Gelignite Frugal Futility
Lapse:
Apparently now, Republicans feel they
have a mandate since clobbering the Democrats in this 2014 off-year election. From
this they’re lining up with so-called political capital in clenched fists along
with taxpayer dollars in stuffed pockets to be first in line to push their own
agendas.
Oh I just s’pose that is the usual
response of norm for any party’s victory in flouting a winning election cycle,
but it is in the agenda that distinguishes the vast difference. Republicans are
poised to repeal Obamacare, deregulate financial rulings again (even seek
deregulations that led to the ‘Great Recession’), privatize Social Security and
Medicare, cut infrastructure budgets to support the richest tax breaks, take
down immigration reform and intensify the remaining two Benghazi investigations
even though a Republican controlled House committee found absolutely no “wrong
doing” just this past November.
The thing here is that the GOP has been
so successful in getting the susceptible to believe anything they hear that the
Republican’s misinformation assault has hooked ‘em line and sinker in the
constant onslaught of showered deceit.
Republican’s incessant chaos then laying
the blaming finger pointed elsewhere has managed to utterly confuse the voting
public that they imputed most of the obfuscation in politics onto Democrats and
Obama this election cycle.
Seriously though, have you looked at who
Republicans have voted into office? There’s Representative Michael Grimm (R-NY)
who was easily reelected by a 13.3% margin even though he was indicted for tax
evasion that he has since plead guilty to and resigned. He even threatened to
throw reporter, Michael Scotto off the congressional House rotunda’s balcony
after saying he’d break him in half. This, Grimm did while on camera no less.
Senator-elect Tom Cotton (R-AR) would
not answer one question honestly, instead only going to talking points bashing
Obama, Obamacare and his opponent Senator Mark Pryor. One of the innumerable examples
of this was in the Arkansas senate debate. A reporter asked Cotton if he was
responsible for any dishonesty in campaign ads. Immediately Cotton resorts to
his usual litany of profuse anti-Obama slurs. Exasperated, the reporter
interrupted him asking, “Are you
answering my question about what your job as a candidate is? Or are you just
doing talking points?” Fortunately for Cotton, the conservative moderator
jumped in rescuing him from having to answer by telling the reporter, “I have to allow him to go ahead because we
have no provision for a follow-up question right away.” Thus Cotton
proceeded back to vituperating all things Obama.
Pig castrating ALEC member Senator-elect
Joni Ernst (R-IA) had enough voters to align themselves around her many lies that
she won the Iowa senate seat. She is willing to publicly support huge corporate
tax breaks while derailing any thoughts of a minimum wage increase state or
federal.
When businessman senator-elect David
Perdue (R-GA) was asked to defend his outsourcing as CEO of various
corporations like ‘Pillowtex’ on the campaign trail, he replied, “Defend it? I’m proud of it.” Later when
asked under oath about his career in outsourcing, Perdue states, “Yeah, I spent most of my career doing that.”
Then shortly after during the Georgia senate debate, the moderator asked
Perdue, “Have you outsourced jobs in your
career?” He merely replied with a resounding, “No!”
You have Governors Sam Brownback (R-KA),
Scott Walker (R-WI) and Rick Scott (R-FL) that have all tanked their respective
state’s economies, but yet all were reelected by the Republican vote.
Congressman Duncan Hunter (R-CA)
flat-out lied on Fox News just before the elections claiming that he knew of
ten ISIL terrorists that have crossed U.S. southern borders just before the
elections simply to scare folks. But yet, he still was easily reelected.
Amazing!
Congresswoman-elect Jody Hice (R-GA)
states that American Muslims deserve no first amendment rights. Congressman
Glen Grothman (R-WI), who will give Louie Gohmert (R-TX) a run for the dumbest congressional
statements, has called for the elimination of African American holidays such as
Martin Luther King Jr. Day, stating they are an “insult” and should be treated
with “contempt.”
Among these and the many others, my
favorite though is Chaplin Gordon Klingenschmitt who was elected by Republican
voters to Colorado’s 15th House district. Klingenschmitt believes in
exorcism and actually put on an exorcism performance, albeit long distance, to
exorcise the demons haunting Obama’s soul.
Can you imagine? Congress now has twenty
plus more Bachmann, Gohmert and Stevie King Tea Partiers to contend with. With
mounting belly aching and comical antics, legislation is going to be a gully
backwashed animal house. Move over Belushi…
They say one reaps what they sow, but
all Americans will reap this Republican victory that is filled with average
folk sorrows. But that is where you can blame Democrats as well. They didn’t
stand for any message and backed off instead of challenging Republican
nonsense. Democrats distanced themselves from Obama and still lost. Democrats
like Senator Mary Landrieu (D-LA) who let it be known she was for the XL
Pipeline, embraced Republican mandates and still lost.
All this created voter apathy displaying
an historic low turnout unmatched since the years of WWII. This 2014 midterm
elections voter turnout was a mere 36.4% according to the ‘United States
Election Project’. The dismal voter turnout has not been matched since the year
1942 where only 33.9% of eligible voters turned out, but there was a world war going
on that year.
So, it’s really difficult to say
Republicans won the American voter’s heart. ‘Washington Post’ exit poll data
shows that voters who voted this election cycle, 75% were white with that
majority being southern white. 12% of the voters were black, 8% were Hispanic
with 3% of Asian voters. Of the white vote, 57% were male. With minority groups
like Latinos showing the fastest growth rates, an 8% turnout was paltry.
From these results, it appears that the
big Republican win was just as much about those who didn’t vote as much as it
is of those who did, for one other statistic is that the ones who voted, 54%
said they viewed the Republican Party unfavorably.
The development here is that once in
power, Republicans will blatantly reveal themselves of who they truly are
making the voting public so disgusted the real voter wave turnout will come in
2016 to flush the vermin out of office.
The best advice until then…be patient…
Sacrosanct
Err:
“A
model of courage and honesty in office.” That’s what soon to be senate
majority leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) had to say about former Senator Edward
Brooke’s (R-MA) passing this past Saturday 01/03/15. Brooke was the first
African American to hold office in the senate since the Reconstruction years. He
was a very liberal Republican pushing heavily on equal rights, racial
integration, economic fairness, had a federal housing amendment named after him
and was the first Republican to urge Nixon to resign.
How can McConnell even credit Brooke
when he and today’s Republicans totally fight against what Brooke stood for and
how can he even recognize “honesty in office” when in his reelection bid,
McConnell had a fraudulent mailer sent out to potential Democrat voters in
eastern Kentucky with the bold title, ‘ELECTION
VIOLATION NOTICE’ proclaiming a grave warning in stating, “You are at risk
of acting on fraudulent information.” It was all merely dirty and dishonest
politics.
45% of his latest twenty-two public
statements have been false and another 18% deceitful as gauged by the conservative
affiliate ‘Politifact’.
Besides all his political moves that
ignored the nation reeling from the Republican induced ‘Great Recession’, let’s
have a look at a few of McConnell’s lies, the one who is now to run the senate.
“The
[Kynect] website can continue, but in my view the best interests of the country
would be achieved by pulling out Obamacare root and branch.”
McConnell said this during a debate in
Kentucky with Allison Lundergan Grimes where Kynect is vastly popular. The
point is ‘Kynect’ is Obamacare.
Creating the worst form of
obstructionism any president has had to face coming from the senate in American
history, McConnell had this to say in defending it in attempts to block Obama
appointed judicial nominees.
First he had previously stated, “Any president's judicial nominees, after
full debate, deserve a simple up-or-down vote.” Then when Majority Leader
Harry Reid invokes the ‘nuclear option’ to counter Republicans incessant
filibusters, McConnell in a furious state says this countering his former
pledge, “This is nothing more than a
power grab. They broke the Senate rules in order to exercise a power grab.”
Naturally though, when W. Bush, a
Republican was in the executive chair, McConnell had this to say in 2005, “Any president’s judicial nominees, after
full and fair debate, receive a simple up-or-down vote on the Senate floor. It
is time to move away from advice and obstruct and get back to advise and
consent.”
Just look at the graph below and see how
prejudicial and detrimental McConnell’s Republican minority has been to this
president’s and nation’s judicial confirmation seating. S’long to the
up-or-down vote…
In the Obamacare implementation battles,
McConnell proclaimed, “Some in Congress
seem to be in such a rush to pass just any reform, rather than the right
reform, that they’re looking everywhere for the money to pay for it—even if it
means sticking it to seniors with cuts to Medicare. They are going to pay for
this plan by cutting Medicare that is cutting seniors. The administration plans to use Medicare cuts to fund yet another new
government program.”
Of course that was absolutely false then
as it is now. In fact, the ACA healthcare law specifically forbids Medicare
benefit cuts and is actually saving Medicare recipients $4,200.00/yr. per
person over the next ten years.
But naturally when it comes to Medicare,
McConnell never stated what he has wanted done to it. For four straight years
McConnell along with forty senate Republicans voted for Representative Paul
Ryan’s (R-WI) budget that includes privatizing and rationing Medicare for 47
million American senior users. McConnell also aligned himself with Newt Gingrich
to slash 15% off the Medicare budget when Gingrich was Speaker of the House.
He also doesn’t note that prior to
Obamacare, 44,789 uninsured Americans on average per year went to their grave.
This figure is from the studies published by the “American Journal of Public
Health’. That was prior Obamacare, for post there was a study published in
‘Annals of Internal Medicine’ that shows for every 830 folks who gain health
coverage under the ACA law, one life will be saved where otherwise they would
have died.
What about now? With McConnell implementing years of
obstruction, most of the progress Obama and Democrats were initiating to reboot
the economy is at present doing fairly well due to what little progressive
policies managed to go around the Republican block. But it just makes one
wonder what if there was some honest bipartisanship on the part of Republicans
where we would actually be today.
Well, McConnell wants to steal credit
and lay the current economic uptick to the recent Republican election results.
He said this day of 01/08/15, “After so
many years of sluggish growth, we’re finally starting to see some economic data
that can provide a glimmer of hope; the uptick appears to coincide with the biggest
political change of the Obama Administration's long tenure in Washington, the
expectation of a new Republican Congress. So this is precisely the right time
to advance a positive, pro-growth agenda.”
The gastrointestinal nerve in him must
be infecting any sense of reason to boast of such a false claim. To actually
proclaim the improving economy as a result of your own failures when in
actuality you are the one directly responsible for thwarting progress through
incessant denials, filibusters and obstructionism is tantamount to the highest
degree in dishonesty. McConnell is one of the main culprits who hindered
economic growth as implicated by him when he stated in 2008, “Top priority; make Obama a one term
president.”
McConnell’s sole agenda was to disagree
on anything and everything the Obama administration put out to heal the nation
from the effects of the ‘Great Recession’s stranglehold.
Of course McConnell is lying when it
comes to fixing a problem he incurred. The debt ceiling crisis, the fiscal
cliff, the sequester, the government shutdown…all these ‘things’ were
Republican sponsored by their own devious deeds, but all these ‘things’
Republicans shirked off in being not responsible for while pointing all the
blame squarely on the backs of Democrats. Republicans are masters of deceit.
In McConnell attempting to give
Republicans credit for the improving economy, when it has actually been their
policies that have stymied it, I like what senior White House adviser Dan
Pfeiffer compared McConnell’s fictitious analogy to.
Pfeiffer came back with a quote from
former NBA basketball player, Stacey King when after an historic game King
played in he said afterwards, “I’ll always remember this as the night that
Michael Jordan and I combined for 70 points.” In the game referred to here,
Michael Jordan scored 69 points where King scored 1.
Look, McConnell and Republicans
prophesized many dire predictions after President Obama won reelection. Senator
Mike Lee (R-UT) in March 2012 said that gas prices would be $5.45 per gallon by
2015 with Obama as president; the national average today has fallen a record
102 straight days and is currently $2.20 per gallon. Wherein states like
Missouri it’s selling at $1.82 per gallon…and see…we never needed the XL
Pipeline to lower gasoline prices after all did we…
Mitt Romney late in the 2012
presidential campaign when unemployment was 8.1% claimed that if Obama was
reelected, you’re going to see chronic high unemployment continue four years or
more. Where Romney claimed he would get unemployment down to 6% by 2017 with
his policies, today in the first days of 2015 under Obama, unemployment
currently stands at 5.8%.
After Obama was just reelected,
conservatist guru economist Charles Bilderman wrote that due to the election
results Obama’s second term policies would “crash stocks.” Investor Marc Faber
claimed that the “stock market would drop at least 20%” and suggested that
investors wanting to protect their assets “should buy themselves a machine
gun.” At the first of the New Year, the ‘Dow Jones Industrial Average’ stood at
17,823; up over 35% since Obama was reelected.
On Obamacare, all Republicans claimed no
one would pay for their health insurance. House Republicans on the House and
Energy Committee claimed this, then they held a hearing to proclaim it, but it
didn’t work out that way. Concerning the over 8 million enrollees in the new
healthcare law, insurance executives lined up telling congress that 80-90% of
those enrolled are paying their premiums. The House Republicans little hearing
appears to have backfired big time.
Speaker of the House, John Boehner
(R-OH) in November 2013 charged that Obamacare is “a rolling calamity that must
be scrapped” and added, “When you step
back and look at the totality of this, I don’t think it’s ever going to work.”
Senator John Barrasso (R-WY) said, “It’s
going to go down, down, and then you are looking at, to me, a massive
government bailout of this entire health care law.” Conservative
strategist, Bill Kristol claims, “Obamacare
is failing and will fail.”
The buttered flab that barred the fat
lady from singing though was Donnie J. Trump. In the tweet below (boy-howdy he
does love his tweets), Trump yelped:
Unfortunately for the Republican doomsayer, the Dow Jones Industrial as of late has been hovering just under 18,000 up 35% since Obama’s reelection. The current U.S. dollar index (value against other currencies) has reached a four year high at 92.53 on the NYE:DXY.
Unfortunately for the Republican doomsayer, the Dow Jones Industrial as of late has been hovering just under 18,000 up 35% since Obama’s reelection. The current U.S. dollar index (value against other currencies) has reached a four year high at 92.53 on the NYE:DXY.
For another matter, according to fury by
Rush Limbaugh, since Obama was reelected the whole economy is going to
collapse. Just before Obama won reelection in 2012, Limbaugh blurted out, “The country’s economy is going to collapse
if Obama is reelected. There’s no if about this. And it’s gonna be ugly. It’s
gonna be gut wrenching, but it will happen.”
He even went so far as to state how it
would occur by predicting, “California is
going to declare bankruptcy and Obama would force states like Texas to bail
them out.” Limbaugh further boasted that you should better skippy well
believe him because as he proclaims, “I
know mathematics and I know economics. I know history. I know socialism,
statism, Marxism, I know where it goes. I know what happens at the end of it.”
Sounds more like he should stick to what
he knows best…babbling…for if he ever gets taken down from fouling the airwaves
with his jukebox junked mouth, there’s certainly not another job awaiting him
in mathematics, economics or history.
In 2014’s 3rd Quarter, America’s
GDP grew an annualized 3.5%; higher than any other industrialized nation.
Today, America’s economy is experiencing the fewest job losses since 1997.
America has witnessed nearly 70 straight weeks of economic growth and as a
result of that the U.S. economy grew a very comfortable 5.0% in the 3rd
Quarter of 2014.
Oh, and as for California…currently the
state has a $4 billion budget surplus ranking far better than most red states
such as Kansas, Arizona and the Republican controlled legislative states of
Wisconsin and New Jersey.
Alas, as if this isn’t enough, the moral
majority religious right got into the GOP foray of predicting end days due to
Obama’s reelection. Mega-might evangelical preacher Frank Graham felt that God
will ruin our economy thanks to the majority of American voters reelecting
Obama.
Just after the 2012 election results the
Reverend Franklin Graham preaches, “In
the last four years, we have begun to turn our backs on God. Maybe God will
have to bring our nation down to our knees—to where you just have a complete
economic collapse. And maybe at that point, maybe people will again begin to
call upon the name of almighty God.”
Just what is it that makes the
fundamental Christian feel Obama is such a threat if it has nothing to do with
bigotry?
So, since Obama’s inaugural election all
job losses from the ‘Great Recession’ have been erased. Under Obama, federal
spending has risen more slowly than the rate of inflation, petroleum imports
are down 48% and believe it or not, fewer SNAP recipients have been added under
Obama thus far than under W. Bush’s tenure.
Hands down, this president has done more
with less congressional input, but tons of congressional resistance than any
other president has encountered.
Distinctly
Dumbed:
The very first item to put on the table
of the new senate Republican majority, one would think that it might be
concerning jobs, immigration reform or even law and order. But no, the number
one priority for Republicans, even though they know full well the president’s
veto pen is aimed dead target on its sites is to build the dad-gummed XL
pipeline.
As mentioned earlier, it has nothing to
do with lower gas prices as the barrel price of crude oil has fallen steeply
from $102.00 per barrel to currently $48.36 per barrel without the pipeline. It
cannot make us independent as we already have a glut of domestic oil, oil is
speculated on the global market and it will not create any fair amount of
permanent jobs, unless you consider around 54 as a lot of jobs.
Whenever Republicans claim it will
create thousands of jobs, they’re deceitfully only accounting for the temporary
14,000 construction workers in building it. Do note; that is ‘temporary’ jobs
for a generation’s worth of potential environmental disasters if it is built.
But even that is minimal, as in just one month of November 2014 alone…14,000 construction
jobs were created in the U.S.
Senate Republicans are touting it as
infrastructure. Now all Americans know that word and know that it needs being
attended to, but to direct the word in describing a dang pipeline…that’s really
dumb. What Americans expect in infrastructure is to address all the crumbling
bridges and potholed highways that are plaguing the country.
No, why Republicans really want the
pipeline built is not on behalf of common folk, it is for the ones who have
padded their pockets such as the Canadian energy company ‘TransCanada’, all the
scores of lobbyists pushing for its construction and the Koch Brothers who
stand to gain billions in its construction in owning all land rights
surrounding the tar sands mining.
Where is the moral authority or public
trust? In fact, Republicans are gearing up toward Koch goals to abuse, degrade
and even destroy the very resources that sustain us; namely land, water and
air. This is tantamount to treachery for our future generations. The more we
cut, make extinct, mow down and pollute these life sustaining resources, nature
will prevail and we as part of life will pay dearly, for nature always corrects
its problem...which is currently us.
The Koch Brothers have sought personal
gain through influence into finance and politics via front groups in lobbying
and advocacy action. Their main agendas are to pump money into Republican
campaigns and lobbying against climate change and universal healthcare.
The Koch Brothers are the key donors to
conservative think tanks and political advocacy organizations like the
‘Heritage Foundation’, the ‘American Legislative Exchange Council’ (ALEC), the
‘Federalist Society’, ‘Cato Institute’, ‘Freedom Works’, ‘Americans for
Prosperity’, ‘Freedom Partners’ and one might as well include the ‘Republican
Party’ as a wholly soul-owned subsidiary of the Koch Brothers.
Republicans are so deep in with the
Koch’s where they are frozen in primary elections courting anything the
brother’s want because if the Koch’s support their opponent, whether a long
term incumbent or freshman, that opponent usually wins. It’s so apparent now
they’ve coined a term for it known as “getting primaried.”
Republicans like to admonish the
Hungarian-born American businessman George Soros as profiteering for the left,
so, incessantly attack him. But let’s look at the Koch Brothers and Soros
side-by-side.
As the graph above illustrates, from
1998 to 2010, the Koch Brothers outspent Soros in lobbying expenditures by over
22%. In the combinational institutional lobbying efforts by the brothers they
have spent $57.4 million to Soros’ personal fund management of $860 thousand
combined with the Soros funded ‘Open Society Policy Center’ of $11,930.00 for a
total of $12.8 million. Funny that; ya know, how the GOP seems to always skip
over that.
The Republican House is at it too. Their
first agenda of course was to attack Obamacare through legislation as if their
fifty-five times before hasn’t been enough.
To go after Obamacare again the
Republican majority House passed a bill calling it, ‘Save Americans Workers
Act.’ As usual under Republican fictitious employment bills, the implied name has
nothing to do with American workers, but all to do with making corporate and
financial institutions wealthier and more powerful.
On Tuesday, January 06, 2015
Representative Paul Ryan announced that the House bill would enable “more
people [to] work full time.” This bill
will actually create the opposite effect. The bill is a “fix” to weaken Obamacare
in changing the definition of full-time work from 30 hours back to 40 hours per
week.
As it currently stands, all employers
with 50 or more employees must provide insurance to 95% of the workers or pay a
fine. With full-time work being moved to 40 hours, American workers will lose
their work sponsored healthcare benefits. Along with raising the limit below 40
hours as part time to preclude healthcare coverage, corporations now have
incentive to even cut into 40 hour work weeks down to say 35 hours excluding
even more workers from insurance benefits. Directly this would impact 7% of
workers currently working under 40 hours and could indirectly impact another
44% of workers who work 40 hour weeks.
This is an appetizer for employers to
cut worker hours thus lowering paycheck amounts and totally eliminate health
benefits. While the ‘U.S. Chamber of Commerce’ welcomes this bill, the
‘Congressional Budget Office’ (CBO) has come out with figures stating the bill,
if it ever becomes law, will add $53 billion to the national deficit over the
next decade.
House Republicans have also bundled
previously DOA (dead on arrival) financial deregulation bills into a ‘super
bill’ that will allow corporate fraud to occur while giving impunity to
executive officers who committed the fraud.
When it comes to taxes, Republicans are
pushing bills that will hinder the ‘Congressional Budget Office’ (CBO) and the
‘Joint Committee on Taxation’ (JCT) from reporting simplified actuarial data.
Republicans are insisting the CBO and JCT included forego fiscal policy on
actual known statistics and include proposed legislation that is not even a
bill yet much less law. This egregious GOP spoof is being called ‘dynamic scoring’.
To do this the CBO and JCT must abandon
long accepted practices to finding data and become clairvoyant or even
telepathic in reaching conclusions. Of course, even though both agencies are
bipartisan, Republicans do not like them as the CBO has shown the Bush trickle-down-effect
era did not stimulate the nation’s economy while proving the cost savings found
in the ACA law.
The JCT tracks revenue and has pointed
out specifically how the W. Bush tax cuts wiped out the 1990’s surplus earnings
creating one of the nation’s largest deficits that led to the ‘Great Recession’
prompting unprecedented income inequality that is still choking the U.S.
In fact, the senate Republican majority
have decided not to reappoint CBO director, Douglass Elemendorf, who although
is a Republican himself has maintained a stellar bipartisan policy since the
1990s and without doubt emphatically opposes ‘dynamic scoring’ policies
currently pursued by Republicans.
Essentially what Republicans are
attempting to do here is mask over tax cuts for the extremely rich. As we know
from the previous W. Bush administration, this will again swell the deficit,
but it won’t be able to be proven that it was due to wealthy tax cuts as they
will be hidden from data collectors such as the CBO and JCT.
If Republicans are so gun-ho for wealthy
tax cuts, well what about the average American?
President Obama this coming Tuesday is
going to announce his plan to give American workers a break with a tax cut. Are
Republicans for it; in one word…nope…in fact, they’re lining up to condemn it.
Representative Paul Ryan (R-WI) had his
office spokesperson Brendan Buck state, “This is not a serious proposal. We
lift families up and grow the economy with a simpler, flatter tax code, not big
tax increases to pay for more Washington spending.”
The flat tax code Buck is speaking of is
in Ryan’s budget proposal. What it does is cover wealthy tax cut costs by
burdening the middleclass making under $200,000.00/yr. The middleclass would
lose their deductions for mortgages and charitable giving while facing tax
increases averaging $3,000.00/yr. All this is broken down nicely by ‘The Center
for Budget and Policy Priorities’ concerning Ryan’s budget.
Republicans profess they are for tax cuts for the average American, not just for the wealthy, but who do they fight for and who do they ignore? Sure they wail when Obama wants to tax the wealthy to give a fairer share, insisting the president wants to tax the “American people” and it is not the right time. Republicans lump it as if the president is taxing everyone.
Even though there is nothing to defund, House Republicans voted to defund immigration and stymie immigration reform. House Republicans have just passed Representatives, Diane Black (R-TN) and Ted Poe’s (R-TX) ‘Separation of Powers Act’ bill to defund immigration. Just before passage Poe stated, “This legislation will allow Congress to exercise its ‘check’ on an out-of-control White House that treats the Constitution as a mere suggestion, not the law of the land.”
Republicans profess they are for tax cuts for the average American, not just for the wealthy, but who do they fight for and who do they ignore? Sure they wail when Obama wants to tax the wealthy to give a fairer share, insisting the president wants to tax the “American people” and it is not the right time. Republicans lump it as if the president is taxing everyone.
If Republicans are truly for fewer taxes
on the middleclass and lower, then why did they allow unemployment to die off
and why is the Ryan budget geared to tax American workers while giving
corporations to pay less in taxation with more tax shelters?
In Obama’s State of the Union Speech he will bring up taxing the rich by raising inheritance and investment taxes that will aid and pay for middleclass and poor tax cuts. It will be interesting in how the muddled GOP response will be if they are for “less taxes for the American people.”
In Obama’s State of the Union Speech he will bring up taxing the rich by raising inheritance and investment taxes that will aid and pay for middleclass and poor tax cuts. It will be interesting in how the muddled GOP response will be if they are for “less taxes for the American people.”
Even though there is nothing to defund, House Republicans voted to defund immigration and stymie immigration reform. House Republicans have just passed Representatives, Diane Black (R-TN) and Ted Poe’s (R-TX) ‘Separation of Powers Act’ bill to defund immigration. Just before passage Poe stated, “This legislation will allow Congress to exercise its ‘check’ on an out-of-control White House that treats the Constitution as a mere suggestion, not the law of the land.”
Ya see that’s a huge problem and most
definitely a conundrum for Republicans, for here in the U.S., immigration
services have nothing to do in being funded by congress; Immigration self-funds
itself through fees collected from immigrant applicants.
In the past twenty years Republicans
have voted against all veteran bills and have attempted to block any increased
funding for veteran programs until this past June when they helped pass Senator
Bernie Sanders’ (I-VT) healthcare bill into law. It was the same bill that they
had successfully blocked in February of last year, the only difference is in
between the two February and June votes, the VA scandal had erupted. With major
heat emanating from the scandal and attempting to lay all the years of VA abuse
squarely on the back of Obama, for the moment, the GOP didn’t want to be perceived
as anti-veteran for the new law allows sick veterans to visit private doctors
if vet doctors aren’t available.
Still the GOP moaned about it. Senator
Jeff Sessions (R-AL) whined, “I feel
strongly we’ve got to do the right thing for our veterans. But I don’t think we
should create a blank check, an unlimited entitlement program, now.”
McConnell even attempted to attach an amendment to extend Iran sanctions that
would have poisoned the bill.
Republicans have fought tooth ‘n’ nail
to block any bill related to soldiers and veterans. They blocked the ‘Veterans
Jobs Corp’ bill, the ‘Enlist Act’, the ‘Clay Hunt Veteran Suicide’ bill, H.R.
1168 ‘Veterans Retraining Act’, a disabled veteran’s home improvement bill in H.R.
1293 and the H.R. 1171 bill that was to address the needs of homeless
veterans…these and much more have been blocked by Republicans. Yet, we voted
all these Republicans back into office.
Unsound
Reasoning:
It just seems that as the rest of the
world is progressing, such as Pope Francis publicly chiding the Vatican
bureaucracy for its complacency over the poor’s struggles, feckless
conservatism and judgmental ineptitudes…America’s far-right political system is
actually grabbing hold of these sunders taking the nation back down the more
primitive path.
Under Obama, TARP and his stimulus
package spent $426.4 billion and had a return of $441.7 billion; a nice payback
profit of $15.3 billion. The auto industry loan alone has saved millions of
jobs with America’s car manufacturers turning out 16.5 million vehicles, the best since
pert near a decade.
Just a couple of weeks after voters
turned their noses on Democrats, the U.S. government sold off its stake in the
auto financing company ‘Ally Financial’ formerly known as ‘GMAC’. The
government also turned a little profit on that too of $2.4 billion.
Yet, no one is giving the Obama administration
any credit in having the foresight in doing the necessary work by turning
things around under insurmountable obstruction reared by the recession’s
tentacles while topped off with an obstinate Republican portion of congress.
The economic recessionary environment zipping ever closer to a full blown depression alone would have discouraged most at what Obama has had to do to offset the recession’s reaches, much less in also battling the unnecessary political obstinacy.
The economic recessionary environment zipping ever closer to a full blown depression alone would have discouraged most at what Obama has had to do to offset the recession’s reaches, much less in also battling the unnecessary political obstinacy.
Let’s not forget where we were when
Obama first entered the White House and though there is still more room to even
inch where we were in the ‘90s, the economy has vastly improved and the
national debt/deficit has been halted and reversed dropping each quarter.
Vision for a moment if you will, if Republicans had gained all control in the 2008 elections vying up with all their agendas to cut public services for the hurting public and allow the auto industry to go bankrupt. Yeah…chew from that tub of lard for a bit.
Purists are not good in making legislation; pragmatists are. Obama is a pragmatist and to bring up Governor Sam Brownback of Kansas again; he is a purist. Let’s look to compare.
Fragile egos seek superiority through deceit, fear, mythical beliefs and prayer while having absolutely nothing to do with substance or meaningful evidence. The main energy force driving the right-wing engine is rooted in apocalyptic expressionisms. The Ebola scare, the Central American children refugee deceits, prophesizing Obamacare as death panels are all fronts of GOP deceit directed towards its gullible and not too bright base. The GOP’s bait is geared towards a fearful, ignorant, bigoted and rhetorical belief base.
Even falsely blaming Obama for the ISIL
uprising when it was solely due to W. Bush/Cheney policies that created the
porous borders and authoritative vacuum in Iraq is inept politics.
Who is the Republican Party? Some will
argue backed by substance that Republican elements correlate nicely with big
business versus the poor; that it dovetails radically with KKK and Aryan Nation
ideology; that it is an extension of Ayn Rand philosophical policies and that
it thrives on division of the nation whether it be race, gender or
socio-economic standing.
As of late in my opinion, the Republican
Party is merely an obstacle of opposition and most certainly not a legislative
body. They require a nemesis and although there are those that say they will
simply pick another to replace him, I say once Obama is out of office the GOP
will flail with no motivational force to entice their base with.
What have Republicans achieved as
constructive for the nation since Obama and W. Bush have been in office? If
nothing comes to mind it doesn’t mean that you’re absent minded, there just
simply is nothing to report.
Oh, the Republican House crammed a bunch
of last minute two year unfinished business down the throat of legislation in
one day just before their Thanksgiving break while Boehner strutted his
feathers in saying, “We will not stand
idle as the president undermines the rule of law in our country and places
lives at risk...we’ll work to protect the Constitution of the United States.”
With that said, then Republicans adjourned running off to their extended
Thanksgiving time off.
Maybe if we gave congress every other
week off, they’d get something done in Boehner’s House of Republican cards, for
it appears when it is time to go on vacation, only then do they act on
legislation.
With that said…I am signing off and high
tailing it too…
In Last Minute
Reporting,
BJA
01/01-18/2015
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