On this Labor Day morning I sent this feedback through whitehouse.gov:
I campaigned for you, like many others. We elected you and majorities of Democrats bigger than Newt Gingrich ever saw to get the job done: end the war, close gitmo, end warrantless wiretapping, implement universal health care, and the other things you said you would do.I'm sure it's hard once you get there, but gitmo is still open and there's a lot of talk that you're thinking of abandoning the public option on health care. A public option is already a compromise. The real solution, as you yourself once said, is single-payer. Medicare for everyone!You can't please everyone. You really can't please Republicans in Congress, because they're not bargaining in good faith: their only goal is to defeat you by defeating health care and anything else you propose. Trying to do it in a bipartisan way was laudable. It didn't work. You held out your hand and they bit it. Time to get the job done.FDR didn't pass the New Deal by asking Republicans to approve every detail. He accepted opposition and actively campaigned to defeat it and to defeat those Congress members in the next election. His biographer Jean Edward Smith said recently:“This fixation on securing bipartisan support for healthcare reform suggests that the Democratic Party has forgotten how to govern and the White House has forgotten how to lead.”LBJ didn't pass Medicare by giving away the store to the Republicans. He said what he wanted and he twisted arms until he got it. If your Blue Dogs are standing in your way tell them to get in line if they want your support for their next bill or at the next election.You're losing us, your progressive base. We are the great majority of people in this country who want real health care reform, not some compromise with the profit-gouging insurers. Nobody else should have to die so a CEO can get a bonus.It's time to lead, Mr. President. It's time for you and the Democrats in Congress to do the job you said you would do; the job we elected you to do.
How do you deter an enemy who is willing to kill himself in order to kill you? You strike at something more important to him than his own life. Defining that will be easy for me. The next question is can America be as ruthless as our enemies?
The time has come to end the fruitless and unsustainable effort to search and destroy every cave in Afghanistan and bomb every campground in bordering Pakistan. It’s counterproductive anyway.
What will put the fear of America into terrorist masterminds and those who would follow their orders is simple and radical revenge. Masterminds have families: Cousins, brothers and fathers. Eliminate them. All at once, or one at a time, it works just as well. The ones who survive an initial “hunt” will go into hiding. Having some adult male relatives killed and the rest hiding out in caves will demoralize masterminds and their loved ones. You cannot work and support your women like that. You can’t make more baby masterminds that way. You cannot continue the blood line. The women and children will pressure them to stop their plotting and bombing.
People want to leave a familial legacy, and they can’t do that under those circumstances over the long term.
Should America do that? Yes. Do we have the “intestinal fortitude” and sustainable motivation? I don’t think so. But we should, and it shouldn’t take another terrorist attack to get us there.
For the last seven years the CIA has been kidnapping people from other nations and torturing them. Why not just go in there and quietly shoot them to death?
Frankly, by not killing women or children the way those terrorists routinely do, we can even claim the moral high ground.
We need to give credit where credit is deserved: NAME this economic crisis after the man most responsible for it's creation.
$10 trillion deficit is what we had at the end of the Bush administration. In eight years, Bush more than DOUBLED all the indebtedness America had accrued in more than 200 years.
This is more than a talking point, this is a necessary reminder that should be made every day, so that the notoriously SHORT memories of Americans shall be stimulated on a regular basis.
Senator Dodd went rogue and inserted some crazy stuff into the new law, so the President will need to be creative. Perhaps we are looking for HEROES to run our troubled banks. A lot of wealthy patriots have made great financial sacrifices to serve in the Obama Administration. Like-minded people who don’t want to go through the vetting process and insane pubic humiliation of being outed on every little tax related or other embarrassment can now serve their country without becoming federal employees but while still consenting to be paid wages not all that far above that.
I see nothing different Obama has said or done since 2004 and today -- perhaps Gregg's understanding of it morphed overnight between the time he was begging for the job and yesterday, when it came time to vote on the stimulus plan. Gregg seems to claim otherwise.
Obama should have known Gregg either hasn't the courage of his convictions or , far more likely, hasn't got any deeply held beliefs other than politics. We demand omniscience! How DARE the President not realize a man like Gregg would say anything to further his own personal ambitions?
There's something wrong with a vetting process that cannot discern that a politically savvy adult who somehow got himself repeatedly elected to the US Senate would claim to have turned his back on Petty Partisan Politics but actually lack the moral fortitude to stand by his decision.
In 1933, Franklin Delano Roosevelt, a man disabled with a peripheral neuropathic disorder that left him unable to walk rose to the highest office in our nation during the midst of the worst economic disaster in U.S. history. Five sentences into his inaugural address, FDR set the course of the nation for the next 36 years, declaring “there is nothing to fear but fear itself”. Those words became the anthem that echoed throughout our nation, instilling a sense of bravery and patriotism in all Americans, just as “Yes, We Can” rings out today. U.S. citizens had no jobs; no food, and yet, one of FDR’s first accomplishments was bringing beer and wine back into American communities, and by the end of that year, prohibition of all other alcoholic beverages had ended. Until recently, ratification of the Twenty-First Amendment has been consistently overlooked or criticized for it’s lack of importance. Today historians identify it as a strategically prudent maneuver of the only U.S. presidential administration maintaining overwhelming popularity across an unprecedented four terms despite the challenges in resolving the Great Depression. Repealing Prohibition was more than a gift of Pleasure; it was a gift of Responsibility. It brought Unity and Motivation to the backbone of the nation to support FDR throughout the largest war effort of all time, culminating in the only U.S. war victory of the 20th century through today and into the foreseeable future. We can wrap a circle around the years 1933 through 1968 and rightfully call this the Rooseveltian Era. It was a time of superman, super heroes, and binary super powers. It was a time when people remained loyal to “Truth, Justice, and the American way” simply because “fear” was not a barrier.
Psycho-active chemical substances were first introduced to the American people by the U.S. Government. Students today learn that Japanese and Nazi military used amphetamines which had an impact on our opponents losing the war. The truth is that amphetamines were regarded state-of-the-art military technology during WWII and those who had the most advanced technology were more likely to have a greater abundance of amphetamines. Since U.S. technology during the war was by far, the most advanced, it is rather obvious that we exceeded others in quantity.
The assassinations of three U.S. Civil Rights leaders during the 1960s rocked the Rooseveltian Era and brought psycho-active substances into the mainstream. The general public was in mourning; the drugs became a way to heal.
While the presidential administration of Richard M. Nixon is credited with ending segregation, landing an American on the moon, the Equal Rights Amendment (ERA), and the end of the draft and the Vietnam War, these events were either fueled by public protest or already set in motion prior to Nixon’s inauguration. The impetus of the Nixon administration lies in restoration of Fear, Ignorance, and Exclusion. Antithetical to FDR, Nixon befriended Fear and Ignorance with a chilling and ghostly pessimism that resounds not only through the tapes he left behind, but in his policies, namely, in the war on drugs (WOD). The Nixonian Era has enduring for 40 years now .
To understand why the WOD was never a logical move, consider two major issues impacting health and safety of the Boomer generation during their teen years, automobiles and drugs, and how each was handled by two distinctively different presidents, one during the Rooseveltian Era and the other in the Nixonian Era.
MOTOR VEHICLE LEGISLATION
In 1966, when automobile fatalities had topped 50,000 in one year, President Lyndon Johnson brought before Congress recommendations from a 1936 Select Committee of the United States Senate, the 1949 Hoover Commission Task Force on Transportation, President Eisenhower’s 1961 Budget Message, and a 1961 Special Study Group of the Senate Committee on Commerce in urging the US Congress to create Department of Transportation.[i] President Johnson facilitated an inclusive effort that reached out to automobile manufacturers, federal, state, and local government contractors engineering the design of roads and highways, motorists, and high schools in developing the foundation for policy that is still successful today.
DRUG WAR LEGISLATION
Exactly one month after the Stonewall Riots commenced on June 27, 1969 in Greenwich Village, Manhattan, triggering a positive turning point in the gay movement, the Nixon administration issued legislation for a comprehensive reform of federal drug enforcement laws. It was a response to constituents and others who believed that sexual perversity was caused by psycho-active substances. Until 1973, homosexuality was listed as a mental illness in the DSM, and the growth of the gay movement was incorrectly attributed to the use of illicit drugs. In Nixon’s May 13, 1971 taped conversation with John D. Ehrlichman, and H. R. Haldeman, Nixon himself states that “Homosexuality, dope, and immorality are the enemies of strong societies.”[ii] A month later, on June 17, 1971, just 10 days before the second annual Gay Pride Parade in New York City, Richard Nixon spoke before Congress with the opening words:
“In New York City more people between the ages of fifteen and thirty-five years die as a result of narcotics than from any other single cause.
"In 1960, less than 200 narcotic deaths were recorded in New York City. In 1970, the figure had risen to over 1,000…”[iii]
The mention of New York City, of course, was a blatant allusion to the gay population that stirred a rather fanatical nationwide appeal by the president in which he states:
“The magnitude and the severity of the present threat will no longer permit this piecemeal and bureaucratically-dispersed effort at drug control. If we cannot destroy the drug menace in America, then it will surely in time destroy us. I am not prepared to accept this alternative.”[iv]
There are two ironies here.
FIRST, “piecemeal…” describes the actions reformists are taking today in a leisurely attempt to undo the WOD. However, the magnitude and severity of the threat imposed by today’s drug laws has totally eclipsed all problems resulting from drugs.
SECOND, destroying the “drug menace in America” IS destroying us, since “US” defines the American people comprised of drug users / abusers.…
Unlike Johnson, who managed the implementation of formal recommendations from experts, commissions, and panels assembled specifically to study the problem of motor vehicle accidents, Nixon excluded the voice of experience, the general public, and even the recommendations from the National Committee on Marihuana and Drug Abuse led by Raymond Shafer, a committee that Nixon personally appointed which recommended the legalization of marijuana when it was released in March 1972. Richard Nixon and members of his administration also rejected input from Dr. Roger Egeburg, Assistant Secretary of Health that he personally appointed to study 1972 in shaping the WOD. In reviewing more than 100 transcribed documents produced by Nixon with specific regard to drug abuse during the first term of his administration, his concern about drug abuse that seems admirable at first glance is actually obsessive and disturbing. However, it is Nixon’s unrefined, personal, erratic, and dangerously presumptive level of understanding about psychoactive substances and drug abuse that are alarming and without foundation. As a result, his efforts threaten rather than inform; demand rather than request; broadly assume rather than specifically identify. Discrepancies in definable terminology with the medical community have been one significant factor steering the U.S. Government directly off course from the original objective.
With support for the drug war waning during the Ford and Carter administrations, Ronald Reagan’s adoption of the WOD was an expectation. During the 1980s, the WOD began expanding in scope with increased bipartisan support and a new focus on prescription drugs. One of the great blunders of the Democratic Party has been the failure to recognize drug use as a Civil Rights issue. Zero Tolerance policy with mandatory minimum sentencing guidelines was not a deterrent to drug use / abuse; it was an invitation to the drug community to engage in other forms of crime. For example, burglary can be reduced to a sentence of a few months; the minimum for possession is 10 years. In cases across the U.S. a defendant arrested for both burglary and drug possession the latter charge might be thrown out if the defendant pleads guilty to the charge of burglary. However, if the defendant was only charged with drug possession, judges have no recourse but to sentence the defendant for 10 years. Such laws are ridiculous because drug crimes offer no reason for incarceration whatsoever.
“Too little is known about drug abuse, especially the causes, ways to treat, and prevent drug abuse.” That humiliating, show-stopping statement came from members of the 109th US Congress in January 2006, 34 years and 7 months after President Nixon declared drugs to be “public enemy number 1”, launching an effort that has cost US taxpaying citizens 2 trillion USD, clogging our courts and increasing our prison population with non-violent drug law offenders sentenced 20-to-40 years or longer under zero tolerance guidelines for something that the US Government knows “too little” about. These mandatory sentences have routinely torn families apart for simple drug possession. As parents are arrested, children, adolescents, and teenagers are taken into custody and frequently scattered among family members whose lives are inconvenienced and these minors are often left on the streets to fend for themselves. They end up without education, a bitter hostility towards law enforcement, and a lifetime of criminal activity. Our lawmakers may know “too little about drug abuse”, but when it comes to spinning out criminals, no nation has mastered this craft better than the U.S.
At the end of the first decade in the 21st century, evidence strongly reveals that the harm resulting from U.S. drug policy is inescapable. Incidents might no longer be hidden but reported daily by the mainstream press with callous interest from the general public which has been led to believe that punishment and treatment are the only ways to stop drug abuse. This is false. These are invalid approaches. Inside the walls of correctional institutions of America, drugs still proliferate. Hundreds of reform organizations have sprouted up over the years and membership is growing steadily in number. While the U.S. Government is so consumed with achieving an impossible victory in the WOD, it has neglected to notice that the collateral damage of current drug policy, by far outweighs any benefit. In fact, it is virtually impossible to determine why nothing has been done to change the course of a war between the government and the people; a war that is destabilizing our nation leading to dangers that are far more imminent than those of global warming. Impacts of the WOD can be mapped across 12 categories:
1. Human Life
2. Civil Rights
3. Healthcare
4. Medical & Pharmacological Research
5. Education
6. Criminal Justice
7. Law Enforcement
8. Corporations & Businesses
9. Economics
10. Family & Society
11. Foreign Relations
12. Future Generations
Each of these is currently defined on my website at http://www.DrugUseEducation.org, I plan to write a blog summarizing each.
RESPONSIBLE DRUG USE IS NORMAL
My website at http://www.DrugUseEducation.org explains in great detail the residual effects our drug laws, but first, to couch my point, simply and succinctly: appropriately formulated drugs are not a threat to humanity. They never have been. Using drugs and chemical substances is normal human behavior.[v] Our culture has established this with regard to using drugs which have medicinal value, while ancient civilizations established the recreational value of drugs with countless generations ever since approving the use of alcohol. The Electro-Chemical Age[vi] coinciding with the Anthropocene[vii] Epoch in which we live today is the logical springboard for introducing safer alternatives to alcohol when correctly administered. These options also make it possible for individuals of different genetic types to enjoy pleasure and relaxation that is more suitable to their body chemistry than alcohol, which is considered to be one of the most lethal substances along with tobacco and gasoline used as pleasure drugs by Americans but are not controlled substances.
THE REAL THREAT IS THE LACK OF EDUCATION
The dangers associated with drugs are specifically linked to incorrect methods of drug administration, namely: drug abuse, dependence, addiction, and misuse. President Richard Nixon was aware of this. Throughout President Nixon’s address to U.S. Congress on June 17, 1971, he specifically mentions drug abuse and drug addiction as the two central “drug problems”. Furthermore, RN presents a proposal for rehabilitation and prevention efforts. Not once does RN mention a “war on drugs” before Congress. Not once does he make the remark that “America's public enemy number one in the United States is drug abuse”. Such comments were made during a news briefing several hours after RN addressed Congress.
ABSENSE OF STANDARDS & GUIDELINES
During the past 37 years, the WOD has evolved into an enigma of convoluted terminology, in which there are no standards and no guidelines to designate the acceptable use of recreational drugs, a pastime that has been growing among adults and will surely continue to grow well into the future with no end anticipated outside of the annihilation of the Earth before we have the opportunity to inhabit at least one other planet outside our solar system.
For that reason, I am appealing to the Obama administration and members of Congress to consider my proposal or any substitute action that will stop the condemnation of those with legitimate medical disorders using controlled substances and responsible recreational drug users and self-medicators who want -- and very well may have just cause -- to use drugs, while providing necessary education to everyone in society, especially those who are unaware how drugs should be used correctly, applying harm reduction, and providing treatment for drug abusers and those who have become chemically dependant. So far, the U.S. Government has repeatedly failed to show why anyone administering drugs one way or another -- whether they are prescribed or illicit controlled substances -- should be subjected to incarceration when they threaten no other members of society. By legalizing drugs and making them available at a fair price to individuals who have earned the privilege to use them, the unwanted illicit drug trade would diminish and cease to exist with the absence of any demand for illegal drugs.
I do not support an illicit drug trade, or the manufacturing, sale, distribution and use of impure homemade/homegrown substances that have not been FDA-approved, or the glamorization and commercial sale of drugs as has been the case with alcohol and tobacco. My philosophy is that all drugs whether they are used for medicinal, recreational, performance-enhancement or other purposes are a personal matter that requires education and qualified support by a legitimate pharmacist, physician, or perhaps some other trained and certified individual who is able work with the user to determine which drug is appropriate for them. While there is no way to assure that drugs won’t be abused, dosing restrictions provided with every drug, including alcohol and cigarettes would give the public the knowledge and the responsibility to maintain control.
In the 21st century, the problems associated with incorrect forms of drug administration are merely a cosmetic blemish compared to the life-threatening hemorrhage that defines our current drug policy. How can we even begin to estimate the number of individuals that are adversely impacted by our drug laws. There are reports on-line which suggest a lower end of 700,000 to an upper end of more than 200 million U.S. citizens that have in some way been adversely impacted by our society’s drug laws during the past two decades. Tragically, many of those directly in the line of fire have been innocent children.[viii] Even more tragically, down here in the trenches we are helplessly witnessing the self-destruction of America as faith in our democratic government wanes amidst a background of corruption, including drug laws that have created an environment far worse than the prohibition of alcohol from 1920 until 1933 since today we have included patients with legitimate medical disorders among those who use drugs for entertainment.
The longer it takes to reach a level of sane, acceptable, drug policy, the more certain we are that a far greater number of human lives will be challenged, if not lost, by hardships that result from the irrational control of psycho-active substances.
[i] Special Message to the Congress on Transportation. Lyndon B. Johnson March 2nd, 1966 http://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/ws/index.php?pid=28114&st=automobile&st1=
[ii] http://www.gicomeng.com/histinsidenixon.htm Original Source: Harper’s Magazine.
[iii] http://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/ws/index.php?pid=3048&st=&st1= Special Message to the Congress on Drug Abuse Prevention and Control, June 17, 1971.
[iv] Ibid
[v] See analysis at http://www.gicomeng.com/
[vi] Electro-Chemical Age (ECA) – The theoretical name that logically represents the tools of our time, which are electronic or chemical based. The ECA has its roots in the Age of Enlightenment (18the Century)that spawned the Industrial Revolution. Technically, the ECA succeeds the Industrial Revolution that took place during the early 19th century. The ceremonial start date of the ECA is May 1, 1851, the date that Queen Victoria and Prince Albert opened the Great Exhibition (aka Crystal Palace) in Hyde Park, London, England, where over 17,000 exhibitors from around the world gathered to demonstrate their inventions and trigger the start of an Age dominated by electrically-powered mechanics, and complex chemical technology.
[vii] Anthropocene is used by some scientists to describe the most recent period in the Earth's history. It has no precise start date, but may be considered to start in the late 18th century when the activities of the humans first began to have a significant global impact on the Earth's climate and ecosystems. This date coincides with James Watt's invention of the steam engine in 1784.[1] The term was coined in 2000 by the Nobel Prize winning atmospheric chemist Paul Crutzen, who regards the influence of human behavior on the Earth in recent centuries as so significant as to constitute a new geological era.
[viii]
Having waged a decade long propaganda war to inflate (indeed, completely myth-i-fy!) the record and administration of Ronald Reagan (see "How Republicans created the myth of Ronald Reagan" at http://www.salon.com/books/excerpt/2009/02/02/ronald_reagan/), Republicans are now outright lying about success of FDR's "New Deal". Republicans seem absolutely bent on ensuring that any stimulus will fail (what with the inclusion of tax cuts that have very limited stimulus effects and the dropping of federal or state spending that would - see the table on the last page of the CBO report http://74.125.47.132/search?q=cache:NYegsQPivcsJ:coburn.senate.gov/public/index.cfm%3FFuseAction%3DFiles.View%26FileStore_id%3D866fa8ea-f6a7-4374-8623-75a9c84a16e6+%241.00+stimulus+effect+CBO+estimates+2009&hl=en&ct=clnk&cd=4&gl=us).
These scurrilous lies must be outed and demolished anywhere and everywhere they appear - right up to the halls of Congress and the offices of the blackards who voice them - like Senator Richard Shelby. Otherwise, when and if the stimulus is found lacking (either through timidity in spending or Republican efforts to ensure that it fails), these lies will be pointed to and repeated as historical "proof" and "I told you so" propaganda.
A fairly succinct choice for such debunking can be found in a "Timeline for the Great Depression" at http://www.huppi.com/kangaroo/Timeline.htm. There it is shown that only when FDR succumbed to ill-founded deficit fears did GDP and unemployment improvements experienced due to "New Deal" programs SOMEWHAT falter - though GDP and unemployment were still MUCH BETTER than at the worst of the Great Depression. "Economists attribute economic growth so far to heavy government spending that is somewhat deficit. Roosevelt, however, fears an unbalanced budget and cuts spending for 1937. That summer, the nation plunges into another recession. Despite this, the yearly GNP rises 5.0 percent, and unemployment falls to 14.3 percent."Further proof of the power of Federal government spending was shown during WWII (including just before US military entry into the war via the "Lend Lease" program to Britain). During the war, government deficit spending became astronomical, with deficits still outstripping in relative terms any since and any contemplated today. And it WAS that huge government spending that led not only to the war victory, but also to the great economic recovery and prosperity that followed. One critical part of the spending AFTER the war was the benefits to veterans - perhaps most significantly for housing and (in the long term) for education benefits lavished on them (RIGHTLY!) by the GI bill. To those, one should also add spending on the Marshall Plan for the recovery of war torn countries. As with their overall false assessments of FDR's "New Deal" and correctly targeted government stimulus spending, Republican's also claim that education and foreign development spending are not "stimulative" - even in the face of historical fact.
(Can I say 'circa' if it's in the future?)
Democrats won't be controlling the Senate after 2010.
They rushed like lemmings to declare they'd never accept Blago's appointee.
A little time and forethought should have enabled them to reason that in order to create the illusion of innocence Blagojevich would be likely to find someone eminently qualified, of stellar reputation and far removed from the (alleged) illegal activities.
That would only be in his own best interests. And if there is one thing we have learned about Blago, it is that his own best interests are his first and last consideration in decision-making.
Senate Democrats have now pitted themselves against the Chicago Democratic Machine. Despite that Dick Durbin has lost touch with reality and thrown in with them, this is a battle Senate Democrats cannot and will not win. In this, there is no winning, only degrees of losing.
Should he be denied, Burris can run against any Illinois Democrat, including Durbin, and win.
As for that silly mausoleum? All politicians are narcissists. He's just 'concrete' about it.
Remember Republican Senator Ted Stevens who actually looked jurors in the eyes and told them he didn't notice people stuffing hundreds of thousands of dollars into his pockets. I dare say Bill Gates would notice if you stuffed a few hundred thousand dollars into his pockets. Ted Stevens,... now THAT'S a big ego!
It is also necessary to remember that this is the same US Senate that gave a seven-time convicted federal felon -- Ted Stevens -- a two-minute standing ovation, and two hours of praise-filled testimonials. And they are claiming to be observing their PRINCIPLES???
Republican and Democratic Senators must think we are stupid, stupid, stupid.
Imagine what would happen if the immediate and long-term success, and even viability, of the Republican Party depended on Barack Obama failing to pull America back into PROSPERITY. Oh, wait, we don't have to IMAGINE that because it happens to be the current condition.
While refusing to offer any better ideas, Republicans stand in adamant opposition to everything the President-Elect suggests, even without knowing any details. I have to admit, he's been somewhat vague.
History suggests that America's realization of a sense of success by spring of 2012 will mean the GOP will be broadly out of power for one to two generations.
Every month that another 600,000 Americans lose their jobs is the direct result of Republicans acting on what they see is their own best political interests. While one of their many changing SLOGANS last year was "America First", in truth it is plain that they hold the Republican Party's interests above those of America and our people.
Every day that our children continue to suffer from a declining educational system in which mediocrity is celebrated; every day that more taxpayers lose high wage jobs only to go on welfare food stamps and unemployment; every day that more and more Americans are forced to sign up to work at the country's largest employer WalMart whose own accidentally leaked internally study said 43% of their full-time employees are on welfare and food stamps; every day that we lose what little remains of our manufacturing base so that when we next need to really go to war like in WW2 we won't have car factories to swiftly convert to making fighter jets and tanks so we'll have to order them from CHINA which the most likely enemy in a real war; remember that Republicans see that as MERELY another day closer to the time when they regain power over the White House, Senate and House -- which if not for the horrendous disaster they have created over the last eight years might not be so terrifying.
America stopped keeping up with the demands for maintenance of our infrastructure with the Reagan administration. We were told that things like that "the free market" would take care of things like that, but tell that now to New Orleans and their crumbling levees, or Minnesota with their collapsed interstate bridge, or Kentucky with their billion gallons of toxic sludge that spilled out of a mine containment area.
America's best defense against precisely the current financial system collapse, the Glass-Steagall Act of 1933, enacted not coincidentally in the wake of the financial collapse of 1929, was REPEALED on the demands of deregulating Republicans -- with help from Bill Clinton in 1999. That law alone prevented financial institutions from becoming "too big to fail". That is, it kept each of the insurance, banking and real estate conglomerates within their own area. They could still become behemoths, but it's when they get into all three of those industries and start making up new ones that are totally unregulated like 'derivatives' that the failure of one company can bring down the American economy, even the world economic system.
The only thing the President-Elect can do to get us out of this disaster is to go back the way we came in, by resurrecting modern-day Glass-Steagall style regulations and stimulating the middle class segment of the system while taking back the giveaway tax cuts from the wealthiest 1% that over the last eight years gave money to people who already had more money than they knew how to spend. They squirreled it away someplace, or bought yachts built in Greece. Republicans love to claim that tax breaks for the ultra-wealthy leads to the creation of small businesses. In reality, it's Steve Jobs and Bill Gates when they had nothing who created small businesses that became leading world companies. Billionaires DON'T start small businesses, they BUY huge corporations then fire 50,000 or 100,000 employees to increase productivity and thus profits for themselves and large bonuses for the three to five top executives of each company. Oh, and they CUT wages of the few employees they do have to keep on.
That doesn't grow anything but unemployment and declining wages. Less taxpayers and more people surviving on public assistance.
If we don't stand up to these self-serving Republicans very few of us will have jobs in 2012, and they will be at WalMart. There won't be any real taxpayers to support the public assistance people need to get back into good paying jobs.
I'll get to the CRAZY DEMOCRATS on another post. I'll give you a hint that after 2012 Democrats will no longer be in control of the Senate.
“A President must be able to do more than one thing at a time,” said then-candidate and now President-Elect Barack Obama, a few months ago when McCain was trying to weasel out of the big debate.
Evidently, President-Elect Obama CAN do far more than one thing at a time. He and his family are MOVING three times in three weeks! This, the weekend of 4 January 2009, he moves from his Chicago home to DC’s Hay-Adams Hotel. On the 15th, they move to Blair House, then on the 20th, they move into the White House. Yes he can! For most of us, the dreaded process of a single relocation is more stressful than death and taxes. But Superman is tripling-down on it.
At the same time, the President-Elect Obama is interviewing and hiring a government, from cabinet members, agency administrators, secretaries and ambassadors. He’s working feverishly on the economic crisis, the transition and inauguration, as well as homeland security and two wars. Throw in taxes, healthcare, unemployment, social security, Medicare and the crisis of the Big 3 automakers, plus Iran, Cuba, Russia, China, the Palestinians and Israel, plus all those special interest groups here at home, such as the disabled, veterans, senior citizens and gays, and you’ve got an enormous inbox.
After those daily national security briefings in which the President-Elect Obama is beginning to learn just how badly Bush has screwed things up for us around the world, it’s a wonder the President-Elect Obama can sleep at night. He needs all the rest he can get.
Enjoy your vacation, sir, you need all the recharging your batteries can get.
There are only two reasonable choices.
To evoke the vision of the world economy rising from the ashes of the torched-earth strategy of the Bush-Cheney-Rove administration, BHO should open the Bible to the gospel account of Jesus’ rising from death. Not only will it give us hope, but it will reinforce our knowledge of BHO’s Christianity, helping put aside the invocation guy.
There are always those who make their fortunes playing to the fears and insecurities of people frustrated with their own lives who need someone to blame, someone to hate, and it's easy for them to agree on certain groups to focus on.
Obama is moving America toward the point where those people will realize that if they don't have a good job, they have too little money, too much debt, their kids are in and out of jail and/or on drugs, or failing in school, it's not the fault of some group of "OTHERS". Not the gays, the jews, the blacks, or even those pesky illegal aliens, to name just a few.
It's time for a new era of Personal Responsibility in which we all take charge of our own lives while working together for all of us to achieve the American dream while making government do what it can to enable us.
Rick Warren is just an updated version of the same old Ministry Of Hatred represented by Falwell and Robertson (and so many others).
The coming of that new era is a direct threat to Rick Warren, Jerry Falwell, Pat Robertson and all the other leaders of the Ministry of Hate. Just like the Republicans did during the long two year campaign, they will go down kicking and screaming all the way.
The President who told at least a dozen lies to get us to go to war in Iraq has conjured up more than a dozen lies to set up President Obama for failure? The most miserable failure of an excuse for a President is leaving directions for the next President?
If it weren’t so serious, it would be funny! If your memory is longer than that of 99% of Americans you know that’s not a line I made up, and you may even know who did. Details.
I’m just saying, George Bush should be planning out where he’s going to hide to keep from being arrested and delivered to the Hague for trial in the World Court for War Crimes and Crimes Against Humanity.
We didn’t let Hitler’s assistants off the hook, and neither can we afford to let Bush’s (the New Hitler’s) people go Scot-free.
We all know that all these recent attempts by Bush to rewrite history are mere hopes that America doesn’t do what’s right. If we intend to restore any sense of moral authority or regain any worldwide respect, we must follow our own laws and those international laws we largely wrote and have been demanding everyone else follow for decades until “W” took office.
If we don’t want our soldiers tortured when they in the future are captured, we must deliver to justice George Bush, Dick Cheney, Donald Rumsfeld, their generals and other high officers who ordered torture and passed on those illegal and immoral orders.
America is a chief signatory to the Geneva Conventions. In fact, before 2001, we liked to claim we largely WROTE it. What good is international law if those who claim to have written it are the worst violators?
America has long had laws against torture of prisoners of war. We cannot allow one power-mad egomaniac (or moron, depending on who is providing the facts, and there are plenty on both sides) to cause us to abandon our Constitution, or it won’t be worth anything, ever.
To put it simply, we cannot defeat terrorism by becoming the worst terrorists on earth. Long before we got to that point, any real President would have caught himself and found a better way. Why? Because Bush’s route could be seen even by people as unworldly as me to be a fool’s plot.
It started with Bush’s WAR-PRAYER-MEETING, right after 9/11. That was disturbing to me THEN, because, as a Christian and an American I wondered if Jesus would say that we should “turn the other cheek”.
What? “Turn the other cheek”. I know. I certainly wasn’t in the mood for that. But that’s what Jesus would have us do – according to the Bible. Those so-called religious Republicans have still never mentioned that, and they would castrate me for mentioning it if they could. (They don’t have the balls for it, so they’ll try to get you to do it, just like the Romans, according to the Bible, were forced to murder Jesus. Just reading it objectively and making no assumptions. NO benefit to me which side you take).
Strange, but when you think about the things that really were surprises, you can’t find any that Bush created that much cohesion to in that short a time. Can you? I can’t.
Almost makes you wonder WHEN Rumsfeld, Cheney and Bush KNEW 9/11 was going to happen, doesn’t it? Naaaaaaah. Certainly not. I don’t really know. Do I???
It WAS amazing that five seconds after the first jet crashed into the World Trade Center, Bush’s officials declared they knew it was Osama Bin Laden! Before the first tower collapsed, the Bush administration told us who to blame. I wondered why they didn’t PREVENT it since they obviously knew so much about it in advance.
Worse yet is the fact that for all of 2000, Bush campaigned claiming “America’s military is not ready!” Yet, during all of 2001, he did NOTHING to get our military ready. Why would you TELL our enemies that our military isn’t ready? Then, once in power, why would you fail to GET it ready/ Bush should spend the rest of his days in Guantanamo for that alone.
I always think you can know who caused something to happen by figuring out who BENEFITTED from whatever happened.
Wall Street Journal: Toyota will delay production at its new $300 million plant in Mississippi, citing a steep decline in the auto market. The company says jobs in the state are "secure."
This is the beginning of proof of what I've been saying all along.
The most important detail not understood by southern voters and conservative Republicans is that they, too, will suffer by causing the collapse of the Detroit auto industry.
It's not only northerners whose non-auto industry jobs will be lost in the fallout. Those millions of former taxpayers on welfare, food stamps and unemployment and those around the country, including even the south, who will be dragged down with them, WILL NOT be buying those Japanese cars and trucks being manufactured in those taxpayer-subsidized southern plants.
People won't have the money, won't be able to obtain credit, and won't have the consumer confidence that enable such major purchases.
So all those high-paid UAW people Republican conservatives want to destroy will be merely the BEGINNING of the calamity.
We cannot afford at this time to have high-wage people lose taxpaying jobs while America’s largest employer, Walmart, according to their own internal report, pays wages so low that 43% of their full-time workers are on welfare and food stamps.
Blagojevich? Emanuel? Is that anything?
The FBI tapes may end up proving that Emanuel’s talks with Blagojevich only related that the President-Elect would offer the governor nothing more than “appreciation” for nominating one of then-Senator Obama’s “acceptable” candidates. Unless Emanuel “went rogue”. All stay together, and all hang together -- that's how they play it in the big leagues. Over the weekend, Mr. Emanuel apparently sent out his personal operatives – his ‘emissaries' – to put out his own SPIN on his alleged contacts with governor Rod. That would seem to point out that he’s the “weak link” – the person who screws up, then tries to protect himself at the expense of the team. His refusal to go to work last week was suspicious enough.
Innocent people don’t have to BREAK RANKS with their fellow patriots, shun the office so they don’t have to look into the eyes of their colleagues, or hide from the press, rather than just smile at the cameras and say “the Team will have something to say at the appropriate time”.
In addition to that, I do not understand why – if news reports and his statements are true – Mr. Emanuel would be getting threatened, or by whom. Regardless whether he is honest or dishonest, I don’t understand that at all – it seems illogical. Was he lying when he said that? Was the reporter lying about him having said that? I’d like some information on that.
You may not appreciate my questions, especially regarding the alleged claim of alleged threats, but I am someone who has been paying attention. Also, I have a very long memory, especially of politics.
I was just a kid more or less during the 80’s, but right then I was asking why we were crazy enough to be capitulating to the Japanese automakers. I seemed to be the only one in the 80’s who articulated that it was absurd for American automakers to keep making rounds of layoffs of tens of thousands of American autoworkers and then wonder WHY their sales continued to fall. “Who do they think are buying their cars?”, I asked. “The workers who build the cars are their best customers” I argued, “With their wages, they are the ones best able to afford them.”
More than twenty years ago, I could see that you can’t keep putting tens of thousands of your best customers out of work and then wondering why your sales keep declining. If a mere kid could see that over twenty years ago, why can’t beyond-middle-aged voters understand that now? American voters in general have very short memories.
There’s a reason they used to say “what’s good for GM is good for America!” Those workers made good wages. They paid equally large TAXES. They bought only American cars. They spent money only at American businesses that sold only American-made goods and services. One dollar spent on an American-made car meant eight-teen dollars (give or take a dollar) spent in America, to other Americans who paid TAXES in America. It pumped up the economy and created jobs for many AMERICANS.
Right now, we are at best buying cars made at plants in the south owned by Japanese companies that pay LOW wages, sending ALL the money we spend to Japan. Those low-wage workers spend all their meager income at WalMart. That money goes straight to China, where it creates more jobs – in China. Those workers reportedly make 9 cents a month. Do we want to “catch up” with them?
WORSE, when all those high-paid Detroit autoworkers lose their jobs, they will go right onto welfare, unemployment and food stamps. The rest of us will be paying ALL the taxes to support them.
I am terrified at the prospects of MY income decreasing due to the lack of customers directly and indrirectly linked to the Detroit autoworker economy. I am horrified that I will make LESS money but have to PAY MORE to support the government assistance to those people who should have been able to keep their jobs and PAY TAXES alongside the rest of us.
Rather than CUT the wages of union workers, Republican politicians should be RAISING the wages of the rest of American taxpayers, and NOT putting Americans out of work.
