Well…it must be nice for the relatives of the Michigan republicans these days when they can lose money, get sued, and then get a law passed that wipes out 2.4 million dollars in debt. If you haven’t heard, that is just what happened last week when Snyder signed into law a bill that relieved the brother of the house repub chair here, Bobby Schostak, of the 2.4 million dollar loss that the appeals court said he owed on a failed property in Traverse City. The gist of the story is that the Schostaks are wealthy developers here, and the younger Schostak signed a contract that said he would be personally responsible for losses on this property…when the economy tanked, he walked away from the property that was worth 2.4 million less than he owed on it, the bank sued, and all of the courts here said he owed the money. So, what does a connected republican do here in Michigan? As always, they change the rules and use crony capitalism to pass this law that retroactively immunizes the leader’s brother from the loss…wouldn’t you like to be able to do that with the house you are upside down on? It is a breach of the public trust for the repubs to cheat the system for personal gain…but, what else should you expect from these guys? After all they are the ones who raised taxes on workers so they could hand a 2 billion dollar tax cuts to the corporations that bought them the election….and it just goes on and on…geez….
One last thing…the bill was written by the Schostak brothers attorney…..
Well…just another short one on the arguments that happened on the ACA in the Supreme Court and the fact that I think that people are missing the point of the whole thing….I can understand why some on the right don’t want to be “forced” to buy healthcare under the new law…but, how many of them are already forced to by the fear that a health problem will bankrupt them? What’s the difference between the two? How many of them have ever canceled their insurance in the name of freedom? You can probably count them on one hand. But, this whole argument has never been about healthcare to me….it is whether or not we we still have a social contract where we work for the common good of the society and where, sometimes, in that society we have to make compromises that will benefit the whole while placing a small burden on each of us as individuals. That is what the individual mandate is…a small burden for the majority of us that will help the 50 million people who can’t afford the peace of mind that comes with being insured….but, those on the right, including the debate audience that when asked about an uninsured person needing care to save his life and chorus sung out “let him die” are actively tearing down the social contract that has served this nation so well over the past 200 plus years….what kind of a country will we have left when those on the right get what they want…back to the days of “I’ve got mine, everyone else can go to hell” that prevailed in the early 20th century….I’m glad I’m getting older and won’t be around to see it if the right wins…geez…
Well…don’t know how long this one is going to be but I did want to comment on the supreme court and the ACA…aka Obamacare and the arguments that have been going on this week….one of the things that strikes me is how the conservatives have strayed from the traditional role of the court; deciding on whether a law is constitutional or not…with the questions that have come back from Alito et al…I can see the worst kind of judicial activism at work…where they are trying to set policy and write law when that is not their job, and I can see the ignorance of the roles of the three branches government that these conservative justices are showing. It is not their job to look at policy and implementation of laws and the effect of those policies, but that is what those on the right on the court have been doing during the arguments, usurping the traditional role of the legislative branch to write laws and placing themselves as equals to that lawmaking. We can see from the decisions that this court has made in Bush v. Gore, Citizens United, and now the ACA that the conservative justices feel they are only there to further the right-wing conservative agenda…ignoring precedent that reaches back to the founding of this nation for crass political advantage….now that we have seen this worst kind of judicial activism, it should make you realize that the court needs to be reformed…and the only way to do that is to re-elect Obama and hope that just one of the conservatives leaves the court so a justice who has respect for the law can replace him…geez…
Well…if you didn’t think that there was something wrong with America and how the rewards of the economy are shared across all of it’s citizens…all you have to do is look at the recent study done by the University of California that revealed that in 2010 93% of all income growth went to the top 1% of earners…yep, you read it…the top 1% took away virtually all of the income growth while the other 99% of us were left to feed on the scraps that these folks have not figured out how to steal yet….I’ll come back for more later..but right now I need to read something else so I don’t fall into the pit of despair that these kind of numbers normally induce…geez…
Well….someone needs to do something pretty soon or I am going to run completely out of things to write about….just haven’t been able to work up the outrage necessary to do these things justice lately….I could comment on the concerted effort on the part of police and prosecutors to cover their asses by smearing Trayvon Martin but the effort is so transparently self-serving that I can’t take it seriously….or I could comment on the open mike gaffe that Obama made a few days back talking to Medvedev where he said he’d have more flexibility to get things done after the election…and ole Mitt jumped on it as the president promising to give away our security if he’s reelected….I see it a little differently…Obama was just telling the truth of the political situation here in the US in front of the election…and truth is something that ole Mitt doesn’t even have a passing acquaintance with and can’t stand when he sees it….hmmmm…what else? That’s enough for now…I’m taking off out of here in a few to go shoot pool with Tom so it will be a while before I come back to add to this one….or I may do that sports one I talked about…
Well…I have been struggling lately to come up with topics that really mean something and I think the problem may be that I have stopped reading the newspapers in the morning….but I have made a little cash lately so maybe I should resume going out…who knows? The one thing that I wanted to deal with today is the new budget proposal put forth by Paul Ryan in the last week or so and the fact that it is just more of the same nonsense that he proposed last year…more tax cuts for the rich, more safety net cuts for the middle class and the poor, and exploding the deficit that the repubs say they are concerned about but their actions say otherwise. This document just reeks of dishonesty with the most egregious lie or omission being how to pay for the tax cuts for the rich and corporations that he wants…saying “trust me” with some vague statement that waste and fraud can be eliminated to pay for them but does not say where that waste and fraud lies….and the cheers on the right for this piece of crap have been long and strong with the self congratulatory pats on the back and the attack line that the repubs produced a budget when the dems haven’t…but I think a bad budget proposal like this one is worse than not doing anything…but I do thank ole Paul for pulling the cover back on what American would look like if the repubs were in control….now, all we have to do is vote these idiots out of office…geez….
Well…don’t really have a long form topic for today so I think I’ll just take a few things and add them into this one just to see where it goes…first, let’s look at the unintended consequences that are coming from many of the laws that the Koch brothers have sponsored through the right wing legislative organization called ALEC, whose sole purpose is to push the right wing agenda by writing laws that they hand to captive repub legislators across the US who then ram them through state legislatures. One of these laws is the “stand your ground” law in Florida that has been copied across 17 other states that says that people can’t be prosecuted if they shoot someone and claim self defense…the most recent case in Florida concerns an unarmed young black man that was chased by an armed citizen and shot and killed…with the killer claiming self defense…now, I’ve never seen anyone who thought they were in mortal danger run toward the person they felt was threatening…the NRA, ALEC, and the Florida legislators who passed this bill are as responsible for this young man’s death as the shooter. Okay….after that, the rest of the things I wanted to talk about seem pretty trivial so I’ll just leave it here….how can this happen in 2012 in the US?
Well…just a short one on the new budget plan that ole Paul has put forth…I’m not going to bog you down with all of the numbers but just the two that define this mess that continues the repubs war on the middle class and poor….5.3 trillion dollars in cuts to programs for the poor and middle class…including gutting Medicare and social security…and guess who gets tax cuts? I’m sure you guessed it…the rich will get 4.3 billion in tax cuts…so, what this idiot has just said that we are no longer even going to pretend that we give a damn about anyone but the rich…and he justifies it by saying that anything that benefits the less fortunate will just take away their incentive to work and get ahead…never mind that the rich and corporations get much more in subsidies every year…does that mean that corporations will no longer have incentive to compete since they are getting corporate welfare? Oh, no….corporations are different since they are “job creators” so the rules don’t apply….as they don’t to the 1%…how did we get here? I am losing hope for our country if guys like this are allowed to stay in power…geez…
Well…I have been kind of interested in the implementation of the new healthcare law since it would allow me to buy insurance again that I can’t afford now…but, that’s not I want to talk about right now…I really want to talk about the political implications of the supreme court taking up the case for the individual mandate before the fall elections. Some of the pundits on the right think that no matter what the decision is, they have a winning issue for the general….but I see it differently…let’s take the either/or of the decision and see where that will take us. So, if the court rules against the individual mandate, I see the immediate result that the dems will be able to use the decision to connect it to the conservative debacle of Citizens United and say that this is an activist court that is not in the mainstream of American life…on the other hand, if the court upholds the law…the dems can say “see, I told you the law was legal” and hammer the repubs on their ignorance of the law and then start to shift the conversation back to the benefits of the law that the people will like once it is implemented….if a political novice like me can come up this off the top of my head…I’m sure we’re going to be able to deflate this issue quite easily in the fall…
Well…just a quick one on the daily gaffes that have been flowing out of the repub candidates and I’m not sure to laugh about them or just roll my eyes…is this shooting fish in a barrel? Yeah, it kind of is but it’s such a hanging curve ball I’m going to take a swing. Okay, I recognize that those last two were bad….Let’s start with ole Rick again, when asked about the unemployment rate, he answered that he “didn’t care about the unemployment rate” and his candidacy is about ‘freedom” and bigger issues than unemployment…how many ways is this one wrong? The one that I want to highlight is the fact that by this statement, Santorum has said that ideology and his right wing agenda is going to trump all of the rest of the problems the country faces…and there are issues that most of us think are more important than his war on everyone but conservative white people. Then, I have to say thanks to ole Mitt for another “let them eat cake” moment that came from questions about his desire to “get rid” of Planned Parenthood. When asked where poor women would go to get the health services that Planned Parenthood provides that they can’t afford to get anywhere else, the wonderfully obtuse Mitt replied “they can go anywhere, it a free country”….I really do wish I was making these up but I’m not…this is the quality of the field from the repubs and these are their ideas….so don’t let them dance around these issues…