Category Archives: Politics

Politics

Here’s the difference…

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Well…I don’t know if I had an epiphany this morning or not…and I may have talked about this in earlier posts but I think it’s an important distinction that we have to keep coming back to…oh, I guess I just “buried the lead” like they say in newspaper business. What I’m trying to say is that we need to recognize the differences between the dems and repubs, and I think it can be boiled down to a few points…the number one being that the repubs are all about restricting peoples rights while the progressives and dems are all about enlarging them. It is odd that the repubs keep harping on limited government and individual rights on one hand, and then they always turn around and use the power of government to limit or even take away rights. We’ve seen this so many times in the past decade or so that I really don’t know why I have to keep bringing attention to these charlatans and their mendacity. Okay, I just love the word mendacity….look it up. While the rights of corporations have been on an arc of unlimited expansion with deregulation and the Citizens United decision, across the country the repubs are limiting the right of women to control their own bodies, limiting the right of association by making sure that unions have no power to represent people in negotiations, limiting the human right of loving and marrying whomever they choose…and the list goes on and on, and on.

The founders of this country envisioned that the rights of the people would continue to expand over time, and constructed a form of government that they thought would guarantee it….they always thought the greatest threat to the freedom of the people would come from within, when ignorant politicians and an uninformed populace would conspire by their action or inaction to bring us down…geez…

Politics

The bait and switch is not working too well…

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Well…I have to be heartened by the news here in Michigan and across the country that the electorate is starting to wake up to the odorous tricks that the repubs have used to get elected…specifically, the lies and obfuscations of the their true agenda that includes breaking all of organized labor and the continued transfer of wealth from the middle class to the rich. Here in Michigan, the people bought into the “tough nerd” label that Snyder used in his campaign and elected him, only to be shown that he is no different from any repub out there; with his tax cuts for the rich being paid for by the poor and the middle class. His approval numbers have plummeted since he revealed himself for what he is…just another millionaire businessman who does not care one whit about the people of Michigan..just about rewarding his cronies.

This mirrors the national trend in the polls where the majority of people do not support the draconian cuts to social programs that the repubs propose, and they also don’t support the dismantling of unions, the environment, or regulations designed to rein in the worst of the financial thieves. So, where do the repubs get the idea that the majority supports their agenda? Oh, that’s right, they don’t care…the public doesn’t elect them, big money does….there is finally a glimmer that the majority of us want a reasonable country where there are protections for the ordinary famliy, not just for people that have money and connections. Can we hope?

Politics

I made it!

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Well…it just dawned on me that I made it through February without once mentioning sister Sarah and her traveling circus of crazy…it wasn’t easy…well…it really was since the repubs always have newer and crazier people that are constantly stepping up to the plate to amaze and astound me….along with the golden oldies like Rush, Rick Santorum, and any of the other “leadership” that passes for deep thinkers on the right.

So….everyone is fair game again and I will promise you that I will have some substance over the next couple of days….it has been a weird couple of days and I can’t remember being so busy…

Politics

Here’s another fallacy…brought to you by the repubs…

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Well…man, things just keep coming to me today and I am having one of those flashes of creativity that don’t happen often enough, so I’m going to take advantage of it while it lasts. If you’ve been reading the news lately, one of the repubs talking points has been that the government shouldn’t be picking “winners and losers” in business and they have been choking on the regulations that have given an advantage to fluorescent light bulbs over incandescents for their energy savings. Here in Michigan, I don’t think they’ve gotten the memo because gov Snyder is deeply in the process of picking winners by giving tax cuts to his constituent businesses while eliminating them for businesses he doesn’t like or get support from….just another instance of the inconsistency….no that’s not true, they are being completely consistent in rewarding their supporters just like some third world country where nepotism runs rampant….geez….

Politics

The results are in…

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Well…this one may be long and convoluted but I really wanted to get to the Michigan budget crisis now that there are real numbers to be put with the plans that were presented by Gov. Snyder…..I’m not going to bore you with listing specifics because those numbers are readily available elsewhere and I just don’t want to swamp you with minutiae. So, let’s get to it….business gets their 1.8 billion tax break….and let’s be clear right away…no study has shown that tax breaks, in the absence of a rise in demand, result in an increase in jobs. With the retained profits of companies already a their highest point in history, why would you think that giving them more profits would result in hiring of more workers? It just doesn’t work that way and yet the faith-based economics of the repubs continue to throw money at business that just ends up padding the wallets of those at the top. The right way to do it would be to ensure there is an increase in demand by tax incentives or higher wages for workers…folks, this is econ 101 stuff that everyone seems to know but the repubs and it exposes this governor’s plan as driven by ideology more than economics. Did you expect anything else from a governor whose only claim to fame was to take his golden parachute worth hundreds of millions while shipping all of the jobs at Gateway to China?

Now, let’s get to who is going to pay for these business tax cuts….the analysis out today, and it is in the right leaning Detroit News, is that the majority of the “shared sacrifice” comes from retirees and the working poor…those who are the least able to afford this huge tax increase…and, make no mistake, this is being done because the repubs always make people pay that have no power or influence…the tax effect for the wealthy here in Michigan would be an increase that is, on average, 77 dollars a year while that of the retirees an working poor would be in the thousands….this is morally reprehensible but true to form for these thieves. Next, let’s get to the the idea of the Michigan film tax credit, that Snyder has proposed be limited to 25 million dollars a year. Under the current plan, for every dollar of tax credit, Michigan sees 6 dollars of economic activity and has resulted in the only area of job growth in the state; diversifying our economy and starting many new businesses that actually employ people…not just giving more money to the rich. But, as we all know, the film industry is a little more liberal leaning than the general population and it is payback time here in Michigan….Snyder will do anything, just like the rest of the repubs, to crush the opposition even if it means putting people out of work and destroying one of the only bright spots in Michigan’s economy.

Okay, I’m running out of steam here but you can see from just these few instances that “shared sacrifice” means shared by the poor and working people, imposed by the rich, benefiting the rich, and everyone else can go to hell….geez…

Politics

More repub craziness…and thievery…

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Well… this is going to be a short one, just had a couple of thoughts about things that popped up in this morning’s news that does a couple of things; one points out the craziness and lack of moral character that the repubs have, and the second sheds light on the real agenda of the new theftocracy that is called the republicans. First, yesterday in Georgia, at a town hall meeting held by Paul Broun a repub rep, a questioner asked this idiot “who is going to shoot Obama?” and the reaction of rep Broun was to change the subject…not address it as being so out of line and using it as a teachable moment, but just moving on; giving the questioner the tacit approval of his silence. These are the people you’ve elected folks…doesn’t anyone else see anything wrong with his response? Especially in light of the shootings in Arizona, this idiot should have been taught right then and there that violence has no place in our political process…but the repubs have benefited by their violent rhetoric so why would they want it to stop?

The next one is about a neat little trick buried in the bill that will strip workers of their rights in Wisconsin…this bit of thievery gives the governor the absolute ability to sell any and all public buildings, powerplants, or any other public property to whomever he pleases without any oversight, bids or recourse for the citizens of the state. Yep, that’s right…this guy that got elected by the Koch brothers and the tea party who railed and railed about dems doing things by unelected regulatory bodies, have just taken away the rights of the people of Wisconsin to have any say in the disposition of government property that they paid for…the czar of Wisconsin now gets to do whatever he pleases with the people’s property….all I have to say is watch…the real agenda of these folks is becoming clear…the lip service they paid to representative government and upholding the constitution was just that, nothing but lies to get elected and to give them the chance to steal everything else they haven’t already given to business and the rich.

Politics

Democracy died in Michigan yesterday…

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Well….I am so outraged by the actions of the repub controlled house here in Michigan yesterday that I can barely think straight….democracy of, by and for the people died here with the passage of the emergency financial bill that would let appointed boards fire elected officials across the state. Yep, you heard it….this new set of six bills would allow non-elected boards, appointed by the governor to fire mayors, school boards, city managers and a whole host of other elected officials if the governor decides they are not toeing his cost cutting line. These thugs have nothing on the commissars of the old Soviet Union who regularly removed politicians that got out of the lock step of communism….these are the people that were elected on the guise of getting government out of the way? Well..with this legislation they can get people out of the way that don’t agree with them and yours and my votes no longer count here….where the hell is the outrage people? Where are you tea party…you who rode to election on the pages of the constitution just to tear it up once elected…if the previous governor had proposed anything of this sort and a democratic controlled legislature passed these bills, you repubs would have been out in the street with your pitchforks and torches screaming at the top of your lungs that socialism had taken over. It has here in Michigan….but more than that, it is totalitarianism; no different than any of the states in the middle east that are now in flames….and our Mubarak or Gadhafi is named Rick Snyder….

Politics

Manny is still a shill….

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Well…just a short one to talk about something I read in the Detroit News by our favorite shill for the repubs, Manny Lopez. In this one, one of the things he bitches about is the media coverage of the protests across the midwest, and his rationale is that since there are only about 12% of the working population in unions, the media should not cover the protests of these “sign carrying, bullhorn toting” crowds. Oh, really Manny? You thought that coverage of events like these was just peachy when it was the tea partiers carrying the signs and toting the bullhorns, and at the time you thought it was wonderful uprising of ordinary folks “taking back their government”. What’s the difference here Manny? These are ordinary working folks trying to keep the government from taking away their right to collectively bargain and if this was happening at a tea party rally, you would be right there with them. This is just another instance where the right shows its intellectual and moral bankruptcy…funded by the Koch brothers….geez….

Politics

Why are people voting to give up their workplace voices?

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Well….the attack on labor in this country continues with yesterday’s vote in the house to defund the NLRB, pushed by the repubs, of course. If you don’t know what the NLRB does shame on you, but I’ll give you a capsule here….it is the government organization that conducts union elections, but more than that, it rules whether business tactics like lockouts and intimidation of workers trying to organize are legal or not…one of the basic protections that labor has here in the US. One thing I just can’t understand is why do people keep voting for the repubs when they want to go back to the bad old days where workers were told to shut up and just cope with unfair labor practices and dangerous workplaces. I think I have to agree with some of my friends on this issue; that Americans are just getting more and more stupid as time goes on. When did people stop voting in their own economic self interest? I’m going to come back to this one in a bit…just wanted to get the idea down before I read the rest of the online papers….

this one is going to be a little disjointed because ideas are coming to me that way today….one that I did want to comment on was the Gallup poll from yesterday that showed that almost two-thirds of Americans want to retain the ability of labor to organize in both the public and private sector…this cuts across the entire political spectrum and raises another question for me: if the people that voted for the repubs don’t want this union bashing to continue, who are they doing it for? Really shows you that business is calling the shots with the repubs and the people that voted for them are just pawns in the con game they are running on the US….

Politics

Make no mistake, this is war…

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Well….just did my state taxes and that put me in a kind of crappy mood, but I really don’t mind paying taxes to keep the society running…and this comes from an unemployed guy who is quickly going broke…so what is the excuse for the richies to not want to pay theirs? But, that’s not what this one is about….I just need to make sure you understand that the attacks on organized labor by the repubs is war, it is an attack on all of us that have tried to drag ourselves up out of poverty and have found that the only way you can stand against the moneyed interests in the US is to organize. I have some questions to ask those non-union folks who are so adamant that the unions have become greedy and unresponsive to the needs of todays economy…do you like your 40 hour workweek? Do you like your employer paid health insurance? Do you like your vacations? Do you like your pension or 401K match? Well…all of these are a result of the unions standing up for all of the workers here in the US…not just their members. All you right wing union bashers out there, do you think your companies would just give you these things out of the goodness of their hearts? If you do…you are even more delusional than you sound in the message boards. Make no mistake….emboldened by the billionaires who bought this last election for the repubs, these same repubs have been told to wage war on labor and the middle class…it’s a take no prisoners game in which all of us need to decide what side we’re on….billionaires or your neighbors and friends..geez…