Putting a Stop to Big Bank Greed

Putting a Stop to Big Bank Greed

It is hard to imagine a better setting for Jim Hightower to renew the populist call to action than Fighting Bob Fest, the county-fair-style outdoor gathering of 10,000 progressives where the agitator from Austin will appear Sept. 11.

And it is hard to imagine a better time.

Hightower has for almost three decades — since his election as Texas agriculture commissioner in the second year of the Reagan/Bush era — been America’s best-known and most ardent progressive populist.

Along the way, he has defended family farmers and factory workers, small-business owners and teachers, neglected rural communities, and inner cities from the ravages of the Wall Street speculators and their political handmaidens in Washington. During the farm crisis of the 1980s, it was Hightower who rallied activists across the country and forced Democrats to get serious about tackling the abuses of big agribusiness. That initiative spawned a renewed rural populism that produced a new generation of candidates in the Hightower mold: Minnesota’s Paul Wellstone, Wisconsin’s Ed Garvey, Iowa’s Tom Harkin. In the 1990s, he warned that trade agreements like NAFTA would devastate farm country and factory towns, and, like Wellstone and Wisconsin Sen. Russ Feingold, he condemned not just the Republicans but Democrats like Bill Clinton for selling out America’s economic future.

Of course, Hightower was a critic of bailouts for Wall Street and, with Feingold, he was a critic of the so-called banking reform that Congress passed this summer. Of that legislation, Hightower observed: “The regulatory reforms were hailed by Democrats as possessing powerful cleansing power, while Republicans wailed that the new rules were overly caustic, imposing such a heavy-handed governmental scrub that the delicate layers of Wall Street innovation, competitiveness and profitability will be rubbed away. Meanwhile, the big bankers were grinning from ear to ear, for the bill requires no restructuring and decentralizing of the monopolistic grip that these giants have on America’s credit system. Thus, they still retain the power to rip off consumers, gamble with depositors’ money, haul in exorbitant profits and pay themselves ungodly bonuses — all while remaining ‘too big to fail.’ ”

That’s the truth, not the spin.

We will need more of that if we are to stand a chance in the great wrestling match over how the banking bill will be implemented — with real regulators or toothless tigers in charge of key agencies, with consumers calling the shots or lobbyists continuing to define things, with Wall Streeters forced to take responsibility for their greed or with taxpayers facing the threat of another “bailout” raid on the treasury.

When Hightower appears at Fighting Bob Fest events (Sept. 10 with Feingold at the Barrymore in Madison; Sept. 11 with the Rev. Jesse Jackson and others at the Sauk County Fairgrounds in Baraboo) he won’t tell anyone to trust the Democrats or the Republicans. He’ll do what progressive populists going back to Robert M. La Follette have done: shine a light on the honest players and shine an even brighter light on the banksters and the unindicted co-conspirators in both parties.

How to stop the too big to fail/bail-out and economic bust cycle? We're sure not going to get sensible regulation from conservative Republicans who have decided that everything from cross-walk zones to protecting consumers from tainted food is big gov'mint socialism. The key is to vote in more Progressive Democrats who will stand up for consumers, tax payers, investors, seniors and the working class.

Check Those Grassroots Conservatives. They Run on Billionaire Plastic

The Billionaires Bankrolling the Tea Party

ANOTHER weekend, another grass-roots demonstration starring Real Americans who are mad as hell and want to take back their country from you-know-who. Last Sunday the site was Lower Manhattan, where they jeered the “ground zero mosque.” This weekend, the scene shifted to Washington, where the avatars of oppressed white Tea Party America, Glenn Beck and Sarah Palin, were slated to “reclaim the civil rights movement” (Beck’s words) on the same spot where the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. had his dream exactly 47 years earlier.

Vive la révolution!

There’s just one element missing from these snapshots of America’s ostensibly spontaneous and leaderless populist uprising: the sugar daddies who are bankrolling it, and have been doing so since well before the “death panel” warm-up acts of last summer. Three heavy hitters rule. You’ve heard of one of them, Rupert Murdoch. The other two, the brothers David and Charles Koch, are even richer, with a combined wealth exceeded only by that of Bill Gates and Warren Buffett among Americans. But even those carrying the Kochs’ banner may not know who these brothers are.

Their self-interested and at times radical agendas, like Murdoch’s, go well beyond, and sometimes counter to, the interests of those who serve as spear carriers in the political pageants hawked on Fox News. The country will be in for quite a ride should these potentates gain power, and given the recession-battered electorate’s unchecked anger and the Obama White House’s unfocused political strategy, they might.

All three tycoons are the latest incarnation of what the historian Kim Phillips-Fein labeled “Invisible Hands” in her prescient 2009 book of that title: those corporate players who have financed the far right ever since the du Pont brothers spawned the American Liberty League in 1934 to bring down F.D.R. You can draw a straight line from the Liberty League’s crusade against the New Deal “socialism” of Social Security, the Securities and Exchange Commission and child labor laws to the John Birch Society-Barry Goldwater assault on J.F.K. and Medicare to the Koch-Murdoch-backed juggernaut against our “socialist” president.

Only the fat cats change — not their methods and not their pet bugaboos (taxes, corporate regulation, organized labor, and government “handouts” to the poor, unemployed, ill and elderly). Even the sources of their fortunes remain fairly constant. Koch Industries began with oil in the 1930s and now also spews an array of industrial products, from Dixie cups to Lycra, not unlike DuPont’s portfolio of paint and plastics. Sometimes the biological DNA persists as well. The Koch brothers’ father, Fred, was among the select group chosen to serve on the Birch Society’s top governing body.

The conservative movement is boring in it's unhinged crusade against progress. It has not changed much in 70 years.

Right-wing Clown Glenn Beck's Perverse Revision of King's Dream Is Nothing New

Glenn Beck's Perverse Revision of King's Dream Is Nothing New

"Far too many have either gotten just lazy or they have purposely distorted Martin Luther King's ideas of judge a man by the content of his character," Beck said in June when defending the timing of his rally, which will be held on Saturday's anniversary of the 1963 March on Washington. "Lately, in the last twenty years, we've been told that character doesn't matter. Well, if character doesn't matter, then what was Martin Luther King asking people to judge people by?"

Beck insists the event was originally planned for September 12, but that date fell on a Sunday and he couldn't make folks work on the Sabbath. Picking August 28 as the alternate, he says, was a mundane decision: It was the only date that worked for all the principals' schedules. But Beck welcomes the timing. "This is a moment that we reclaim the civil rights movement," he declared on his radio show [2] in May. "It has been so distorted and turned upside down, it's an abomination."

Such theatrics are typical for Beck--his political performances generated $32 million [3] between March 2009 and March 2010—but the ideas behind them are neither new nor particularly radical for the right. Conservatives long ago set out to derail the civil rights movement by co-opting it. Like Beck, the right's Beltway think tanks have always narrowly framed the movement's goals as achieving equal rights and fostering social grace—with victory declared on both fronts. The fact that the proverbial conversation about race is now more focused on racial harmony than racial justice is proof they've succeeded.

Ironically, Beck, Fox and the Tea Party have finally provided today's civil rights leaders a tangible target for challenging this frame-shift. Next generation advocacy groups like Color of Change have consistently targeted Fox, most recently with a campaign to hold the network accountable [4] for Beck's behavior. The NAACP's effort to make the Tea Party take responsibility [5] for racists in its ranks seems like a similar effort to reclaim control of the discussion. Several groups have planned their own march for Saturday, which will culminate on the National Mall. Organizers insist they're not looking for a showdown. "At no point will we interchange," Rev. Al Sharpton told the Washington Post. "We will not desecrate the march and what King stood for."

All of this, of course, begs the question of what King, his movement and this iconic speech in  fact stood for—and what reformers stand for today. There are many things about King's dream speech that Beck won't likely point out at this weekend's gathering. Perhaps top among them: the 1963 March on Washington was the work of a war-resisting labor organizer, A. Philip Randolph, and an openly gay man, Bayard Rustin, who was himself a war-resisting socialist.

The event's actual name was the March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom. That moniker was a compromise between King, who wanted a more focused event, and Randolph, who helped broker the broad constituency that made the march the largest peacetime gathering in the nation's history at the time. King's iconic speech reflected the event's dual focus on economic and political justice--and it included much, much more than a call to judge people by their character.

King began the speech by harking back to the promise of the Emancipation Proclamation as a "great beacon of light." But he quickly pivoted to the ways in which that light had dimmed. "One hundred years later, the Negro lives on a lonely island of poverty in the midst of a vast ocean of material prosperity," King declared. "We cannot be satisfied as long as the Negro's basic mobility is from a smaller ghetto to a larger one," he later added.

No one - other than die hard wing-nuts like Sarah Palin take Beck seriously - but it is a mistake to let their circus of depraved ideas and exploitation of people who were truly oppressed go unanswered. While there were probably average wage earners in the crowd, Beck and Palin are making millions off basically calling people names and dreaming up crazy conspiracy theories. No, Glenn Beck Is Not a Civil Rights Icon

My gripe with Glenn Beck has always been with his absurd attempt to claim a connection to Tom Paine.

The furiously self-promotional Fox personality wrote a book last year that he suggested was a contemporary update of Paine's pamphlet "Common Sense."

In fact, Glenn Beck's Common Sense [1] was short on Paine and long on Beck. And it failed to note the founder's canon of criticism of organized religion, concentrated wealth and know-nothing opponents of government. [2]

But, as silly as Beck's attempt to claim Paine might have been, his attempt to associate himself with the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr., a radical critic of not just racism but of an economic system left tens of millions in poverty, would be comic if it was not so sad.

Beck and his followers say they are out to "reclaim the civil rights movement."

Reclaim it from who? Presumably the people who were involved in the civil rights movement.

As Martin Luther King III notes [3]:  "My father championed free speech. He would be the first to say that those participating in Beck's rally have the right to express their views. But his dream rejected hateful rhetoric and all forms of bigotry or discrimination, whether directed at race, faith, nationality, sexual orientation or political beliefs. He envisioned a world where all people would recognize one another as sisters and brothers in the human family. Throughout his life he advocated compassion for the poor, nonviolence, respect for the dignity of all people and peace for humanity.

"Although he was a profoundly religious man, my father did not claim to have an exclusionary 'plan' that laid out God's word for only one group or ideology. He marched side by side with members of every religious faith. Like Abraham Lincoln, my father did not claim that God was on his side; he prayed humbly that he was on God's side.

"He did, however, wholeheartedly embrace the "social gospel." His spiritual and intellectual mentors included the great theologians of the social gospel Walter Rauschenbush and Howard Thurman. He said that any religion that is not concerned about the poor and disadvantaged, 'the slums that damn them, the economic conditions that strangle them and the social conditions that cripple them[,] is a spiritually moribund religion awaiting burial.' In his 'Dream' speech, my father paraphrased the prophet Amos, saying, 'We will not be satisfied until justice rolls down like waters and righteousness like a mighty stream.'"

That reference to the "social gospel" is a direct rebuke to Beck's attacks on churches, synagogues and mosques that preach a social justice message.

Beck's own religious background seems to be a patchwork of beliefs. Beliefs that see average workers as leeches on society and media clowns like himself as deserving to be millionaires. It is Beck's version of the long held Conservative Republican belief that wealth should be rewarded for its own sake and work should be looked down upon.

Why Are Glenn Beck and the Tea Nuts Holding a Rally For Social Justice They Do Not Believe In

Martin Luther King, Jr. Was a Social Justice Christian

This coming Saturday, Aug. 28, will mark the 47th anniversary of the March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom, where King delivered his famous "I Have a Dream Speech." Glenn Beck has chosen this day to deliver his own speech from the steps of the Lincoln Memorial.

On that same morning I will be speaking at the dedication ceremony of a work of public art that commemorates the words and legacy of King. It is not a protest. Rather, it is an opportunity to reflect on what this great American had to say and is still saying to our country today. Whenever we take the time to collectively consider what that dream was, we all benefit.

My picture has graced the Glenn Beck blackboard a number of times over the past year. I am quite sure that if the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. were alive today, he would have been on Glenn Beck's blackboard long before I would have ever been considered. That is because Martin Luther King Jr. was clearly a Social Justice Christian -- the term and people that Beck constantly derides. If the Christians of King's era had listened to Beck, they would have been forced to walk out on King's "I Have a Dream" speech. If they were to heed his advice to turn in social justice pastors to the church authorities, they all would have had to turn in Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.

On December 18, 1963, at Western Michigan University, King gave a speech whose topic was "social justice and the emerging new age." If Beck had been there, I don't doubt that he would have gotten up and walked out as he has told his viewers to do if they hear "social justice" from their pastors. It might be foolish, but I hope that as Beck prepares for his rally on Saturday, he takes the time to read this speech and think about what it says. In it King explained why for justice to be just it can not only be individual, but must also be social:

    All I'm saying is simply this, that all life is interrelated, that somehow we're caught in an inescapable network of mutuality tied in a single garment of destiny. Whatever affects one directly affects all indirectly. For some strange reason, I can never be what I ought to be until you are what you ought to be. You can never be what you ought to be until I am what I ought to be. This is the interrelated structure of reality.

This is why in the Old Testament, God commands his people to be charitable but also to work for justice. The people of God are to give offerings of their own free will, but there are also laws that show the government has a legitimate role to play. As a Christian, I believe that Jesus changes people's hearts and lives, and that is something that government policy can never compete with. But, I also believe that personal charity does not do the work of justice. Here is how King put it in that same speech:

    Now the other myth that gets around is the idea that legislation cannot really solve the problem and that it has no great role to play in this period of social change because you've got to change the heart and you can't change the heart through legislation. You can't legislate morals. The job must be done through education and religion. Well, there's half-truth involved here. Certainly, if the problem is to be solved then in the final sense, hearts must be changed. Religion and education must play a great role in changing the heart. But we must go on to say that while it may be true that morality cannot be legislated, behavior can be regulated. It may be true that the law cannot change the heart but it can restrain the heartless. It may be true that the law cannot make a man love me but it can keep him from lynching me and I think that is pretty important, also. So there is a need for executive orders. There is a need for judicial decrees. There is a need for civil rights legislation on the local scale within states and on the national scale from the federal government.

King recognized misunderstandings like this as obstacles to social justice. But, ultimately he was hopeful:

    I think with all of these challenges being met and with all of the work, and determination going on, we will be able to go this additional distance and achieve the ideal, the goal of the new age, the age of social justice.

Yes, King named social justice as the goal of the new age. This is why so many Christians were willing to turn themselves in to Beck as Social Justice Christians. It was not difficult for them to choose between King's interpretation of the gospel and Beck's interpretation that I know some in his own Mormon church are not comfortable with.

Did King believe that the role of government was only to eliminate discrimination? No. As he wrote in "Showdown for Nonviolence" in 1968, it played a role in ending poverty too:

    We will place the problems of the poor at the seat of government of the wealthiest nation in the history of mankind. If that power refuses to acknowledge its debt to the poor, it would have failed to live up to its promise to insure "life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness to its citizens. (From A Testament of Hope: The Essential Writings and Speeches of Martin Luther King Jr.)

Now, Beck and I do have one area of significant agreement. When he spoke about the civil rights movement in context of the debate around health care, he said, "Who were the civil rights marchers? They were people with profound belief in God." This is true. Both Beck and I would probably agree that the most powerful social movements are rooted in deep faith. But he finished that thought saying, "They were trying to set things right. They weren't crying for social justice, they were crying out for equal justice."

Beck's mistake is to somehow think that the two can be separated.

Beck has lied again and again about me and so many others; it saddens me to hear him now trying to rewrite the legacy of Martin Luther King. When you do the work of social justice there are always criticisms, detractors, and those who will slander and lie. But, in the words of Dr. King in 1961 to the AFL-CIO: "Yes, before the victory is won, some will be misunderstood. Some will be called Reds and Communists merely because they believe in economic justice and the brotherhood of man. But we shall overcome."

Beck has continually called me, Sojourners, and many others "communists, socialists, and Marxists" because we call for "economic and social justice." If he were an honest man, he would have to include Dr. King as well.

But King must have been thinking about the Becks of his time when he concluded his speech at Western Michigan University:

    In spite of the difficulties of this hour, I am convinced that we have the resources to make the American Dream a reality. I am convinced of this because I believe Carlyle is right: "No lie can live forever." I am convinced of this because I believe William Cullen Bryant is right: "Truth pressed to earth will rise again." I am convinced of this because I think James Russell Lowell is right: "Truth forever on the scaffold, Wrong forever on the throne; Yet that scaffold sways the future, And behind the dim unknown, Standeth God within the shadow, Keeping watch above His own." Somehow with this faith, we will be able to adjourn the councils of despair and bring new life into the dark chambers of pessimism. With this faith, we will be able to transform the jangling discords of our nation to a beautiful symphony of brotherhood. This will be a great day. This will be the day when all of God's children, black [people] and white [people], Jews and Gentiles, Protestants and Catholics will be able to join hands and sing in the words of the old Negro spiritual, 'Free at last! Free at last! Thank God, Almighty, we are free at last!'"

There are probably a few reasons Beck and his sycophant followers are exploiting and using MLK for cover. One is a problem right-wing extremists have always had. They do not have a coherent political or social policy. They simply worship at the feet of Authority. Authority - their icon - is the answer to anything and everything. The more authority we have, the less freedom and justice we have  - so goes conservative thinking - the better society we'll have. Funny how all the historical achievements of our nations - the ones we're most proud off - are about throwing off unjust authority.

Republican Gubernatorial Candidate Rick Scott Runs Hospitals Like Torture Camps

What You Need To Know About Rick Scott: The Corrupt And Fraudulent GOP Gubernatorial Nominee In Florida

In his victory speech last night, Rick Scott, the 57 year old former health care executive and founder of the health care attack group Conservatives For Patients Rights, assured Republicans that the “party will come together” after a particularly bruising primary challenge against Florida Attorney General Bill McCollum. Scott entered the race in April and proceeded to spend approximately $50 million of his estimated $218 million fortune on a negative campaign that sought to deflect attention from his past business controversies and smear McCollum as a product of the establishment.

That outlandish sum, however, is not nearly as shocking as how Scott came to acquire it — as the chief executive of one of the largest and most controversial for-profit hospital chains in the country, Columbia/HCA.

In 1987, Scott, a mergers and acquisitions lawyer who “had cut his teen on deals involving radio stations, fast food businesses, and oil and gas companies before focusing in on the money to be made by acquiring hospitals,” didn’t enter the health care business for the sake of improving the quality of care, but rather wanted to “do for hospitals…what McDonald’s has done in the food business” and “what Wal-Mart has done in the retailing business.” The goal, as Maggie Mahar explains in Money Driven Medicine, “was to combine volume with low cost.” This quote is demonstrative: “Do we have an obligation to provide health care for everybody? Where do we draw the line? Is any fast-food restaurant obligated to feed everyone who shows up?” he asked.

Indeed, through an aggressive strategy of rapid acquisitions and consolidation, Scott turned Columbia/HCA into one of the largest health care companies in the world. Forbes magazine noted Scott ruthlessly bought “hospitals by the bucketful and promised to squeeze blood from each one.” HCA/Columbia executives saw health care as any other commodity. “This industry’s not any different than an airline industry or a ball bearing industry,” said David T. Vandewater, Columbia’s chief operating officer. “You run at 40 percent of capacity or at 60 percent of capacity you’re not getting the maximum value out of your assets.”

Under Scott’s leadership, Columbia/HCA pled guilty to an massive array of fraud charges — which resulted in a fraud settlement of $1.7 billion dollars, the largest in U.S history. Columbia/HCA systematically defrauded taxpayers, charging Medicare $15,000 for Tiffany pitchers and other luxury goods, “exaggerating the seriousness of the illnesses they were treating,” and engineering a program where doctors were granted partnerships in hospitals as a kickback for referring patients. In 1997, “disaster struck in the form of an FBI raid.” In July of that year, “federal agents swarmed Columbia/HCA hospitlas and offices in five states. Within weeks, three executives were indicted on charges of Medicare fraud, and the board had ousted Scott.” Scott left in disgrace, but not before walking away with “a $9.88 million severance package, along with 10 million shares of stock worth up to $300 million at the time.”

Scott has learned what many conservatives have known for years - you can steal more as a businessman than you ever could as a bank robber. And while any bank robber that has stolen as much as Rick Scott would be in jail for life, Scott might well be on his way to becoming governor. That's because other Republicans will vote for him since the conservative movement does not care about morals or America.

Ameria Hating Conservatism Runs on Crazy

If they cannot win on the issues - and Republicans never could since lies do not count as solutions -Scaring White People for Fun and Profit

Rachel Maddow hits another one out of the park with the motivations behind those exploiting this trumped-up "ground zero mosque" debacle and this one sentence pretty well sums it up: "It`s time to scare white people for political profit."

    RACHEL MADDOW: We begin tonight with what has past becoming the most embarrassing non-Justin Bieber related obsession of the summer of 2010. It is the proposed building of an Islamic community center in downtown New York City.

    Now, this story, this talking point maybe, has quickly become a study in political awkwardness for many conservatives.



    GLENN BECK, FOX NEWS HOST: The imam from the Ground Zero mosque apparently wants Sharia law in America.

    The imam of the proposed Ground Zero mosque won`t even denounce Hamas as a terrorist organization.

    Now, let me ask you this, would a moderate imam, a peaceful Muslim, employ another imam who told an Arabic language Web site that, quote, "Only the Jews could have perpetrated the 9/11 attack"?



    MADDOW: Here`s what I mean about awkwardness with this story on the political right. That host that you just saw there in those clips, this guy here, Glenn Beck, before spending this summer in being against the imam and what Mr. Beck calls the Ground Zero mosque, before this became this summer`s scare story talking point, Mr. Beck himself appeared on TV with that very same imam. Not to envy against him but to join him in promoting a moderate vision of Islam.

    Former Bush administration official Karen Hughes is having the same kind of awkwardness with her own record in this story. Ms. Hughes has now written a op-ed arguing that the planned cultural center in downtown New York City should be moved further away from the World Trade Center site, calling the plan to build there, especially contentious because, she says, quote, "it goes to the heart of who is to blame for the attacks of September 11th, 2001."

    An Islamic community center goes to the heart of who is to blame for the attacks of September 11th? If that does not make any sense to you, rest assured it probably does not make any sense to Karen Hughes either, because Karen Hughes also knows the imam behind the proposed Islamic center she is arguing shouldn`t be built or should at least be moved. In fact, she worked with him on Muslim outreach during the Bush administration. They, in fact, traveled together, side by side, to promote a moderate vision of Islam.

We can only ask why these conservatives love terrorists and hate America.

What ever happened to hard work and an honest day's pay. Why are Republicans on the fascist path where wealth is rewarded and work is punished - Republicans are Ruining This Country With Their Extreme Need for Greed and Sloth.

I keep trying to find a liberal fair minded media and have found only right of center to far right genuflectors - Pundits Blame the Victims on Obama Muslim Myth

Other commentators have blamed Obama himself for failing to refute the myth. The Washington Examiner's Byron York, for instance, claimed (absurdly) that "Obama and his aides might also blame themselves for the way they've handled the Muslim issue over the years" such as saying that his father was a Muslim in 1985 and speaking about his family background during a speech in Cairo. Similarly, CNN's Candy Crowley and Time's Amy Sullivan both faulted Obama for not making more public visits to church. However, neither Ronald Reagan nor George W. Bush regularly attended church services (see here and here), and no one accused them of being Muslims.*

But while pundits have been quick to blame Obama and the public, very few commentators have noted the role played by the media and political elites in misleading the public about Obama's religious beliefs. Slate's Dave Weigel came the closest, writing that "At some point it became acceptable to question Obama's American-ness, which naturally begged the question of whether he was a secret Muslim... and the WorldNetDailys, tabloids, and Drudge Reports of the world were ready to keep begging that question."

It's worth examining the scope of this effort, which has been ongoing since Obama's presidential campaign. Here's a sample from a 2009 post:

    Frank Gaffney, the right-wing apparatchik last seen suggesting that President Obama's apparent bow to King Abdullah of Saudi Arabia was "code" telling "our Muslim enemies that you are willing to submit to them," has written an entire column for the Washington Times arguing that "there is mounting evidence that the president not only identifies with Muslims, but actually may still be one himself" (via MM). He bases this false conclusion upon a bizarre and elaborate exegesis of Obama's Cairo speech that would embarrass even the most paranoid conspiracy theorist.

    We've repeatedly seen members of the press and political figures promoting this myth (or claims that reinforce it) over the last few years. Just in the last week, Media Matters has documented Fox Nation falsely claiming "Obama Says U.S. Is a 'Muslim Country,'" Fox News running a graphic about Obama titled "Islam or Isn't He?", former Washington Times editor Wes Pruden writing that Obama found "his 'inner Muslim'" in Cairo, and Weekly Standard's Michael Goldfarb asking "if the president hasn't been concealing some greater fluency with the language of the Koran."
Gaffney later made the bizarre claim that the alleged resemblance of the Missile Defense Agency's new logo to the Islamic crescent and star proved that Obama was trying to submit the United States to sharia law (he subsequently retracted the claim).

Decoding What Meg Whitman Stands For

Decoding Meg Whitman's shout-out to New York - Did the candidate for governor just tell Californians that Wall Street wants her to win the election?

Calbuzz spots a bizarre outburst in Republican gubernatorial candidate Meg Whitman's otherwise un-noteworthy speech to the Republican state convention in San Diego Friday night.

    "Do you know who's as excited about this election as we are? The people of New York. They have suffered the financial reforms that are going to crimp our ability to raise capital and they want California to turn the corner."

The people of New York? I haven't seen any good polling numbers about how Meg Whitman is regarded by the people of New York, although presumably she still has some fans among the horse-riding set in Cold Spring Harbor, Long Island, where she grew up. And while it's true that a return to strong economic growth in California would be good for the whole country, Whitman's emphasis on those "who have suffered the financial reforms" seems to refer to a specific group of New Yorkers -- the executives of financial institutions with headquarters in Manhattan.

Calbuzz labels Whitman's baffling Back East shout-out a "secret message to Goldman Sachs." But what could she possibly be thinking? Whitman is the poster girl for sleazy dot-com-boom-era you-scratch-my-back I'll-scratch-yours corruption.

    From 1998 to 2002, while she was CEO of eBay, Whitman helped steer millions of dollars of her company's investment banking business to Goldman, court records show.

    In 2001, Goldman put Whitman on its corporate board, paying her an estimated $475,000 for little more than a year of part-time service. The company also gave her insider access to the initial public offerings of hot stocks worth millions, according to the records.

    Whitman left the board in 2002 after she was targeted in a congressional probe of bond underwriters and "spinning" -- a financial maneuver, now banned, in which Goldman and other firms allegedly traded access to hot IPOs for bond business. Whitman later settled a shareholder lawsuit related to profits she and other execs made from buying the IPOs.

Whitman owes some of her $1.4 billion in persona net worth to the profits she made by getting in on the ground floor of those hot IPOs, so maybe she was just saying thank you to Goldman for helping bankroll her campaign, and likely helping her set the all-time record for personal spending by a candidate for office in the United States. But I don't think she's helping her case by reminding either the people of New York or California of that sorry episode.

In other Whitman trivia, Crooks and Liars relays the news that despite unloading $104 million dollars so far on television ads, Whitman is still in a dead heat with Jerry Brown, who hasn't even started spending yet.

What Whitman seems to be promising is a return to the good old years of Wall St under the Bush administration where Wall St make billions on insider trader. When they weren't helping each other to make fortunes in unearned wealth, Whitman and friends were making sure the rules were in place where if they screwed up tax payers would pay for the losses. Meg is part of the new hopey changey Republicans that promise to undo financial reform so her and her pals can continue playing average Americans for chumps.

Unhinged Conservatives at The Weekly Standard Don't Know What anti-semitism is, but that does stop them from using the slur to win an argument they know damn well they're wrong about 

Republicans lied over 4000 Americans to their deaths with their cooked up threats about Iraq. Now they are lying about the Bush tax cuts to keep America in debt. Hope and change conservative style, appears a lot like George Bush worship.

Like Every Republican Elitest Carly Fiorina Does Not Care About Working Class Americans

Senate GOP Candidate Carly Fiorina Flip-Flops On Unemployment Benefits

After weeks of Republican obstructionism, the Senate — in a 60-40 vote yesterday — cleared the way for the extension of unemployment benefits to millions of struggling Americans. In California alone, where current unemployment is 12.3%, the state’s Employment Development Department reports, “the delay in benefit extension…affected about 260,000 jobless Californians.” In an interview with San Francisco’s KGO-AM radio yesterday, California’s GOP Senate candidate abandoned her former stance on extending unemployment benefits, indicating she would now “probably” support the extension if she was elected:

    “I probably would vote for this extension, but I’ll tell you what, I think it is absolutely appropriate for people to stand on their desks and say, ‘When is it that we’re finally going to do what needs to be done and cut government spending?’” Fiorina said.

This statement stands in sharp contrast to the GOP candidate’s previous sentiments. In June, CNBC’s Larry Kudlow asked Fiorina if her time at HP qualifies her “to go after the government payrolls…to make the spending cuts in their salaries and their benefits.” Fiorina said “sure.” And earlier this month, the former Hewlett-Packard CEO told Good Morning America she would not have voted for the unemployment bill “the way it is put together today” and — like many of her Republican colleagues — cited concerns over the deficit to justify her position.

Although the GOP candidate has had a change of heart on unemployment benefits, still, as Wonk Room’s Pat Garofalo points out, “Fiorina’s only real solution to anything is to cut taxes. But that doesn’t do much good for those who are already out of work and have no taxable income, and it doesn’t spur demand that will give businesses more customers and thus a reason to expand.”

Carly Fiorina is just George W. Bush in lipstick. She couldn't manage HP, now she wants an unearned promotion to represent California - the world's fifth largest economy.

The Myth of Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac, Barney Frank, the Housing Bubble and the Recession

GOP's Paul Ryan(R-WI) Road Map Lies - Doubles Down on Medicare Rationing

Linda McMahon Republican senate nominee in Connecticut is Selling Pants on Fire Lies

Linda McMahon Republican senate nominee in Connecticut is Selling Pants on Fire Lies

Linda McMahon, the Republican senate nominee in Connecticut, is selling herself as the consummate business woman, thanks to her years as an executive with World Wrestling Entertainment. But if her appearance last night on CNBC is any indication, McMahon is a little unclear about how much money the typical small business owner is earning. CNBC’s supply-side devotee Larry Kudlow asked McMahon for her position on allowing the Bush tax cuts for the wealthiest two percent of Americans to expire, and McMahon used the standard Republican argument that permitting the expiration would cause a tax increase on small businesses:

    The fallacy Larry, and you know this as well as anyone, it’s not just that top marginal tax rate that’s going to affect the wealthy, it’s going to affect small businesses. I’ve started as a Subchapter S corporation, and so when you increase that top marginal tax rate, if it goes from 35 to 39.6 percent, you know, that’s going to be a big dig for small businesses. And as I talk to small businesses all over the state of Connecticut, they’re telling me, ‘look, I’m not going to grow. I’m not going to go over that level. I’ll lay somebody off, I won’t take that next job, I can’t work any harder, and I’m just not going to work any more for the government.’


The fact remains that fewer than two percent of small businesses and less than three percent of people with any business income whatsoever will see a tax increase if the top two income tax brackets reset to the 2001 level, as President Obama has proposed. As The Wonk Room explained, small businesses are actually hesitant to hire because of weak economic conditions and lack of demand, not the political climate as McMahon claims. McMahon herself, who holds personal assets worth anywhere from $156 million to $400 million, would face higher tax rates if the tax cuts for the rich expire, but the same can’t be said for the vast majority of small business owners.

McMahon represents the same old Bushnomic policies that got America into this financial crisis. She says she representatives much needed change, but will do everything she can to drag us back into the no growth economics of Bush and Republicans. If McMahon is going to lie her way into office she will lie when she gets there. That is not change. That is more business as usual for the worshipers of voodoo economics.

What kind of people does California Senate gubernatorial Meg Whitman associate with - Smelling A Chance To Burn Oil Money, Tobacco Lobbyists Orchestrate Effort To Repeal CA Clean Energy Law

Prop 23 operativesTo manage their initiative to roll back California’s landmark climate change law, AB 32, big oil is turning to the same deceptive tobacco operatives who engineered Philip Morris’ fight against efforts to tax cigarettes and stop childhood as well as indoor smoking. According to veteran right-wing activist Ted Costa, former Philip Morris outside counsel Tom Hiltachk co-opted his AB 32 repeal initiative, known as Proposition 23 (”Prop 23?). Hiltachk’s name appears on both versions of Prop 23 filed with the California Attorney General, and his tactics and already ubiquitous in the campaign.

Hiltachk, who is also serving as an attorney for Republican gubernatorial candidate Meg Whitman, has made a career writing misleading right-wing initiatives, then pitching the initiatives to corporations that may benefit from their passage. To fund Prop 23, he reached out to a friend from his days working for the tobacco industry, Mike Carpenter. Carpenter, the former top California lobbyist for Philip Morris, now lobbies for Valero, a Texan oil company with operations in California. To date, Valero has been the prime driver of the Prop 23, donating over $1 million so far directly to the effort.

Meg Whitman - a paid up member of the conservative culture of corruption.

The Republican Legacy. Your Grandchildren Will be Paying For.

The Iraq Debacle: The Legacy of Seven Years of War

We, the undersigned organizations and individuals, mark the August 31st partial withdrawal of U.S. troops from Iraq with the following evaluation and recommendations:

    * The U.S. occupation of Iraq continues and the reduction of U.S. troops in Iraq can at best be called only a rebranded occupation. While the number of U.S. troops in Iraq will be reduced from a high of 165,000, there will still be 50,000 troops left behind, some 75,000 contractors, five huge "enduring bases" and an Embassy the size of Vatican City.
    * The U.S. military's overthrow of the brutal dictatorship of Saddam Hussein did not lead to a better life for Iraqis-just the opposite. It resulted in the further destruction of basic infrastructure-electricity, water, sewage-that continues to this day. The U.S. dropped more tons of bombs on Iraq than in all of WWII, destroying Iraq's electrical, water and sewage systems. Iraq's health care and higher education systems, once the best in the entire region, have been decimated. The U.S. war on Iraq unleashed a wave of violence that has left over one million Iraqis dead and four million displaced, as well as ethnic rivalries that continue to plague the nation. We have seriously wounded millions of Iraqis, creating a lifetime of suffering and economic hardship for them, their communities and the entire nation as it struggles to rebuild. Life expectancy for Iraqis fell from 71 years in 1996 to 67 years in 2007 due to the war and destruction of the healthcare system. The U.S. use of weapons such as depleted uranium and white phosphorous has taken a severe toll, with the cancer rate in Fallujah, for example, now worse than that of Hiroshima.
    * The majority of the refugees and internally displaced persons created by the US intervention have been abandoned. Of the nearly 4 million refugees, many are now living in increasingly desperate circumstances in Syria, Jordan, Lebanon and around the world. As undocumented refugees, most are not allowed to work and are forced to take extremely low paying, illegal jobs ($3/day) or rely on the UN and charity to survive. The United Nations refugee agency (UNHCR) has documented a spike in the sex trafficking of Iraqi women.
    * Iraq still does not have a functioning government. Many months after the March 7 elections, there is still a political vacuum and violence that is killing roughly 300 civilians a month. There is no functioning democracy in place and little sign there will be one in the near future.
    * The Iraq War has left a terrible toll on the U.S. troops. More than one million American service members have deployed in the Iraq War effort. Over 4,400 U.S. troops have been killed and tens of thousands severely injured. More than one in four U.S. troops have come home from the Iraq war with health problems that require medical or mental health treatment. PTSD rates in the military have skyrocketed. In 2009, a record number of 245 soldiers committed suicide.
    * The war has drained our treasury. As of August 2010, U.S. taxpayers have spent over $750 billion on the Iraq War effort. Counting the cost of lifetime care of wounded vets and the interest payments on the money we borrowed to pay for this war, the real cost will be in the trillions. This misappropriation of funds has contributed to the economic crises we are experiencing, including the lack of funds for our schools, healthcare, infrastructure and investments in clean, green jobs.
    * The U.S. officials who got us into this disastrous war on the basis of lies have not been held accountable. Not George Bush, Dick Cheney, Condoleezza Rice, Colin Powell, Karl Rove, Donald Rumsfeld. No one. Neither have the Bush administration lawyers who authorized torture, including Jay Bybee and John Yoo. The "think tanks," journalists and pundits who perpetuated the lies have not been fired-most are today cheerleading for the war in Afghanistan.
    * The war has led to the pillaging of Iraqi resources and institutionalization of corruption. The U.S. Department of Defense has been unable to account for $8.7 billion of Iraqi oil and gas money meant for humanitarian needs and reconstruction after the 2003 invasion. The invasion has also led to the erosion of Iraqi government control over the nation's oil. In 2001, Vice President Dick Cheney's energy task force, which included executives of America's largest energy companies, recommended opening up areas of their energy sectors to foreign investment. The resulting draft Iraq Oil Law threatens global grab for Iraq's resources as the international oil cartel seeks to reestablish its control. Adoption of the oil law, however, has been stymied by stiff popular resistance, foremost by the oil workers and their union.
    * The war has not made us more secure. The US policy of torture, extraordinary rendition, indefinite detention, violent and deadly raids on civilian homes, gunning down innocent civilians in the streets and absence of habeas corpus has fueled the fires of hatred and extremism toward Americans. The very presence of our troops in Iraq and other Muslim nations has become a recruiting tool.

Republicans certainly will not hold themselves accountable. It is a matter of political policy that Republicans never apologize or admit wrong - lack of integrity has haunted them since Nixon. Even now they are busy blaming the Bush-Republican Recession on Democrats. They're blaming lack of immigration reform - which they voted against under Bush - on Democrats.You know they're not going to admit they betrayed America and our troops with a war based on lies.

Let's meet the knucklehead Americans who think Barack Obama is a Muslim.

Can Californians Trust What Whitman is Selling? - An Analysis of Gubernatorial Candidate Meg Whitman’s Economic Policy Proposals

It Was, It is and Always Will Be The Bush Recession - A Generation Long Tragedy

DeMint Tries To Rewrite History: ‘This Was Not Bush’s Recession’

During a lengthy speech on the Senate floor yesterday about his opposition to the confirmation of Elana Kagan to the Supreme Court, Sen. Jim DeMint (R-SC) went on a tangent, claiming the ongoing economic downturn “was not Bush’s recession” but was a “result of Democrat economic polices”.

...Even the staunchly conservative Wall Street Journal editorial board understood it was Bush’s recession, writing in early 2009 that Bush’s comment that “Wall Street got drunk and we got a hangover,” “reveals how little the President comprehends about the source of his Administration’s economic undoing. To extend his metaphor, Who does Mr. Bush think was serving the liquor?” Even if one ignores everything after 2006, Bush still had the worst record of job creation in 40 years.

Moreover, the economy only began to recover after President Obama and the Democratic Congress passed the stimulus package in early 2009. Since then, the GDP has grown, the financial sector has recovered, and — while the overall employment situation is still bleak — private sector job growth has rebounded..

After the worse presidency in history - in which Congressional Republicans acted in unquestioning lock step
with Bush ( many of them like John Boehner(R-OH) and Mitch McConnell (R-KY) conservatives are now ruuning in the mid-term elections on a platform of returing to the same economic policies that were largey responsible for the worse economic crash since the Great Depression.

Are Americans Forgetting The Recession Began Under Bush, Not Obama

Fact: The federal government had a budget surplus under the Clinton administration.

Fact: When George W. Bush left office, the budget had a deficit of over $400 billion.

Fact: The Bush tax cuts for the wealthy combined with the recession are the reasons why the deficit has reached over $1.5 trillion roday. (Brookings Institute)

Fact: In the run-up to the Iraq war, the Bush administration insisted that the total cost of the war would be $100 to $200 billion of taxpayer money. So far, over $1 trillion have been spent and the total tab will be $3 trillion by the time the war is over — if it’s ever, over. (CostofWar.com and Washington Post).

Fact: Under the Bush administration the country shed jobs. When Bush took office, the unemployment rate was 4.7 percent, when he left it rose to 5.8 percent. (Bureau of Labor Statistics)

Do I need to go on?

The GOP’s playbook also consists of rallying up people against Obama’s federal spending. Fear-mongering has always worked for the right-wing and as long as they keep saying that the Obama’s stimulus package and his healthcare reform will bankrupt the country, they will surely get votes.

When it comes to healthcare reform, the GOP’s lies and funny math need to be exposed. In fact, healthcare reform will save the country money, help reduce the deficit, and boost jobs. (LA Times)

Bush's chief propagandist Karl Rove once said the public has a short term memory. A phenomenon that serves right-wing nuts, that call themselves Republicans, very well.

Bush Speechwriters Back Obama on Mosque. Strange times when defending the rights guaranteed by the 1st amendment is controversial.

It's 2010 and The Deranged Reagan Idolatry Continues

If anyone from Blogger admin should stop by: It would be great if you would update your photo size policies to include photos up to 2000 pixels wide and 1300 pixels high. I post a lot of wallpapers and the most popular monitors are 24" to 26" wide. Those sizes are increasing in popularity because large widescreen monitors are selling for the same price 19" monitors were going for just a couple years ago. If the biggest I can post here is 1600x1200 than I'm not able to keep up with the wallpaper size many people are using. You get better wallpaper viewing quality scaling down than you do stretching to fit.

It's 2010 and The Deranged Reagan Idolatry Continues

I swear, I want to stop writing about the nearly-identical political trajectories (at least so far) of the Reagan and Obama presidencies. But too many pundits just can't seem to get it through their heads that Reagan, as president, was not some magical political super-being who was immune to sagging public confidence, poor midterm election prospects, and intraparty dissent and second-guessing that Obama is now faced with. And this week brought us two more egregious offenders.

First, on Wednesday, came a Wall Street Journal Op-Ed from Fouad Ajami, who sort-of acknowledges the parallel between Reagan's standing as the 1982 midterms approached and Obama's today, but then quickly brushes it aside, arguing that Reagan's "deep and true" connection with the public ultimately saw him through -- and that Obama is doomed because he lacks this connection.

...Let's leave aside Ajami's ridiculous contentions about the Reagan crew's respect for the public treasury (ahem); others have provided the context he ignores. The main problem with Ajami's narrative is that there's just no evidence that the unbreakable bond between the president and his people that he celebrates ever really existed -- or that Reagan's poll numbers at any point in his presidency were really that remarkable.

Where, for instance, was the "deep and true" bond in in the 1982 midterms, when double-digit unemployment prompted voters to toss 26 of Reagan's Republican allies out of Congress and to hand seven new governorships to Democrats and 11 state legislative chambers to the Democrats? Or where was it in 1986, when a pre-Iran-Contra Reagan pleaded with Americans -- the Americans with whom he supposedly shared a mutually affectionate relationship -- to preserve his party's control of the Senate, only to watch as voters handed Democrats an eight-seat gain and their first Senate majority since 1980. Moreover, where was it after Reagan left office -- after, in Ajami's words, his adoring countrymen had "carried him across the finish line" -- when a savings-and-loan crisis and recession caused by his policies undermined his Republican successor and prompted Americans to revise downward their estimation of the Gipper. It's completely inconvenient to Ajami's narrative, but it's worth remembering that by the summer of 1992, just 24 percent of Americans said their country was better off because of the Reagan years, while 40 percent said it was worse off -- and that more Americans (48 percent) viewed Reagan unfavorable than favorably (46 percent). "Deep and true" bond, indeed. 

In the mean time, the guy that is trying to clean up the disaster Republicans created - President Obama Pushes Green Energy Made in America

Another day , another right-wing conservative nut talking out both sides of his two faces- Stimulus hypocrite Rep. Joe Barton (R-TX)  attends groundbreaking for health clinic funded by the Obama economic stimulus.

Conservatives Stole From Social Security to Finance Voodoo Economics

There’s Nothing Wrong with Social Security that Taxing the Rich Fairly Wouldn’t Fix

New York Times columnist and economist Paul Krugman, in his column today, is right to expose the attacks on Social Security as being the work of right-wing ideologues eager to destroy a government program that works, backed by cowardly Democrats who want to show their fiscal "responsibility" by getting tough with future pensioners.

But he doesn't go the extra step to point out that this program, founded 75 years ago as a cornerstone of Franklin Roosevelt's New Deal, could be much more fair and even generous to elderly and disabled retirees, and also placed on a much sounder economic footing, by a few simple reforms that would not cost most people a penny, or require hard working folks to work one day longer before retiring.

There is a problem facing Social Security, which Krugman doesn't mention. The Novel economist is correct that the system has built up a huge multi-trillion-dollar surplus over the years. And he is correct in noting that this surplus--the Trust Fund--is big enough to fund the system probably indefinitely, even during the huge bulge in retirement that is starting now that the Baby Boomer generation is hitting retirement age. What he fails to mention is that the Trust Fund has all been stolen (okay, technically borrowed) by the federal government to fund its own annual deficits, and given the national attitude towards taxes, it will never be repaid. That's why the right is able to create a panic by falsely claiming that Social Security is going to go "bankrupt" when current workers' Social Security taxes can no longer pay for the benefits of current retirees.

But there is a simple solution to even this deception, which is to eliminate the cap on income which is subject to the Social Security tax.

From 2000 to 2008 Republicans managed to rack up the largest debt in the nations' history, crash the economy and steal from retirees in their spare time. So go out and vote for Republicans in 2010 and 2012 so they can finish destroying America.

GOP's Paul Ryan Doubles Down on Medicare Rationing. Republicans have this obsession with rewarding wealth and punishing everyone else.

Today's geography lesson: St. Andrews Bay is located on the Gulf of Mexico.

O'Reilly advanced falsehood about Democrats and Fannie May

O'Reilly advanced falsehood that about Democrats and Fannie May

On The O'Reilly Factor, Bill O'Reilly falsely claimed that "the Democrats in charge of the finance committees" resisted efforts by the Bush administration to regulate the mortgage industry and Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac in particular. In fact, it was only after the Democrats did gain control of both "finance committees" in Congress in 2007 that Congress passed legislation strengthening oversight of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac.

On the February 24 edition of Fox News' The O'Reilly Factor, host Bill O'Reilly once again advanced a false attack on congressional Democrats over the housing crisis, falsely claiming that "the Democrats in charge of the finance committees" resisted efforts by the Bush administration to regulate the mortgage industry and Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac in particular. In fact, during President Bush's tenure, Democrats did not gain a majority of both houses of Congress -- and therefore control of both "finance committees" -- until 2007. Only then did Congress pass oversight legislation over Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac.

O'Reilly stated to Fox News analyst Karl Rove: "I researched this after I went after Frank -- and I researched it. And here is the absolute -- this is my certainty, and I want you to just reply to it. You're right. The Bush administration tried for three years to try to get more regulation over the mortgage markets and the banking system. They did. But they didn't bring it to the folks. ... Didn't raise the alarm." He later added that this failure of the Bush administration "provided the Barney Franks and [Sen.] Chris Dodds [D-CT] of the world -- the Democrats in charge of the finance committees in Congress -- it provided them cover because they, indeed, didn't want the regulations." Rove responded by saying, in part: "Frank in particular said that we were talking down the mortgage -- the mortgage markets, and we were talking about Fannie and Freddie, and that we were trying to create the bugaboo of a crisis where no crisis existed."

In fact, in early 2007, as the new chairman of the House Financial Services Committee, Frank sponsored H.R. 1427, a bill to create the Federal Housing Finance Agency (FHFA), granting that agency "general supervisory and regulatory authority over" Fannie and Freddie and directing it to reform the companies' business practices and regulate their exposure to credit and market risk. The FHFA was eventually created after Congress incorporated provisions that House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) said were "similar" to those of H.R. 1427 into the Housing and Economic Recovery Act of 2008, which Bush signed into law on July 30, 2008.

Furthermore, before taking over the House Financial Services Committee chairmanship, Frank worked with committee chairman Rep. Michael Oxley (R-OH) on the Federal Housing Finance Reform Act of 2005, which would have established the FHFA to replace the Office of Federal Housing Enterprise Oversight (OFHEO) as overseer of the activities of Fannie and Freddie. After voting for the bill in committee, Frank voted against final passage of the bill on the House floor, stating that he was doing so because an amendment added to the bill on the House floor imposed restrictions on the kinds of nonprofit organizations that could receive funding under the bill.

It is anyone's guess as to why the conservative loons at Fox hate facts, reason and America.

Republican candidate for governor Meg Whitman Shows Her Sleazy Side

Republican candidate for governor Meg Whitman Shows Her Sleazy Side

Meg Whitman, the Republican candidate for governor, is airing a 60-second radio ad that tries to link the financial scandal in the city of Bell (Los Angeles County) with her opponent Jerry Brown's tenure as mayor of Oakland - the state's eighth-largest city.
What happened in Bell

Chief administrative officer Robert Rizzo resigned after the Los Angeles Times revealed that he was paid more than $1.5 million a year in salary and benefits by the city of about 40,000 residents, which is one of the poorest in the nation.

The police chief made more than $450,000 a year and the mayor and three City Council members pulled down $100,000 a year for part-time work.

Public employee salaries in the city are being investigated by Brown, the state attorney general, and Steve Cooley, the Los Angeles district attorney, along with other state and local officials.
Whitman's ad says:

What happened in Bell "happened before - when Jerry Brown was mayor of Oakland."

One of its claims:

-- Brown supported $500 million in higher property taxes and "pushed for higher fees and taxes on garbage collection, parking and even cable TV."

Facts:

-- The new fees and parcel taxes required a two-thirds vote of approval from voters in Oakland - and some received nearly 80 percent approval for funds to improve Lake Merritt and pay for the city's museums and cultural institutions. They were not imposed by fiat.

Another claim:

-- "In Jerry Brown's Oakland, city workers were paid for 22,000 hours that they never worked."

Facts:

-- The figure comes from a wrongful termination lawsuit filed in 2008 by former Oakland city controller Larae Brown. A trial is pending. But the office of City Auditor Courtney Ruby, in an independent 2007 performance audit, said the city never made such a finding. Likewise, officials in the city administrator's office said, "We have no data to support that claim."

Another claim:

-- "The total number of workers making $200,000 a year went up 700 percent."

Facts:

-- It rose 740 percent, a jump attributed to a small pool of employees - most of them firefighters - who were chalking up more than $100,000 annually in overtime in the 2005-06 fiscal year. Two years before that, five Oakland city employees made more than $200,000. In 2005-06, that number jumped to 42. Of Oakland's top 25 earners that year, all but four were firefighters. The others were police officers, an engineer and former city administrator Deborah Edgerly, who Jerry Brown hired.

Another claim:

-- "Under Jerry Brown, the Oakland city administrator gave herself $60,000 in bonuses. And she cashed in over $180,000 in vacation days. Not in comp time but in a very big check."

Facts:

-- City officials say Edgerly, a city employee for 20 years, had hundreds of hours of vacation and sick time accrued when she was terminated - and for which the city was contractually obligated. But the city administrator office's final accounting shows that Edgerly's total payout for benefits and time accrued from the city was $90,000 - not $180,000.

So to recap - when right-wing conservative Whitman is not lying about Brown she is writing another check to herself for millions to buy herself a governorship, she's making economic plans that would cripple California's economy. Whitman seems to be another typical Bush/Cheney conservative - no ideas and no honor.

Republican U.S. Senate hopeful Sharron Angle Wants America to Get rid of Social Security

Republican U.S. Senate hopeful Sharron Angle Wants America to Get rid of Social Security

AP:

    LAS VEGAS — Republican U.S. Senate hopeful Sharron Angle says the nation's Social Security system needs to be privatized, and she says it was done before in Chile.

    Angle referred to the South American country on Thursday in North Las Vegas while explaining previous statements that the United States should phase out its current system.

    However, the pension system established in 1981 by right-wing Chilean dictator Augusto Pinochet is no longer a fully private system. Chile's system was revamped in 2008 to expand public pensions for groups left out of its system, including low-income seniors.

So Sharron Angle's platform in a nutshell:

   1. Get rid of Social Security.

   2. Don't do anything that might help create jobs.

   3. Impose her own personal theology on our legal system.

The crazy thing isn't that some Republicans still think she can win. The crazy thing is that they want her to.

 Why do so many Republicans hate America and our senior citizens.

How Conservative Women Like California's Meg Witless Whitman  Make Life Harder for Working Moms

O'Reilly Spreads Conspiracy Theory About Fannie May and Barney Frank

O'Reilly Spreads Conspiracy Theory About Fannie May and Barney Frank

On The O'Reilly Factor, Bill O'Reilly falsely claimed that "the Democrats in charge of the finance committees" resisted efforts by the Bush administration to regulate the mortgage industry and Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac in particular. In fact, it was only after the Democrats did gain control of both "finance committees" in Congress in 2007 that Congress passed legislation strengthening oversight of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac.

On the February 24 edition of Fox News' The O'Reilly Factor, host Bill O'Reilly once again advanced a false attack on congressional Democrats over the housing crisis, falsely claiming that "the Democrats in charge of the finance committees" resisted efforts by the Bush administration to regulate the mortgage industry and Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac in particular. In fact, during President Bush's tenure, Democrats did not gain a majority of both houses of Congress -- and therefore control of both "finance committees" -- until 2007. Only then did Congress pass oversight legislation over Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac.
O'Reilly stated to Fox News analyst Karl Rove: "I researched this after I went after Frank -- and I researched it. And here is the absolute -- this is my certainty, and I want you to just reply to it. You're right. The Bush administration tried for three years to try to get more regulation over the mortgage markets and the banking system. They did. But they didn't bring it to the folks. ... Didn't raise the alarm." He later added that this failure of the Bush administration "provided the Barney Franks and [Sen.] Chris Dodds [D-CT] of the world -- the Democrats in charge of the finance committees in Congress -- it provided them cover because they, indeed, didn't want the regulations." Rove responded by saying, in part: "Frank in particular said that we were talking down the mortgage -- the mortgage markets, and we were talking about Fannie and Freddie, and that we were trying to create the bugaboo of a crisis where no crisis existed."

In fact, in early 2007, as the new chairman of the House Financial Services Committee, Frank sponsored H.R. 1427, a bill to create the Federal Housing Finance Agency (FHFA), granting that agency "general supervisory and regulatory authority over" Fannie and Freddie and directing it to reform the companies' business practices and regulate their exposure to credit and market risk. The FHFA was eventually created after Congress incorporated provisions that House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) said were "similar" to those of H.R. 1427 into the Housing and Economic Recovery Act of 2008, which Bush signed into law on July 30, 2008.

Furthermore, before taking over the House Financial Services Committee chairmanship, Frank worked with committee chairman Rep. Michael Oxley (R-OH) on the Federal Housing Finance Reform Act of 2005, which would have established the FHFA to replace the Office of Federal Housing Enterprise Oversight (OFHEO) as overseer of the activities of Fannie and Freddie. After voting for the bill in committee, Frank voted against final passage of the bill on the House floor, stating that he was doing so because an amendment added to the bill on the House floor imposed restrictions on the kinds of nonprofit organizations that could receive funding under the bill.

Frank also spoke in support of "legislation that would have enhanced the regulatory structure for Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac" during an October 6, 2004, hearing on capital markets, insurance, and government-sponsored enterprises. During the hearing, Frank said:

    First, I want to address a little history here. The committee here was well on the way to adopting legislation that would have enhanced the regulatory structure for Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. In the Senate, in fact, the committee actually voted out a bill. There was some disagreement between the parties over I think a relatively minor section over receivership. I think that could have been worked out.

    I believe we were well on the way, the chairman and I and the staffs, to putting together a bill that would have enhanced the regulator and could have passed. What stopped progress on a new bill was the Bush administration's determination to go beyond safety and soundness and into provisions that would have restricted the housing function.

    [...]

    What derailed the legislation was an insistence by the Bush administration on going beyond safety and soundness and giving the regulators, for example, particular power to say, well, they are going beyond their charter in housing; they should not do these new products. There were specific issues here that transcended safety and soundness or went under it, but the administration was seeking powers that were not related to safety and soundness. If they were to have dropped that, we would have a law already signed and in place, because on the question of safety and soundness regulation, there has not been a significant dispute.

Right-wing extremists like Bill O'Liar continue to push the total falsehood that Democrats were at fault for not tightening regulation on Fannie May and Freddie Mac. The House of Representatives is not like the Senate. In the House legislation is passed by simple majority. Republicans controlled the House from 2000 to 2006. They even held hearings on Fannie May in 2003. Democrats and Republicans alike did vote to tighten up some accounting procedures, but that is all. Barney Frank and Democrats could not have passed any regulatory rules because they did not have enough votes until 2006. In 2006 one of the first things they did was pass some financial reforms. The Myth of Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac, Barney Frank, the Housing Bubble and the Recession

Why Carly Fiorina Should NOT be Elected to the United States Senate to represent California

Republicans Want America to Stay on Path to Destruction

Republicans Want America to Stay on Path to Destruction

Conservatives like to say that taxes are theft. In fact it is tax cuts that are theft because they break a long-standing contract.

The American Social Contract: We, the People built our democracy and the empowerment and protections it bestows. We built the infrastructure, schools and all of the public structures, laws, courts, monetary system, etc. that enable enterprise to prosper. That prosperity is the bounty of our democracy and by contract it is supposed to be shared and reinvested. That is the contract. Our system enables some people to become wealthy but all of us are supposed to benefit from this system. Why else would We, the People have set up this system, if not for the benefit of We, the People?


A beneficial cycle: We invest in infrastructure and public structures that create the conditions for enterprise to form and prosper. We prepare the ground for business to thrive. When enterprise prospers we share the bounty, with good wages and benefits for the people who work in the businesses and taxes that provide for the general welfare and for reinvestment in the infrastructure and public structures that keep the system going.

We fought hard to develop this system and it worked for us. We, the People fought and built our government to empower and protect us providing social services for the general welfare. We, through our government built up infrastructure and public structures like courts, laws, schools, roads, bridges. That investment creates the conditions that enable commerce to prosper -- the bounty of democracy. In return we ask those who benefit most from the enterprise we enabled to share the return on our investment with all of us -- through good wages, benefits and taxes.

But the “Reagan Revolution” broke the contract. Since Reagan the system is working like this:


Since the Reagan Revolution with its tax cuts for the rich, its anti-government policies, and its deregulation of the big corporations [1] our democracy is increasingly defunded [2] (and that was the plan), infrastructure is crumbling [2], our schools are falling behind, factories and supply chains are being dismantled, those still at work are working longer hours for fewer benefits and falling wages [3], our pensions are gone, wealth and income are increasing concentrating at the very top, our country is declining.

This is the Reagan Revolution home to roost: the social contract is broken. Instead of providing good wages and benefits and paying taxes to provide for the general welfare and reinvestment in infrastructure and public structures, the bounty of our democracy is being diverted to a wealthy few.

We, the People built this country’s prosperity and this built wealth. We reinvested that wealth, building the world’s most competitive economy. Now a few people are gaming the system and breaking the formula, taking for themselves vast riches, leaving the rest of us to clean up the mess.

We must recognize and understand these tax cuts for what they are. They are a broken contract. These tax cuts for the wealthy are theft. And we must recognize the Reagan Revolution for what it has cost us. Our democracy has been corrupted and our political system has been captured. A wealthy few are taking all of the benefits of our efforts for themselves. The lack of investment in infrastructure, courts, schools and other public structures is making our country less competitive in the world. The Reagan Revolution is stealing our future.

Clinton held the Reagan Anti-America Revolution back a little, but not enough to keep George W. Bush and his crony Republicans in Congress - most of whom are still there - from pushing America into the wage slave ditch. If they're lucky, the loons that call themselves Republicans will get us back on track to keeping uppity middle-class America down in the ditch where they think everyone, but them belongs.

Conservatism is the Political Philsophy of Fake Patriots and Charlatans

Conservative media forecast dark results if Dems retain majority in November

Conservative media figures have used extreme and violent rhetoric to drum up support for the GOP in the midterm elections and have warned of the consequences of continued Democratic majorities in Congress.


Blankley: "[T]he country will be rocked to its core" if GOP fails to reclaim majority. In an August 9 Washington Times op-ed, Tony Blankley warned that the country will be "rocked to its core" if the GOP doesn't retake the House this fall. He also described a "foul and dangerous brew" that the Republicans will need to counter, a part of which, he said, is "the thwarting of the public will -- with glee -- by the entrenched, non-elected powers (in the courts, media, colleges and government bureaucracies)." After listing all the conservative policies he hopes will be enacted if the Republicans do end up with a majority, Blankley wrote:

    No, what worries me is a scenario in which the GOP does not take back the House and at least make major gains in the Senate, or takes it back but fails to find the power to begin having a serious check on administration policies and actions. I don't say that with a mere partisan, boostering mentality.

    Rather, if the upcoming election results fail for any reason (including GOP campaign incompetence) to empower the public's overwhelming desire to stop and reverse the "fundamental transformation" of the United States -- I suspect the country will be rocked to its core within the following months and few years.

Conservatives at Right Online conference use extreme rhetoric to stump for GOP votes in midterms. While speaking at the 2010 Right Online conference, held July 23-24, a number of conservative media figures used extreme rhetoric to show support for the GOP in the upcoming midterm elections.

    * Fox Business contributor Herman Cain expressed his hope that "in November of 2010, we're going to change the house of politicians back to the House of Representatives, the way it was supposed to be" and "take back our government."

    * RedState's Erick Erickson, who is also a CNN contributor, stated: "We're coming. We're going to take over." Erickson later attacked the left for being "so wrapped up in this idea that we should all be equal" when, he claimed, "[t]he only way for us to be equal is for us to be slaves ... to government."

The Republican right-wing extremists brought America a war in Iraq that cost hundreds of thousands of lives (many of those children) that left us with a three trillion dollar bill. Republican philosophy brought us a greedy and out of control Wall St partly responsible for the worse economic collapse since the Great Depression. Republicans used the Department of Justice to act as a political hammer for the Republican party. Republican brought us the culture of corruption with K-Street  -buying and selling legislation.  These are the people that America nees to return to power? Is that supposed to be some kind of joke.

REPORT: Republican Whitman’s Economic Plan Blows A Hole In California’s Budget, Reduces Jobs And Services

In an interview yesterday, California gubernatorial candidate Meg Whitman (R) said “what I want to convince voters of is I am the very best person to fix the economy in California.” “I am not actually a politician. I am a businessperson. I have created jobs, I have met budgets, I have done, figured out how to do more with less, and that is actually a really important thing for the state right now,” she said.

However, according to a new Center for American Progress Action Fund analysis by Michael Reich, an Economics Professor at The University of California at Berkeley, Whitman’s economic plan — outlined in Meg 2010, Building a New California — is “likely to have negative effects on jobs and economic growth and to deepen the state’s budget crisis.”

“She claims to have a plan that’s very detailed and based on careful research. But it really isn’t careful at all, and it’s misguided,” Reich said. “It has a lot of incorrect assumptions. A lot of studies she draws on are useless or kind of misleading and don’t agree with well-accepted economic research.” Whitman’s plan consists of:

    – Tax cuts for wealthy people and businesses — including eliminating the state’s capital gains tax — which would “reduce the state’s economic growth while exacerbating the state’s budget deficit problem.”

    – Eliminating climate change regulations, which “could bring positive harm to the environment, would sharply reduce clean-tech venture capital spending in the state, and would reduce employment.”

    – Spending cuts that “would have negative consequences on employment.”

Whitman likes to make a big show of her determination to cut spending, stating that “I have identified $15 billion worth of spending cuts that we can go after over a couple of years.” However, the California budget deficit for the coming fiscal year alone stands at $20 billion, and it’s only going to grow if her tax cut plan is implemented.

According to Reich, the state will lose $6-$10 billion in revenue depending on how Whitman implements her tax plan. And her spending plan “does not specify” where most of her proposed budget cuts will fall. But since most of California’s general fund spending is in education, health and human services, and prisons, it stands to reason that those areas would see the most severe budget cutbacks.

A group of 20 California economists signed a letter today stating that “the evidence and theory that Whitman uses to diagnose California’s problems are unscientific and an unsound basis for policy. As a result, her diagnosis and her proposed economic policies are both deeply flawed…If implemented, Whitman’s program would worsen California’s budget malaise and its economic performance.”

 Whitman's voodoo economics are a glimpse of the kind of Bush-Cheney style governance that Republicans would like to bring back to the federal government. The kind of mentality that cost the America over three trillion dollars between 2000/2008.