and investment firms (such profits are largely the product of the economic bailout, rather than increased lending).
If one is still inclined to take Summers seriously, consider some other numbers:
- The New York Times estimates that the job losses accompanying the 2009 recession are the most extreme the U.S. has seen in the last 35 years. The paper also reports that the most recent numbers from the Census Bureau show that the national poverty rate reached 13.2 percent in 2008, an increase from 12.5 percent in 2007, and poverty is at an all-time high over the last ten years. Although numbers are still unavailable for 2009, trends from 2008 suggest that poverty continues to be a monumental problem.
- Further analysis from the New York Times suggests that the median household income has declined by four percent from 2007 to 2008. Similarly, the percent of American adults without health insurance has increased by more than three percent over the past ten years, with approximately 50 million uninsured and another 25 million underinsured (both combined equal about 25 percent of all Americans). The economic crisis has also exacerbated the health care problem, since so many of those thrown out of their jobs lose their health insurance coverage.
- As of late 2009, nearly 10 percent of all U.S. home mortgages were either delinquent or in foreclosure, while projections suggest that up to six million families may lose their homes in the next three years if the government fails to effectively act. 2009 estimates suggest that 17 percent of all homes in the U.S., and four in ten homes sold in the last five years are underwater. End of year foreclosure rates also remain high. For the third quarter of 2009, foreclosure filings reached a total of 937,840, a 23 percent increase from a year earlier. Data for November 2009 suggests that home foreclosures did decline 8 percent from October, but remain 18 percent higher than in November 2008.
- Sadly, Obama’s plan to stabilize the housing market has fallen short up to this point. Although Obama allocated $75 billion to assist troubled homeowners avoid foreclosure, the program has not been as successful as expected. Elizabeth Warren, the head of a Congressional Oversight Panel overseeing the bailout funds, concluded this month that the Obama administration was relatively successful in stabilizing the banking system, although it failed to make similar progress in the troubled housing market. As U.S. News & World Report concluded this month: “while the Obama administration is temporarily reducing mortgage payments for a growing number of troubled borrowers, it has failed to find permanent fixes for all but a precious few. A little more than four percent - or 31,382 - of the more than 728,000 modifications underway through November have advanced from the program’s trial period to the permanent phase.”
Where does Summers fit into the larger economic crisis? Aside from his ineptitude in fostering a national recovery and his current state of denial on the state of the economy, Summers and his allies in the Obama administration (including Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner, Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel, and economic advisor Robert Rubin) share major responsibility for creating the economic meltdown in the first place. Summers has amassed quite a controversial record in his various public and administrative positions, as the following review demonstrates.
- Summers was pressured to step down as President of Harvard after he made sexist claims that women were less well represented in the sciences and engineering because of their intellectual inferiority. Summers’ tenure at Harvard was also marked by controversy after he fired Harvard Endowment Manager Iris Mack for blowing the whistle on the university after it became involved in dangerous derivative investments - which were a major contributor to the 2008 economic collapse, and cost Harvard nearly $1 billion in lost investments.
- Summers also became a controversial figure when it was shown that he made over $5 million in profits for the year in hedge fund investments and another $2 million from troubled Wall Street investment firms (many of which received bailout money) for various speaking engagements. The millions made by Summers from his Wall Street connections have raised many eyebrows at a time when he’s supposed to be spearheading an effort by the White House to increase transparency in the national economy and hold Wall Street accountable for its many transgressions.
- Summers enjoys other controversial ties with Wall Street firms. He was strongly criticized after it was revealed that he accepted benefits from Citigroup (one of the major banks responsible for the sub-prime/derivatives economic crisis), including free jet rides. Summers also called prominent members of Congress, requesting that they remove limits on executive pay at companies that received TARP bailout money (Citigroup was one of the companies that would benefit from the removal of the cap).
- Finally, Summers supported the 1999 bi-partisan repeal of the 1933 Glass-Steagall Act. The Congressional repeal tore down the legal separation between traditional commercial banks and riskier investment banks. This repeal was significant because it ushered in the deregulation of U.S. banks. Deregulation is cited by critics as having played a major role in fostering the current economic collapse and crisis, especially in light of Congress’s deregulation of financial derivatives with the Commodity Futures Modernization Act of 2000.
Larry Summers is merely a symptom of the much larger problem of big businesses’ dominance of government. Business elites do not merely “control” or “buy” political leaders. Increasingly, business and political elites are one and the same. Many of the most prominent members of Obama administration not only serve the business community, they are an active part of it. A recent report from the Chicago Tribune finds that “virtually all of the top Chicagoans [including Rahm Emanuel, David Axelrod, and Valerie Jarrett] serving in the West Wing had assets valued at a million dollars or more at the end of 2008.” Other administration officials also made their fortunes in corporate America. These officials - many of whom are responsible for regulating Wall Street - include: Secretary of Treasury Timothy Geithner (net worth of $1.7 million), economic advisor Robert Rubin ($130 million), Commodity Futures Trading Commission head Gary Gensler ($61.7 million), Security and Exchange Commission Chair Mary Schapiro ($41.8 million), and Chief Economist of the Economic Recovery Advisory Board Austan Goolsbee ($2.7 million), to name just a few.
More generally, the wealthy overwhelmingly dominate the presidential nomination and primary processes. A review of the 2008 presidential election shows that six of the top seven candidates who ran in the Democratic and Republican primaries - including John McCain, Rudy Giuliani, Mitt Romney, Hillary Clinton, Barack Obama, and John Edwards - were all millionaires (only Mike Huckabee wasn’t a millionaire, at least before his 2008 foray into the media punditry).
The problem of business dominance extends beyond the White House as well. As of 2003-2004, an estimated 40 percent of members of the Senate were millionaires. A 2009 study by the Center for Responsive Politics found that close to half - 44 percent of members of Congress - enjoyed assets of more than a million dollars each. Government officials are typically well represented among corporate lobbyists as well. A study by the Washington Post finds that an astounding one-half of all health industry lobbyists employed by the private sector “worked for key [Congressional] committees and lawmakers [who are] debating whether to adopt a public insurance option opposed by major industry groups.” The revolving door between government and the private economy is a major threat to the public good, as government officials serve as defenders of corporate power and are part of the same business class they’re supposed to be regulating.
The results of corporate-government incest are entirely predictable: government’s primary goal is to serve the interests of the business power elite. It is no surprise, then, that officials like Summers appear so inept in light of public demands for stronger regulation of Wall Street. They’re more interested in protecting corporate profitability and ensuring that public subsidies continue to flow from American workers to the business class. As progressive thinker John Dewey once explained: “politics is the shadow cast on society by big business.” This reality couldn’t be any starker when looking at the Obama presidency.
With Massachusetts running a $3 billion deficit and residents suffering from $1.2 billion in new taxes, Governor Patrick is pushing for providing benefits to illegal immigrants. College tuition subsidies, making it cheaper for illegal aliens to attend college in Massachusetts than a born-and-raised American citizen from out of state; food stamps and welfare payments; drivers licenses... No, this is not a bad fiction novel. This is Deval Patrick's vision for Massachusetts:
The poll and interviews illustrate some of the measures taken by unemployed workers to survive. About one quarter of those surveyed have relied on food stamps and one fifth have received help from food charities. Half said that their spouse has taken on extra hours or another job to supplement family income, and 53 percent have borrowed money from family members in order to make ends meet. Sixty percent have liquidated money from savings and retirement accounts. Among these is Lee Daves, 54, who worked as a machinist making $13 an hour in Springfield, Missouri, until he was laid off in January. His unemployment benefits, which are soon to expire, are not enough to pay for his modest lifestyle. To pay bills, he was forced to sell off his 401(k) retirement account.
One of the survey's more striking revelations is that nearly half of the unemployed workers in its sample have received no unemployment benefits through the nation's restrictive jobless insurance system. Among those who have, 61 percent say that this has not been enough money to pay for mortgages, health insurance, food and other expenditures. Fifty-four percent of those polled by the Times/CBS say they have cut back on medical treatment or visits to the doctor, and forty-seven percent are without health care coverage.
Bill Grierson, of Dayton, Ohio, worked at auto parts maker Delphi for nearly 20 years. He is now jobless and without health insurance for his family. "To have some sort of ailment and not be able to go to the doctor or just wait and hope things get better," is a new experience for his family, Grierson said. After losing health care coverage, Grierson's daughter fell at school and hurt her head. The resulting emergency room bill was $8,000, a sum the family was unable to pay. "Watching them play sports," Grierson says of his children, "you say play your hardest, but please don't get hurt because we can't do anything about it."
Howard Watley, 63, is a laid off construction project manager from North Texas. He is without health insurance for himself and his wife, and his unemployment benefits are set to expire. "We can't afford our medicines sometimes and can't afford our doctors visits," he says. One fourth of those surveyed said they had been threatened with foreclosure or eviction.
Vicky Newton of Mount Pleasant, Michigan, lost her job in March "and from there on, everything went downhill,” she told the Times. She abandoned her house in Flint, Michigan, went on food stamps to feed her daughter, and moved into a rental house owned by her father. Unemployment is causing anxiety, stress, and other mental disorders, the poll finds. Nearly 70 percent of respondents reported being "stressed more than usual," while 55 percent reported suffering from insomnia. A quarter have sought help from mental health professionals. Forty percent say that as a result of unemployment they have noticed changes in the behavior of their children.
“Every time I think about money, I shut down because there is none,” said Tammy Linville, 29, of Louisville, Kentucky, the mother of two small children. “I get major panic attacks. I just don’t know what we’re going to do.” After losing her job, Linville underwent counseling for depression, but was forced to quit after she was unable to afford repairs on her car. Nancy Perry, who lost her job at a Florida child care center and has no unemployment insurance, said that she suffers from insomnia, headaches and depression. "Knowing that it's the holiday season has made it worse." Perry said. "For me there's not going to be a holiday this year."
In response to unemployment, 40 percent of those surveyed said they have considered moving to a different part of the country, two-thirds have pondered switching careers, and 44 percent have tried job retraining or other educational possibilities. These often desperate individual responses, as well as much of the emotional suffering caused by unemployment, result from the lack of a social and political response to the crisis.
But there is also an understanding among unemployed workers that the jobs crisis is not their fault.
“We grow up with the impression there’s a correlation between effort and the fruits of your labor,” said Evan Gutierrez, 29, who lost his job working for a church charity in Los Angeles after its endowment collapsed. “To be honest with you, I have very little confidence I’m going to be able to turn this around. It just feels completely, completely out of my control.” Indeed, mass unemployment arises from the economic crisis, which was set into motion by the predatory financial speculation of the American ruling class. Since then every measure put in place by the Bush and Obama administrations has had as its overriding concern the defense of the biggest banks and the enormous personal wealth of the financial elite.
The Obama administration has taken no serious steps to address mass unemployment, finding in it an important tool in driving down wages and reducing “overconsumption.“ Obama administration officials openly warn the population to expect years of high unemployment. The Times/CBS poll found evidence that many unemployed workers blame some aspect of the political and economic setup for their predicament. Of those surveyed, 26 percent blamed former president George W. Bush, 12 percent blamed the banking industry, and 8 percent attributed unemployment to jobs moving overseas.
Only 3 percent of the sample blamed President Obama, who has ruled out any government jobs program or public works programs to put people to work. On the other hand, 44 percent expressed disapproval over Obama's efforts at job creation. Tuesday found Obama in suburban Virginia at a Home Depot building and repair mega-store, touting his "cash for caulkers" proposal which would offer cash rebates to homeowners able to come up with the money to change windows, put in insulation, and similar "energy saving" schemes. This is, to say the least, a derisory response to an economic crisis in which more than one in six workers are unemployed or underemployed.
It is not only the unemployed who are suffering. A separate Times/CBS poll, also conducted in early December, found that about one third of US workers say that their pay was cut last year as a result of the economic crisis. And a recent Zogby International poll found that an astonishing 72 percent of Americans already consider themselves poor or can imagine themselves becoming poor (20 percent and 50 percent, respectively). And about half of Americans say they worry about money "most or all of the time."
"What they're saying is that they're one, two or three paychecks away from poverty," said John Zogby, the CEO of the polling company. "This has a huge implication." Dennis Jacobe, chief economist of polling firm Gallup, said "people do not feel safe." Workers "compare the stock market rally to the economy they are experiencing, there is an atmosphere of unreality," Jacobe said. "Wall Street gets theirs and the average American doesn't. There is a sense of unfairness and confusion
Meet local activists with the Socialist Party USA
Learn what Democratic Socialism is all about in plain English
Find out how you can make an impact in today's movements, locally and globally
The Socialist Party of Boston is hosting this meeting for new people who want to learn about socialism and our work in Boston. Brief presentations and facilitation will be conducted by
David Schaich, local secretary and current SPUSA Campaign Clearinghouse Coordinator.
Matthew Andrews, local treasurer and current SPUSA National Committee member.
Plenty of time will be left for discussion to address the questions and interests of participants. This event is totally free and everyone is welcome to come!
Christ has been eliminated from the public square and schools.
Things are ready for me now. I know you will receive me when I inhabit a world leader soon. Do you know which Global Leader I will inhabit?............Ha, ha, ha.....
I have a Human Implant Banking Chip, I want you all to receive under your skin. It's the only way I we can monitor every Human Being. You'll have to take the implant device, because we're going to eliminate cash. There will not be any other way to purchase food, except through banking electronic funds transfer.
Don't listen to Christians, when they say "do not receive the banking implant chip". Don't worry, you won't go to Hell.............Ha, ha,ha..........When Christ returns, I think we can stop him from taking back the Earth, if we all work together, YES WE CAN.
Keep up the good work my slaves.........ha, ha,h a........
I know you have a $100,000 School Loan to pay off, but "Globalization" has moved most of the good jobs "Off-Shore". That incudes White Collar jobs as well.
The LYING Globalizt Economics Professors, said that "only a few" manufacturing jobs would be lost to "Globalization". Well, we know that IS a BIG Lie, because White Collar jobs are moving to Asia as well. At the same time we are IMPORTING Low-Wage Immigrants from the Third-World.
Perhaps you've heard the LYING "Globalization" Economics professors speaking for the White House, or in Congress.
If you can get a bartender spot in Boston, you might make a few bucks cash. Most of the Grads I know, are scurrying for Bartender positions all over Massachusetts. Or, consider accepting a "manager's" position at Wendy's or Walmart.
It's really sad, most were DUPED into "The Global Economy" by these Idiot Economics Professors, who have ties to Global Corporations.
This is what you get, when you keep electing Liberal Democrats to offices of power.
Persecution is what you get, when school Departments are Run By COMMIE SCUMBAGS !!
WAKE-UP ! !!
The Liberal Democrats are FUNKING COMMIES, who are out to TAKE away YOUR way of life, your history, your culture, your families, your incomes, your freedom.
WAKE-UP, and don't be fooled by their smilies, and their innocent appearances. They are NO DIFFERENT than Mao Zedong, Vladimir Lenin, or Pol Pot. Don't go by their attire. They are RAT BASTARD Commies.
In reality, the event was a media exercise designed to placate growing popular anger toward the Obama administration. The true nature of the event was not lost on its attendees. “It's a PR [public relations] stunt,” an unnamed CEO flatly told Time magazine prior to the meeting.
Attending were Jamie Dimon of JPMorgan Chase, Ken Lewis of Bank of America, Richard Fairbank of Capital One, Bob Kelly of Bank of New York Mellon, Ken Chenault of American Express, and Ron Logue of State Street Bank. Lloyd Blankfein of Goldman Sachs, John Mack of Morgan Stanley, and Dick Parsons of Citigroup joined the meeting via video conference.
The nation's biggest banks will soon hand out year-end executive bonuses totalling in the tens of billions. This conspicuous display of bank prosperity comes just over one year after the US Treasury and Federal Reserve began to funnel trillions of dollars to the finance industry. This ensured that the banks would profit from the economic crisis that they precipitated through rampant financial speculation.
The vast majority of the population continues to suffer through the nation's worst social crisis since the Great Depression. One in six workers is without a job or underemployed. For those who have work, speed-up and pay and benefit cuts are the rule. The foreclosure crisis continues. Hunger is at a record high. The destruction of the social safety system by cash-strapped states is accelerating, and the Obama administration is readying years of budget austerity to right the US fiscal crisis at the expense of the working class.
Appearing on the CBS news program “60 Minutes” on Sunday evening, Obama acknowledged the anger. Referring to the Wall Street financiers as “fat cat bankers,” Obama noted, “They're still puzzled why is it that people are mad at the banks.”
“Well, let's see,” Obama continued, “you guys are drawing down 10, 20 million dollar bonuses after America went through the worst economic year that it's gone through in decades, and you guys caused the problem. And we've got 10 percent unemployment.”
Obama did not mention that this is an outcome of the policies of his own administration, which has overseen the Wall Street baillout and has explicitly campaigned to oppose any measure that would curb executive pay. Meanwhile, it has spearheaded the attack on workers' pay, including through the forced bankrupcy of General Motors and Chrysler.
Monday's meeting comes nine months after a similar meeting at the White House in March. Then, Obama pledged not to take any measures that would impinge on the interests of the financial oligarchy. Bank of America's Lewis said at the time that he was confident that no “punitive” actions would be taken after the “pleasant” meeting. (See “Obama holds ‘very pleasant’ meeting with top US bankers”)
While the media had predicted that Obama's criticisms on “60 Minutes” meant he would shame the executives or give them a “dressing down” on Monday, by all accounts the meeting was likewise as pleasant as it was unsubstantial. No transcripts of the discussion have been released.
Richard Davis, CEO of US Bancorp, told the media “there wasn't a lot of disagreement.” “He didn't call us any names,” Davis said, referring to Obama's “fat cat” reference on “60 Minutes.”
Obama pleaded with the bank executives to “explore every responsible way” to increase lending “to help creditworthy small and medium-sized businesses.” Over the past year, a general lack of cash liquidity has forced many businesses to fold, scale back operations, and lay off workers.
Last fall, Obama, President George W. Bush, and Democratic House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, among others, justified the Troubled Asset Relief Program (TARP) as critically necessary in order to “jump start” or “open the spigot” of lending. Since then every facet of the Wall Street bailout, including the unaccounted trillions extended to the banks from the Federal Reserve, has relied on the same rationale.
But all evidence shows that the banks have hoarded the cash or used it to engage in new forms of speculation. Overall loan volume continued to fall from the second to third quarters this year, according to recent data.
What the banks have made liquid has not been invested in production. Instead much of it has been been shifted into new asset bubbles, primarily in Asia. From this and other speculative practices the banks have made windfall profits only one year after they teetered on the brink of collapse.
The banks have used some of these profits to pay back TARP funds in order to escape modest limitations on executive pay. Citigroup and Wells Fargo became the latest Wall Street firms to do so, announcing Monday they would pay back $20 billion and $25 billion, respectively. They join Bank of America, Goldman Sachs, JPMorgan Chase, and Morgan Stanley.
Obama also implored the bankers to “close the gap” between their declared support for finance reform and their vocal opposition to the regulatory bill passed by the US House of Representatives last week, even though the proposed law would, if anything, expand possibilities for financial speculation.
Such hypocritical entreaties from the president characterized the meeting. There was no mention of any penalties or consequences to banks that fail to increase their lending. Unsurprisingly, results were slim, with only Bank of America announcing it intends to make $5 billion more available to small and medium-sized businesses, a drop in the bucket compared to the enormous need for capital and liquidity.
Wall Street executives' determination to not lend to the productive sectors of the economy¯while rewarding themselves billions in compensation¯is not a question of morality, nor is it an aberration. It arises from the historical decay of capitalism and its turn to evermore parasitic forms of financial speculation.
While media accounts attempted to present the gathering as an example of Obama “taking on” the bankers, they could not conceal the real relationship of forces. The Obama administration's efforts to put on the show of getting tough produced the opposite image, that of the president as willing supplicant before the masters of Wall Street.
It is significant that Blankfein of Goldman Sachs, Mack of Morgan Stanley, and Parsons of Citigroup did not attend in person. While their last-minute cancellations were chalked up to weather¯fog in the Washington DC area delayed some flights on Monday morning¯they more likely aimed a rebuke at Obama over his “fat cats” comments. Parsons was already a substitute for Citi CEO Vikram Pandit, whose decision to skip the event was attributed to his bank's negotiations with the Treasury to pay back TARP.
“The President has real problems only the banks can help him solve,” according to Time magazine. “On jobs, housing and the strength of the economy, he needs bankers to change their behavior, and there's only so much he can do to force them. So when he sits down with the financial industry elite on Monday, he may talk tough, but he'll also be asking for their help.”
The admission that a democratically elected president has no power over a handful of financiers is an acknowledgement of the oligarchic character of US society. The financial aristocracy in fact controls every lever of state power and dictates economic and social policy. Obama is their representative.
Watching the Senate press last week toward passage of President Obama's universal health care, my Red Alert is forced to contemplate whether a socialist agenda is intending to bankrupt the United States with trillion-dollar social-welfare programs there is no way the country will ever be able to afford.
In "The Obama Nation: Leftist Politics and the Cult of Personality," I clearly established that Barack Obama is trained in the Saul Alinsky "Rules for Radicals" methodology of lying to voters to disguise a true intent to transfer wealth from the "haves" to the "have nots."
But as we watch President Obama expand the social-welfare state to an unprecedented level, the question is this: Is Barack Obama silently pursuing the Cloward-Piven strategy with an intent to destroy private-enterprise capitalism itself?
A central theme of "America for Sale: Fighting the New World Order, Surviving a Global Depression and Preserving USA Sovereignty" is that the nation is bankrupt, with a $65.5 trillion negative net worth and trillion-dollar deficits stretching for a decade or more ahead.
Put simply, there is no way the U.S. government can possibly honor current obligations in programs such as Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid, to say nothing of the universal health care being pushed relentlessly by the Obama administration, despite continued and growing voter resistance.
Now the bond-rating agencies are warning the United States that unless trillion-dollar federal budget deficits are curtailed soon, the United States may lose a triple-A credit rating.
Could it be that President Obama intends to bankrupt the USA in order to destroy free-enterprise capitalism itself?
The only other alternative would be to charge the Obama administration and the Democrats in Congress with incompetence, arguing that somehow the president and the Democratic Party were not responsible for understanding that their unprecedented spendthrift ways would necessarily cause the United States to become economically insolvent.
The Cloward-Piven strategy
On May 2, 1966, two Columbia University sociologists, professor of social work Richard A. Cloward, and his then-research associate Frances Fox Piven, wrote a pivotal article in The Nation, articulating "a strategy to end poverty."
In what became known as the Cloward-Piven strategy, the article advocated a revolutionary approach to mobilizing the poor in a form of class warfare against capitalist forces viewed as exploiting labor and oppressing the poor.
David Horowitz, a long-time student of leftist political movements in the United States, characterized the Cloward-Piven strategy as seeking "to hasten the fall of capitalism by overloading the government bureaucracy with a flood of impossible demands, thus pushing society into crisis and economic collapse."
Cloward and Piven argued a "guaranteed annual income" should be established as an entitlement for the poor, a right the poor could assert and demand to be paid.
Arguing for massive registration of poor in existing social-welfare programs, Cloward and Piven sought to create a crisis that could be exploited to obtain a fundamental redistribution of power in favor of the "have-nots."
Advancing their socialist revolutionary aims, Cloward and Piven explained the crisis they sought "can occur spontaneously (e.g., riots) or as the intended result of tactics of demonstration and protest which either generate institutional disruption or bring unrecognized disruption to public attention."
The Cloward-Piven strategy sought to apply the tactics of the revolutionary civil-rights movement, including urban riots, to the poor as a whole, transcending interest-group politics defined by race to involve interest-group politics defined by class.
Radical black activist George Wiley created the National Welfare Reform Organization, or NWRO, to implement the Cloward-Piven strategy.
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Sol Stern, writing in the City Journal, noted that foot soldiers hired by the NWRO were successful in expanding welfare rolls from 4.3 million to 10.8 million by the mid-1970s, with the result that in New York City, where the strategy had been particularly successful, "one person was on the welfare rolls ... for every two working in the city's private economy."
James Simpson, a former White House staff economist and budget analyst, writing in American Thinker, argued the "vast expansion of welfare in New York City that came of the NWRO's Cloward-Piven tactics sent the city into bankruptcy in 1975."
Is President Obama intentionally placing so many on the government dole, including the inclusion of illegal aliens in Obamacare, because he wants to bankrupt the United States to destroy the private enterprise system, following the lead of the leftist radicals that employed the Cloward-Piven strategy to bankrupt New York City in the 1970s?
ACORN, Barack Obama, and the Cloward-Piven strategy
William Rathke, the founder of ACORN, was a member of the radical Students for a Democratic Society before he dropped out of Williams College in 1968 to join the anti-draft movement protesting the Vietnam War.
He next worked for George Wiley's NWRO in Springfield, Mass., before leaving for Little Rock, Ark., in 1970, where he formed the Arkansas Community Organizations for Reform Now, an organization whose name he morphed into the Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now, or ACORN, to form a national entity.
With ACORN, Rathke resolved to apply the Cloward-Piven strategy to working as a "community organizer" in the effort to recruit radicals to register to vote, often fraudulently, as Democrats to vote in local, state and national elections.
Rathke's idea was to create a crisis in voter registration similar to the crisis in registration for welfare benefits that Cloward and Piven had initially sought to cause. Funded heavily by George Soros through his Open Society Institute, ACORN has followed a three-point strategy James Simpson described as follows:
Register as many Democratic voters as possible, legal or otherwise, and help them vote, multiple times if possible;
Overwhelm the system with fraudulent registrations using multiple entries of the same name, names of deceased and names selected at random from the phone book; and
Make the system difficult to police by lobbying for minimal identification standards required of voters arriving at polling stations to vote.
In 1992, while he was working as a community organizer in Chicago, Barack Obama headed the Chicago operations of Project Vote!, an ACORN effort to register voters nationally. In Chicago, Obama had his biggest impact registering African-American voters on Chicago's South Side.
George Soros attacks capitalism
That Barack Obama may intend to undermine the free-enterprise system itself is not so far-fetched when we consider the attack George Soros, one of candidate Obama's primary financial supporters, has launched on capitalism.
Now billionaire hedge-fund financier George Soros has decided to spend $50 million to fund a new institute designed to undermine the free-enterprise system, according to a report published last week in Newsweek.
The Soros-funded "Institute for New Economic Thinking" is designed to make research grants and fund symposiums on the need for central government control of the economy, advancing an argument from the political left that the private economy is in need of the re-regulation to prevent the occurrence of another global economic recession.
The move re-enforces a Democratic Party argument that the Bush administration's deregulation of the economy was the cause of the Economic Panic of 2009, even though President Bill Clinton accomplished the major regulatory reform of recent decades – namely, the repeal of the Glass-Steagall Act.
In a revealing passage, Soros identifies his antipathy to George W. Bush in terms fashioned from Popper's Open Society philosophy: "When I heard President Bush say, 'Either you are with us or you are with the terrorists,' I was reminded of Nazi propaganda."
Fundamentally, Soros criticized the "Bush agenda" as being "nationalistic," too focused on pursuing narrowly defined U.S. nation-state interests. Soros was particularly vituperative toward Vice President Cheney, whom he demonized as "the power behind the throne" and characterized as working with Defense Secretary Rumsfeld to largely succeed "in imposing their views on Bush."
Asking how he came to have a position of influence on world affairs, Soros honestly admitted, "I have made a lot of money." Nor has Soros been shy about spending his money to advance his political agenda.
Since founding the Open Society Institute in 1979, Soros has spent hundreds of millions of dollars funding this flagship organization, which in turn has funneled millions to organizations dedicated to advancing causes of the political left, including MoveOn.org and the Center for American Progress.
In 2004, Soros admittedly spent several hundred of millions of dollars in the attempt to prevent George W. Bush from winning a second term as president. Soros was an early supporter of Barack Obama, holding a fundraiser for Obama at his home and donating the maximum legal amount even before Obama was elected to the U.S. Senate. In 2006, Soros urged Obama to run for president.
When Obama declared his candidacy, Soros organized a meeting with other financiers in Soros's Wall Street office. His strong and early financial support of candidate Obama has given Soros a strong voice in the Obama White House.
Soros has offered many different proposals for overhauling the International Monetary Fund, the World Bank and the World Trade Organization. Yet, always his conclusion is the same: Global financial markets require international regulation from a new generation of world-governance organizations capable of imposing global political control over global economics.
On December 11, 2009, a federal judge ruled that Congress had unconstitutionally cut off all federal funds to ACORN. The judge issued an injunction stopping federal authorities from continuing to cut off past, present and future federal funds to the community organization.
ACORN (Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now) and its allies in 75 cities will again have access to millions of federal dollars to counsel people facing foreclosure, seeking IRS tax refunds, and looking for affordable low cost housing. ACORN, which has received about $54 million in government grants since 1994, will be able to apply for new federal programs just like any other organization.
The court ruled that Congress violated the U.S. Constitution “by singling out ACORN and its affiliates for severe sweeping restrictions” and that such action constitutes illegal punishment or a “bill of attainder.”
What is a bill of attainder? Even most lawyers have no idea. Bills of attainder are acts of congress which unilaterally punish an individual or organization. Essentially Congress acts as prosecutor, judge, jury and executioner.
The U.S. Constitution has prohibited bills of attainder since 1787. U.S. founders objected to bills of attainder because in England Parliament passed many such bills against political enemies, used them to throw people in prison and even execute them without trial.
Congress punished ACORN without even trying to figure out if any laws had been broken or allowing the 500,000 member organization to defend itself.
What about protecting the taxpayers against fraud? As the court pointed out, there are many legal ways for the government to investigate and terminate federal contractors which have been proven to engage in fraud or illegal activity.
But Congress did not want to wait for trials or proof or to allow ACORN due process.
Conservatives developed a voting majority and imposed punishment without a hearing or anything.
ACORN has been a target of right-wing politicians for years. Conservatives hate ACORN primarily because it registered over two million people to vote since 2003 and because it has an overwhelming African American, working class, democratic-voting, membership.
Fox News is obsessed with ACORN. Google Fox News and ACORN and you will see over two million hits. Google Glenn Beck and ACORN and you get over a million hits, six hundred thousand for Rush, and three hundred thousand for Michelle Malkin.
Right wing members of Congress accused ACORN of being a “shell game” using millions of taxpayer dollars “to advertise for a political candidate” and which “helped President Obama get elected.”
After a highly dubious right-wing sting operation in September, the conservative media machine overran Congress members, including, sadly, many democrats, and passed the bill of attainder cutting off all federal funds to ACORN and any affiliates, subsidiaries and allies.
Most Congress reps knew full well this was an illegal bill of attainder as it was pointed out in the debates and even by the Congressional Research Office, but voted to let it go through anyway. Representatives Nadler and Grayson and Senator Leahy, among others, repeatedly pointed out that this was unconstitutional. Democrats who voted for the bill of attainder included many who had sought and received help from ACORN members in the past. They have some explaining to do.
Progressives who remained silent while the nation’s largest low income African American community organization was under attack also should re-think their lack of support. Did anyone think that if the right-wingers took down Van Jones and ACORN they would stop there?
What is ahead? Surely the conservative opponents of ACORN will continue to bloviate and continue to try to put ACORN out of business. There will likely be fights galore. But with this ruling the fights will be a little fairer.
ACORN won this case. The U.S. Supreme Court has called the prohibition of congressional bills of attainder a “bulwark against tyranny.” Here the bulwark against tyranny worked to stop the right-wing smear machine.
Watching the Senate press last week toward passage of President Obama's universal health care, my Red Alert is forced to contemplate whether a socialist agenda is intending to bankrupt the United States with trillion-dollar social-welfare programs there is no way the country will ever be able to afford.
In "The Obama Nation: Leftist Politics and the Cult of Personality," I clearly established that Barack Obama is trained in the Saul Alinsky "Rules for Radicals" methodology of lying to voters to disguise a true intent to transfer wealth from the "haves" to the "have nots."
But as we watch President Obama expand the social-welfare state to an unprecedented level, the question is this: Is Barack Obama silently pursuing the Cloward-Piven strategy with an intent to destroy private-enterprise capitalism itself?
A central theme of "America for Sale: Fighting the New World Order, Surviving a Global Depression and Preserving USA Sovereignty" is that the nation is bankrupt, with a $65.5 trillion negative net worth and trillion-dollar deficits stretching for a decade or more ahead.
Put simply, there is no way the U.S. government can possibly honor current obligations in programs such as Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid, to say nothing of the universal health care being pushed relentlessly by the Obama administration, despite continued and growing voter resistance.
Now the bond-rating agencies are warning the United States that unless trillion-dollar federal budget deficits are curtailed soon, the United States may lose a triple-A credit rating.
Could it be that President Obama intends to bankrupt the USA in order to destroy free-enterprise capitalism itself?
The only other alternative would be to charge the Obama administration and the Democrats in Congress with incompetence, arguing that somehow the president and the Democratic Party were not responsible for understanding that their unprecedented spendthrift ways would necessarily cause the United States to become economically insolvent.
The Cloward-Piven strategy
On May 2, 1966, two Columbia University sociologists, professor of social work Richard A. Cloward, and his then-research associate Frances Fox Piven, wrote a pivotal article in The Nation, articulating "a strategy to end poverty."
In what became known as the Cloward-Piven strategy, the article advocated a revolutionary approach to mobilizing the poor in a form of class warfare against capitalist forces viewed as exploiting labor and oppressing the poor.
David Horowitz, a long-time student of leftist political movements in the United States, characterized the Cloward-Piven strategy as seeking "to hasten the fall of capitalism by overloading the government bureaucracy with a flood of impossible demands, thus pushing society into crisis and economic collapse."
Cloward and Piven argued a "guaranteed annual income" should be established as an entitlement for the poor, a right the poor could assert and demand to be paid.
Arguing for massive registration of poor in existing social-welfare programs, Cloward and Piven sought to create a crisis that could be exploited to obtain a fundamental redistribution of power in favor of the "have-nots."
Advancing their socialist revolutionary aims, Cloward and Piven explained the crisis they sought "can occur spontaneously (e.g., riots) or as the intended result of tactics of demonstration and protest which either generate institutional disruption or bring unrecognized disruption to public attention."
The Cloward-Piven strategy sought to apply the tactics of the revolutionary civil-rights movement, including urban riots, to the poor as a whole, transcending interest-group politics defined by race to involve interest-group politics defined by class.
Radical black activist George Wiley created the National Welfare Reform Organization, or NWRO, to implement the Cloward-Piven strategy.
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Sol Stern, writing in the City Journal, noted that foot soldiers hired by the NWRO were successful in expanding welfare rolls from 4.3 million to 10.8 million by the mid-1970s, with the result that in New York City, where the strategy had been particularly successful, "one person was on the welfare rolls ... for every two working in the city's private economy."
James Simpson, a former White House staff economist and budget analyst, writing in American Thinker, argued the "vast expansion of welfare in New York City that came of the NWRO's Cloward-Piven tactics sent the city into bankruptcy in 1975."
Is President Obama intentionally placing so many on the government dole, including the inclusion of illegal aliens in Obamacare, because he wants to bankrupt the United States to destroy the private enterprise system, following the lead of the leftist radicals that employed the Cloward-Piven strategy to bankrupt New York City in the 1970s?
ACORN, Barack Obama, and the Cloward-Piven strategy
William Rathke, the founder of ACORN, was a member of the radical Students for a Democratic Society before he dropped out of Williams College in 1968 to join the anti-draft movement protesting the Vietnam War.
He next worked for George Wiley's NWRO in Springfield, Mass., before leaving for Little Rock, Ark., in 1970, where he formed the Arkansas Community Organizations for Reform Now, an organization whose name he morphed into the Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now, or ACORN, to form a national entity.
With ACORN, Rathke resolved to apply the Cloward-Piven strategy to working as a "community organizer" in the effort to recruit radicals to register to vote, often fraudulently, as Democrats to vote in local, state and national elections.
Rathke's idea was to create a crisis in voter registration similar to the crisis in registration for welfare benefits that Cloward and Piven had initially sought to cause. Funded heavily by George Soros through his Open Society Institute, ACORN has followed a three-point strategy James Simpson described as follows:
Register as many Democratic voters as possible, legal or otherwise, and help them vote, multiple times if possible;
Overwhelm the system with fraudulent registrations using multiple entries of the same name, names of deceased and names selected at random from the phone book; and
Make the system difficult to police by lobbying for minimal identification standards required of voters arriving at polling stations to vote.
In 1992, while he was working as a community organizer in Chicago, Barack Obama headed the Chicago operations of Project Vote!, an ACORN effort to register voters nationally. In Chicago, Obama had his biggest impact registering African-American voters on Chicago's South Side.
George Soros attacks capitalism
That Barack Obama may intend to undermine the free-enterprise system itself is not so far-fetched when we consider the attack George Soros, one of candidate Obama's primary financial supporters, has launched on capitalism.
Now billionaire hedge-fund financier George Soros has decided to spend $50 million to fund a new institute designed to undermine the free-enterprise system, according to a report published last week in Newsweek.
The Soros-funded "Institute for New Economic Thinking" is designed to make research grants and fund symposiums on the need for central government control of the economy, advancing an argument from the political left that the private economy is in need of the re-regulation to prevent the occurrence of another global economic recession.
The move re-enforces a Democratic Party argument that the Bush administration's deregulation of the economy was the cause of the Economic Panic of 2009, even though President Bill Clinton accomplished the major regulatory reform of recent decades – namely, the repeal of the Glass-Steagall Act.
In a revealing passage, Soros identifies his antipathy to George W. Bush in terms fashioned from Popper's Open Society philosophy: "When I heard President Bush say, 'Either you are with us or you are with the terrorists,' I was reminded of Nazi propaganda."
Fundamentally, Soros criticized the "Bush agenda" as being "nationalistic," too focused on pursuing narrowly defined U.S. nation-state interests. Soros was particularly vituperative toward Vice President Cheney, whom he demonized as "the power behind the throne" and characterized as working with Defense Secretary Rumsfeld to largely succeed "in imposing their views on Bush."
Asking how he came to have a position of influence on world affairs, Soros honestly admitted, "I have made a lot of money." Nor has Soros been shy about spending his money to advance his political agenda.
Since founding the Open Society Institute in 1979, Soros has spent hundreds of millions of dollars funding this flagship organization, which in turn has funneled millions to organizations dedicated to advancing causes of the political left, including MoveOn.org and the Center for American Progress.
In 2004, Soros admittedly spent several hundred of millions of dollars in the attempt to prevent George W. Bush from winning a second term as president. Soros was an early supporter of Barack Obama, holding a fundraiser for Obama at his home and donating the maximum legal amount even before Obama was elected to the U.S. Senate. In 2006, Soros urged Obama to run for president.
When Obama declared his candidacy, Soros organized a meeting with other financiers in Soros's Wall Street office. His strong and early financial support of candidate Obama has given Soros a strong voice in the Obama White House.
Soros has offered many different proposals for overhauling the International Monetary Fund, the World Bank and the World Trade Organization. Yet, always his conclusion is the same: Global financial markets require international regulation from a new generation of world-governance organizations capable of imposing global political control over global economics.
Taunton second-grader suspended over drawing of Jesus
Father angered by forced psychological evaluation of boy, 8
A Taunton father is outraged after his 8-year-old son was sent home from school and required to undergo a psychological evaluation after drawing a stick-figure picture of Jesus Christ on the cross.
The father said he got a call earlier this month from Maxham Elementary School informing him that his son, a second-grade student, had created a violent drawing. The image in question depicted a crucified Jesus with Xs covering his eyes to signify that he had died on the cross. The boy wrote his name above the cross.
“As far as I’m concerned, they’re violating his religion,” the incredulous father said.
He requested that his name and his son’s name be withheld from publication to protect the boy.
The student drew the picture shortly after taking a family trip to see the Christmas display at the National Shrine of Our Lady of La Salette, a Christian retreat site in Attleboro. He made the drawing in class after his teacher asked the children to sketch something that reminded them of Christmas, the father said.
“I think what happened is that because he put Xs in the eyes of Jesus, the teacher was alarmed and they told the parents they thought it was violent,” said Toni Saunders, an educational consultant with the Associated Advocacy Center.
Saunders is working with the boy’s parents after a mutual acquaintance referred them to her.
“When I got that call, I was so appalled that I had to do something,” Saunders said.
“They weren’t looking at the fact that this is an 8-year-old child with special needs,” she added. “They made him leave school, and they recommended that a psychiatrist do an evaluation.”
The school, in fact, required the evaluation before the boy could return, the father said.
Maxham School principal Rebecca Couet referred all questions on the matter to the superintendent’s office.
Superintendent Julie Hackett said district policy prevents her from discussing a “confidential matter regarding a student.”
“Generally speaking, we have safety protocols in place,” Hackett said. “If a situation warrants it, we ask for outside safety evaluations if we have particular concerns about a child’s safety. We followed all the protocols in our system.”
Hackett refused to specifically discuss the student’s drawing or the school’s reaction to it.
The father was flabbergasted when he learned his son had to undergo an evaluation.
“When she told me he needed to be psychologically evaluated, I thought she was playing,” he said.
The man said his son, who gets specialized reading and speech instruction at school, has never shown any tendency toward violence.
“He’s never been suspended,” he said. “He’s 8 years old. They overreacted.”
The boy made the drawing and was sent home from school on Dec. 2. He went for the psychological evaluation — at his parents’ expense — the next day and was cleared to return to school the following Monday after the psychological evaluation found nothing to indicate that he posed a threat to himself or others.
The boy, however, was traumatized by the incident, which made going back to school very difficult, the father said. School administrators have approved the father’s request to have the boy transferred to another elementary school in the district.
This is not the first time in recent years that a Taunton student has been sent home over a drawing. In June 2008, fifth-grade student Cullen Smithson was suspended from Mulcahey Middle School for a day after creating a stick figure drawing that appeared to depict him shooting his teacher and a classmate.
ACORN (Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now) and its allies in 75 cities will again have access to millions of federal dollars to counsel people facing foreclosure, seeking IRS tax refunds, and looking for affordable low cost housing. ACORN, which has received about $54 million in government grants since 1994, will be able to apply for new federal programs just like any other organization.
The court ruled that Congress violated the U.S. Constitution “by singling out ACORN and its affiliates for severe sweeping restrictions” and that such action constitutes illegal punishment or a “bill of attainder.”
What is a bill of attainder? Even most lawyers have no idea. Bills of attainder are acts of congress which unilaterally punish an individual or organization. Essentially Congress acts as prosecutor, judge, jury and executioner.
The U.S. Constitution has prohibited bills of attainder since 1787. U.S. founders objected to bills of attainder because in England Parliament passed many such bills against political enemies, used them to throw people in prison and even execute them without trial.
Congress punished ACORN without even trying to figure out if any laws had been broken or allowing the 500,000 member organization to defend itself.
What about protecting the taxpayers against fraud? As the court pointed out, there are many legal ways for the government to investigate and terminate federal contractors which have been proven to engage in fraud or illegal activity.
But Congress did not want to wait for trials or proof or to allow ACORN due process.
Conservatives developed a voting majority and imposed punishment without a hearing or anything.
ACORN has been a target of right-wing politicians for years. Conservatives hate ACORN primarily because it registered over two million people to vote since 2003 and because it has an overwhelming African American, working class, democratic-voting, membership.
Fox News is obsessed with ACORN. Google Fox News and ACORN and you will see over two million hits. Google Glenn Beck and ACORN and you get over a million hits, six hundred thousand for Rush, and three hundred thousand for Michelle Malkin.
Right wing members of Congress accused ACORN of being a “shell game” using millions of taxpayer dollars “to advertise for a political candidate” and which “helped President Obama get elected.”
After a highly dubious right-wing sting operation in September, the conservative media machine overran Congress members, including, sadly, many democrats, and passed the bill of attainder cutting off all federal funds to ACORN and any affiliates, subsidiaries and allies.
Most Congress reps knew full well this was an illegal bill of attainder as it was pointed out in the debates and even by the Congressional Research Office, but voted to let it go through anyway. Representatives Nadler and Grayson and Senator Leahy, among others, repeatedly pointed out that this was unconstitutional. Democrats who voted for the bill of attainder included many who had sought and received help from ACORN members in the past. They have some explaining to do.
Progressives who remained silent while the nation’s largest low income African American community organization was under attack also should re-think their lack of support. Did anyone think that if the right-wingers took down Van Jones and ACORN they would stop there?
What is ahead? Surely the conservative opponents of ACORN will continue to bloviate and continue to try to put ACORN out of business. There will likely be fights galore. But with this ruling the fights will be a little fairer.
ACORN won this case. The U.S. Supreme Court has called the prohibition of congressional bills of attainder a “bulwark against tyranny.” Here the bulwark against tyranny worked to stop the right-wing smear machine.
But the rule of law won too. And all of us and Congress have again been taught a valuable lesson – there are no shortcuts when it comes to following the Constitution.
No, it's doesn't ring true, but why would it? It was posted by the drama queen, who is crying for attention again. Same person who doesn't know who Scott Brown is. The best thing to do is to ignore such posts, but since it already got two responses, I would like to add the Libertarian Party's Statement of Principles to this discussion. Of course, some of the clauses can be interpreted in different ways, which is why we end up with different types of Libertarians.
1) All six constitutional offices are held by Democrats.
2) There are no Republicans in Congress from this state.
3) There are only five Republican State Senators out of Forty.
4) There are only sixteen Republican State Reps out of 160.
5) There are no Republicans on the eight member Governors Council (The Lt. Gov. is the ex-officio Chairman and ninth voting member)
6) The highest ranking elected Republican officials are three of the state's fourteen county Sheriffs, which is not a policy position.
7) Although municipal elections are non-partisan, very few, probably about three, of the state's fifty or so Mayors are not registered Democrats.
8) Republicans are only 11% of the voter enrollment. Unenrolled (Independents) and minor party enrollment is slightly more than half. Democrats outnumber Republicans by a four-to-one margin.
The fact is state reps, state senators, mayors, etc., are valuable when it comes to endorsements. The Republican Party has too few. I fully expect the majority of the state's major newspapers to endorse Attorney General Marth Coakley.
The problem the Mass. Republican Party has is at the local level. Unlike most states, we do not have county-based political parties. Ours are town and city based, and within cities, there are ward committees. Too many local Chairmen have no idea what they're doing and their committees are nothing more than social groups.
Another problem is infighting. The local committee is not the place for members to attempt to purge other members who are not like-minded. Too often self-proclaimed conservatives will do whatever it takes to make life miserable for those with more moderate views. They throw around the insult "RINO", Republican In Name Only. Likewise for the moderates who call conservatives uncomplimentary names.
There are enough special interest groups in the GOP to belong to aside from the local committee to associate with like-minded members of your party and to work with to help elect people who are acceptable to you. For conservatives, there's the Republican Assembly. For moderates, there's the Republican Leadership Conference. For Libertarians there's the Republican Liberty Caucus. There are national organizations that represent both sides of the abortion issue. If people would leave their fellow members alone and stick to getting candidates elected, we may have a chance at electing someone like Scott Brown.
There are some greedy Middle Class people still left in Massachusetts. We can get their incomes to pay for more Programs.
The City of Lawrence Massachusetts is broke, from all the Third-World Poverty Immigrants, .......Let's help them get more Taxpayer subsidised housing, food stamps, and Health Care.
Help Madam Coakley in Washington bail out everyone, except the Middle Class.
53% think Obama SUCKS, and I bet 90% think his Marxist skank wife looks like a transvestite!!
Daily Presidential Tracking Poll
Sunday, December 13, 2009 Email to a Friend ShareThis.Advertisement
The Rasmussen Reports daily Presidential Tracking Poll for Sunday shows that 23% of the nation's voters Strongly Approve of the way that Barack Obama is performing his role as President. Forty-two percent (42%) Strongly Disapprove giving Obama a Presidential Approval Index rating of -19.
Today is the second straight day that Obama’s Approval Index rating has fallen to a new low. Prior to the past two days, the Approval Index had never fallen below -15 during Obama’s time in office (see trends).
The 23% who Strongly Approve matches the lowest level of enthusiasm yet recorded. Just 41% of Democrats Strongly Approve while 69% of Republicans Strongly Disapprove. Among voters not affiliated with either major party, 21% Strongly Approve and 49% Strongly Disapprove.
Among those who consider the economy to be the most important issue, just 26% Strongly Approve of the President’s performance while 39% Strongly Disapprove.
Among those who consider fiscal policy issues the most important, just 1% Strongly Approve and 81% Strongly Disapprove.
The President’s Approval Index rating is -2 among voters under 30 and -29 among senior citizens. From an income perspective, the President’s ratings are weakest among those who earn $40,000 to $100,000 annually.
Check out our review of the week’s key polls to see “What They Told Us.”
The Presidential Approval Index is calculated by subtracting the number who Strongly Disapprove from the number who Strongly Approve. It is updated daily at 9:30 a.m. Eastern (sign up for free daily e-mail update). Updates are also available on Twitter and Facebook.
Overall, 46% of voters say they at least somewhat approve of the President's performance. Fifty-three percent (53%) disapprove.
(More Below)
Most Nevada voters oppose the health care plan working its way through Congress and that’s one reason Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid is trailing a group of little known Republicans in his bid for re-election. Rasmussen Reports has released updated polls on the 2010 Senate races in Arkansas, Colorado, Illinois, Connecticut, Pennsylvania, Ohio, and California. Overall, the results confirm the conventional wisdom that the mid-term election season is off to a tough start for the Democrats. However, there is a long way to go until November.
Scott Rasmussen has recently had several columns published in the Wall Street Journal addressing how President Obama is losing independent voters , health care reform, the President's approval ratings, and how Obama won the White House by campaigning like Ronald Reagan. If you'd like Scott Rasmussen to speak at your meeting, retreat, or conference, contact Premiere Speakers Bureau. You can also learn about Scott's favorite place on earth or his time working with hockey legend Gordie Howe.
It is important to remember that the Rasmussen Reports job approval ratings are based upon a sample of likely voters. Some other firms base their approval ratings on samples of all adults. President Obama's numbers are always several points higher in a poll of adults rather than likely voters. That's because some of the President's most enthusiastic supporters, such as young adults, are less likely to turn out to vote. It is also important to check the details of question wording when comparing approval ratings from different firms.
(More Below)
Rasmussen Reports has been a pioneer in the use of automated telephone polling techniques, but many other firms still utilize their own operator-assisted technology (see methodology).
Pollster.com founder Mark Blumenthal noted that “independent analyses from the National Council on Public Polls, the American Association for Public Opinion Research, the Pew Research Center, the Wall Street Journal and FiveThirtyEight.com have all shown that the horse-race numbers produced by automated telephone surveys did at least as well as those from conventional live-interviewer surveys in predicting election outcomes.”
In the 2009 New Jersey Governor’s race, automated polls tended to be more accurate than operator-assisted polling techniques. On reviewing the state polling results from 2009, Mickey Kaus offered this assessment, “If you have a choice between Rasmussen and, say, the prestigious N.Y. Times, go with Rasmussen!” During Election 2008, Nate Silver of fivethirtyeight.com said that the Rasmussen tracking poll “would probably be the one I'd want with me on a desert island."
A Fordham University professor rated the national pollsters on their record in Election 2008. We also have provided a summary of our results for your review. In 2008, Obama won 53%-46% and our final poll showed Obama winning 52% to 46%. While we were pleased with the final result, Rasmussen Reports was especially pleased with the stability of our results. On every single day for the last six weeks of the campaign, our daily tracking showed Obama with a stable and solid lead attracting more than 50% of the vote.
An analysis by Pollster.com partner Charles Franklin “found that despite identically sized three-day samples, the Rasmussen daily tracking poll is less variable than Gallup.” During Election 2008, the Rasmussen Reports daily Presidential Tracking Poll was the least volatile of all those tracking the race.
In 2004 George W. Bush received 50.7% of the vote while John Kerry earned 48.3%. Rasmussen Reports was the only firm to project both candidates’ totals within half a percentage point by projecting that Bush would win 50.2% to 48.5%. (see our 2004 results).
Daily tracking results are collected via telephone surveys of 500 likely voters per night and reported on a three-day rolling average basis. The margin of sampling error—for the full sample of 1,500 Likely Voters--is +/- 3 percentage points with a 95% level of confidence. Results are also compiled on a full-week basis and crosstabs for full-week results are available for Premium Members.
Like all polling firms, Rasmussen Reports weights its data to reflect the population at large (see methodology). Among other targets, Rasmussen Reports weights data by political party affiliation using a dynamic weighting process. While partisan affiliation is generally quite stable over time, there are a fair number of people who waver between allegiance to a particular party or independent status. Over the past five years, the number of Democrats in the country has increased while the number of Republicans has decreased.
Our baseline targets are established based upon separate survey interviews with a sample of adults nationwide completed during the preceding three months (a total of 45,000 interviews) and targets are updated monthly. Currently, the baseline targets for the adult population are 37.1% Democrats, 32.4% Republicans, and 30.5% unaffiliated. Likely voter samples typically show a slightly smaller advantage for the Democrats.
State Senator Scott Brown won his primary by over 80% but is considered an underdog to the well funded, powerful and media supported Democrat, Martha Coakley. They act as she deserves the job. She is so far to the left with her liberal policies and typical Democrat thinking. Massachusetts has been run by Democrats for so long they think it is all theirs but people are getting sick and tired of Democrats and their policies and tactics. The time for this is right,. Right now!
We can't afford to keep the Democrats in charge. They will either bankrupt us or tax us to death. The deck has been stacked for too long. In order for change in Washington you must change the players. Martha Coakley will be more of the same. 2010 is going to see these changes and should start in Massachusetts. This special election is in January 19 2010.
If anyone has any connections to prominent Republicans please call or write them to come forward and support Senator Scott Brown, Bill Clinton was making phone calls on behalf of Martha Coakley. We need to get
Sarah Palin, Newt Gingrich, Karl Rove, Shawn Hannity, Laura Ingram, Rudy Guliani, Mitt Romney, Ann Coulter and others to help get Scott elected. Please help and do your part, wake up Massachusetts and the entire country. Independents, conservative Democrats and all Republicans, There are enough of us to do it! Get involved, get your friends and family involved!
Please make a film explaining the global warming "scam." It is time for an exposé of how and why Al Gore and company created this massive scam. It would be a costly endeavor to create a conspiracy this big, and it seems to me that thereare quicker and easier methods to bilk people out of money, get rid of the middle class, and create a new world order.
Exactly why did they need to spend 40 or 50 years creating a false crisis like Global Warming?
Yes, this is a challenge to you who think global warming is a scam. It doesn't cut it to tell us that the physical evidence, such as before and after video footage of disappearing glaciers, was produced on a computer through the magic of CGI. Why would they go through all that trouble to make people believe the glaciers are melting? Why would they convince Australia to accept thousands of immigrants from the vanishing Pacific islands? How much did it cost to cut loose that missing chunk of Antarctica (or was that CGI trickery, too?)
Open minds would like to see your proof of the scam you have claimed.
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