Spintested: November 2012

American Drones Ignite New Arms Race From Gaza To Iran To China

Tuesday, November 27, 2012

I saw Hearts and Minds again last night, a documentary film that recounts the history and attitudes of the opposing sides of the Vietnam War using archival news footage as well as its own film and interviews.

A key theme is how attitudes of American racism and self-righteous militarism helped create and prolong this bloody conflict. The film also endeavors to give voice to the Vietnamese people themselves as to how the war has affected them and their reasons why they fought the United States and other western powers while showing the basic humanity of the people that US propaganda tried to dismiss.

Two quotes from the film stand out:

Gen. William Westmoreland: "The Oriental doesn't put the same high price on life as does the Westerner. Life is cheap in the Orient."

Daniel Ellsberg: "We weren't on the wrong side. We were the wrong side."

What keeps us developing these killing machines and foreign policies of aggression never changes.
Read the Article at HuffingtonPost

American Drones Ignite New Arms Race From Gaza To Iran To China

I watched Hearts and Minds again last night, and I was struck by how we continue to learn nothing from our history. We're as susceptible to being lied into war by our government as ever. Our leaders play on our fears to create the means of our destruction many times over, in order to increase their own riches.
Read the Article at HuffingtonPost

Reappraising Obama

Did you know that we could pretty much keep all Americans safe from terrorists if we revoked all Constitutional rights, eavesdropped on all communications, kept Americans in small, policed neighborhoods like prison communities? It then becomes a really easy task. Look at N. Korea, with bugged housing, and Singapore with Draconian laws that have eliminated just about all crime - Even bubble-gum chewing!

They are humorless and obedient cultures, lacking innovation and sheer joy or genius.

The trick in the US is to solve our problems without impeding Constitutional rights. Both Democrats and Republicans take the easy way out (ending our rights), not for the good of the people, not to keep Americans safe, but for the further fleecing of Americans by the corporations.

You keep touting Obama's insurance bonanza bill ("already cut Medicare costs by 50%") when I keep telling you that there's a way to do it without Americans giving up their right of privacy (that's what IT for Medicare reporting has done - It's ended Americans' medical privacy).

There is a very real price paid when we lose our privacy, when we open our lives to clandestine surveillance by the government and strangers. The danger is not only in the misuse of our information, but the effect of being watched has on innovation and other aspects of culture.
Read the Article at HuffingtonPost

Dick Durbin: Social Security Should Be Off The Fiscal Cliff Table

IT IS NOT A ENTITLEMENT IT IS BOUGHT AND PAID FOR

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That's why it's an entitlement -- It's been bought and paid for.

That's what 'entitlement' means.

But the only thing that Republicans could do with the word, with the concept of 'entitlement', was to try to change people's attitude about the word itself, conflate it with a common parlance of the word used to describe people who are 'putting on airs' -- "Look at her, all high and mighty, as if she were entitled."

The first step is recognizing the tricks of the trade (political pin, weasel-speak, and Democrats do it, too), and reclaiming the language.
Read the Article at HuffingtonPost

Reappraising Obama

Friday, November 23, 2012

And, of course, the most immediate job was to stop the economy from going over the cliff. Remember?

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It's not as if we hadn't tread these waters before. We had a blueprint for how to get through this ~~recession~~ Depression with what FDR did in the 1930s. We even had a blueprint for how to avoid the stall we're in now, from when FDR caved to Republicans after the initial stimulus funds had shown positive effects and he took his foot off the gas (stimulus funds) at their demand.

The stimulus was weak tea. Intentionally. Just enough to let us believe that Obama and Congress were doing something, but little enough to let the fleecing from continue. It was just enough to keep us from marching on the White House and Congress with pitchforks and torches. Politicians' intent was never to restore what's been stolen from us. It was just to stonewall and stall for time, misdirect our attention, so that the corporate class could keep on keeping on.

Obama's in office to mellow-talk us into accepting that which we'd never stand still for if we had contentious fire-in-the-belly Democratic politicians actually fighting on our behalf. Obama's in the White House to ease us into accepting the greatest heist in the history of the world, and never even think about trying to get back the money that 's been stolen from the middle and poor classes.
What Obama's doing is presiding over the end game of America, letting the 'Haves' pick the (our) bones clean. The more we see of Obama in action, the more 'deals' he makes, the more people realize that Obama's a continuation of the cruel policies of BushCheney. You don't put a Tim Geithner into the Treasury if you're a man of the people. You don't put a Larry Summers in to head your Economic Council. You don't put a Bill Daly in as your Chief of Staff.

Both parties' politicians have signed on to deregulation and privatization of America's resources, and yes, dismantling the New Deal and Great Society programs. Programs that created the greatest middle class in the history of the world. For 4 decades, the poor and middle classes have been losing economic ground, and that's been the plan of both parties, despite the rhetoric from Democrats. Nothing that has happened in the last 40 years happened without the Democrats signing on.

Do you see Obama calling for the reinstatement of Glass-Steagall?
Read the Article at HuffingtonPost

Reappraising Obama

Not prosecuting BushCo is destroying the country. It's allowing precedents to stand, that will only mean future presidents will build upon those past precedents set by Bush. From those precedents spring aberration -- Obama already has built upon Bush's claims of 'UnitaryExecutive', asserting that a president has the right to kill American citizens with no due process, no oversight, and no legislative or judicial review of that position. Obama's already imposed a policy of 'indefinite preventive detention', again, imprisoning anyone, anywhere, anytime, forever, if a president chooses, with NO DUE PROCESS, no oversight.

How any Democrat defends that is beyond my understanding.
Read the Article at HuffingtonPost

Reappraising Obama

Torture Is Ongoing Under Obama

A TeaParty (or a JebBush-MittRomney-PaulRyan, et al) happens when you "look forward, not back".

When you refuse to impeach BushCheney because "Republicans will say it's just because they impeached Clinton".

When you refuse to prosecute neocons who lied to Congress so that they could attack Iraq because [pick a reason]?

When you don't uphold the laws of the land, when you don't drive discredited offenders out of the halls of power, they return to the public stage, only to raise the ante on the destruction they're willing to do to their opponents.

You can't go forward unless and until you've looked back, assessed and corrected what went wrong.

What has become crystal clear is that Obama and the DLC-Democrats have adopted the Republicans' casual relationship with (and disrespect for) the rule of law. Preserving the rule of law underpins how the US has been the most successful, longest running democracy in world history.

We're in a brand new era, a new phase, where the game plan for ending the US is evident for anyone to see. And it begins and ends with the rule of law. By refusing to investigate and prosecute Bush, by "looking forward, not back", Obama has broken the covenant that the American people have with their government.

BushCo broke federal US laws; the rule of law applies to all Americans, elected officials, too. Elected officials especially.

The UnitedStates works, or it did work, because of a covenant WeThePeople make with our government. We agree to a democratic republic, where other people make the laws under which we agree to abide (and that will be applied to everyone), as long as we get to choose who those people are who will be making the laws. It is under those conditions that we consent to be governed.

When we no longer trust in the process, when we no longer trust that the selection process by which our elected representatives is fair and accurate, or that the laws don't apply equally to all, then all bets are off. And no government can stand once that happens.

For a president of the UnitedStates not to equally apply the law to all people, presidents, too, means that the grand experiment is over.

KEEP READING
Read the Article at HuffingtonPost

White House To Boehner: Obamacare Not Part Of Fiscal Cliff Deal

Talk of Democratic politicians having no spines are greatly exaggerated, just like Obama's timidity is myth: He's plenty tough when it comes to standing up to the Democratic base. And now, standing up to Boehner.

Obama should be adding to the list of wants - Like Medicare for all, single payer, healthcare for the millions that ACA doesn't cover. After all, we won.

But Democratic voters have mistakenly believed that Obama and Democrats want what they want. The DLC-controlled DemocraticParty gives lip service to all populist issues (like jobs, civil rights protections, restoring habeas corpus, ending the wars, public healthcare, WallStreet reform, environmental and energy issues, etc.).

If the Bush years taught us anything, it's that anyone can sell anything to Americans, if you're stolid and relentless in your sales pitch and tactics. It's not that Bush and Rove were geniuses and knew something that nobody else knew; Bush and Rove were just more ruthless in doing what politicians and the parties had gone to great lengths to hide from Americans -- If you keep at it, escalate your attacks, don't take 'no' for an answer, never back away, you'll wear the opposition down.

Obama didn't get to be the first black president, vanquish Clinton's machine (to get the nomination) and the oldest, most experienced politicians in US history (including the RoveMachine) by not having mastered these skills. Nor do Democratic politicians (more incumbents than ever, in office longer) not know how to do it. How do you think Democrats managed to keep impeaching BushCheney off the table, have us still reelecting them, not marching on Washington with torches and pitchforks?

Obama and Democrats know how to do it -- They don't want to do it.

The trick for them has been to keep the many different populist groups believing that they really do support our issues, but they're merely inept. And to get us to keep voting for them despite their failure to achieve our alleged shared objectives.

Getting Democratic voters (and Obama's 'most ardent supporters') to understand that Democratic politicians have been taking us all for suckers and patsies is the most immediate problem and the challenge.
Read the Article at HuffingtonPost

Reappraising Obama

‎"Was it all cynical electioneering when President-Elect Obama told the Boston Globe in 2007, with reference to specific executive powers the Bush administration had claimed or exercised, that he rejected 'the view that the President may do whatever he deems necessary to protect national security, and that he may torture people in defiance of congressional enactments;' that the 'detention of American citizens, without access to counsel, fair procedure, or pursuant to judicial authorization, as enemy combatants is unconstitutional,' that '[w]arrantless surveillance of American citizens, in defiance of FISA, is unlawful and unconstitutional'?

The president itemized the specific counts of an indictment, yet in his first four years he utterly failed to take any step whatsoever to hold the Bush administration accountable for any of its crimes, preferring instead to use the vast resources of his Justice Department to actual defend members of the Bush administration on the one hand and vigorously prosecute whistle-blowers on the other."

Will President Obama Restore the Rule of Law During His Second Term?
Read the Article at HuffingtonPost

Reappraising Obama

I have to say that the people I knew on the Left who dissapproved of Obama during the first term were all hard idealogues

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There's no "extreme" or "far left" in the DemocraticParty. They left long ago, and can be found bombing animal testing labs and burning down suburban subdivision sites being built on land where ancient forest have been clearcut. If they vote at all anymore, it's as Independents and rarely for Democrats.

Obama's not a centrist; "Privately, Obama describes himself as a BlueDogDemocrat."

BlueDogDemocrat = Might as well reregister as a Republican

Real Democratic policies aren't that hard to sell to Americans. When most Americans want Medicare and other government programs which they've benefitted from to continue and teabaggers shout "No government control of healthcare; Get your hands off my Medicare", the answer is EDUCATION.

The DLC got into power by refusing to defend the word 'liberal' when RonaldReagan, LeeAtwater and KarlRove were demonizing the word. Instead of educating the public about liberalism, and how liberals were responsible for creating the largest middle class in history, a strong regulatory system that provided clean water and nutritious affordable food for everyone, public education that led the world, etc., the DLC convinced Americans that liberals could never win another election. The DLC attributed to ideology what's more accurately explained by lousy campaigns outgunned by election dirty tricks and fraud.

When informed of the issues, most Americans agree with liberal policies. They wouldn't characterize themselves as far-anything or extreme, but mainstream. For example, nobody likes the idea of abortion, but most Americans do not want the government involved if they find themselves in the predicament of an unwanted pregnancy. And if you frame it as, "You like to kill babies?!?! ?!?!", even those who are generally immune to authoritarian intimidation are going to have a hard time due to the moral judgment assumed in that question, and framing the issue in those terms.

If the Bush years taught us anything, it's that anyone can sell anything to Americans, if you're stolid, relentless in your sales pitch and tactics. It's not that BushRove were geniuses and knew something that nobody else knew; BushRove were just more ruthless doing what politicians had gone to great lengths to hide from Americans -- If you keep at it, escalate your attacks, don't take 'no' for an answer, never back away, you'll wear the opposition down.

You're about to see that in the next couple of weeks, as Obama 'barnstorms' the country, selling what we didn't want, a 'Grand Bargain', cuts to social programs, entitlements. We paid for them, that's why we're "entitled" to them.
Read the Article at HuffingtonPost

Reappraising Obama

Obama ran on being the lesser of two evils and after watching the most ridiculous Republican candidate and his abzurd daily campaign blunders, voters believed it.
Read the Article at HuffingtonPost

Reappraising Obama

Obama's nothing but a politician, and I mean that in the worst sense of the word. In the 'used car salesman' sense. It turns out that doing what's right for transnational corporations is what Obama is about, and trying to sell it as good for Americans is what he does afterwards. He's the epitome of the 1950s Republican, "What's good for GM is good for America." He did a snow job on everybody.

Incidentally, Obama was an 'adjunct professor' - He taught night school. Just like Greta Van Susteren prior to her stint as a commentator on CNN during the OJ Simpson trial. Just like I was at one time. Just like anyone with a college degree can be. It's not nothing, but it's certainly not a big deal and by no means does it make him "a Constitutional scholar".

In the next couple of weeks you're about to see Obama's only real talent: Speechifyin'*.

* Speechifyin': Selling the American people on a position that they don't want (cuts to social programs), didn't vote to put him into power to get for them, but getting it none the less, while leaving them feeling they got a 'fair deal', "the best that anyone could have ever gotten them with these ***hole Republicans".
About Barack Obama
Read the Article at HuffingtonPost

Reappraising Obama

You're a litigator and you don't know lawyer-speak when you hear it?

If you go back and watch Candidate Obama's speeches, interviews and debates in 2008, and listen with what should be now 'experienced ears' (experienced in lawyer-speak, aka Bush-speak, although Bush needed a team of speechwriters to do what Obama's able to do on his own, i.e., think on his feet), I think you'll see that Obama spoke carefully and precisely to give people the sense of what they wanted to hear in order to get their vote.

One of my favorite examples of this was Obama saying in 2008, ""Part of the job of the next American president is making Americans believe that our government is working for them, because right now they don't feel like it's working for them. They feel like it's working for special interests and it's working for corporations"

Not making the government actually work for Americans, but making Americans believe that it is. That's some artful shuck and jive. Lawyer-speak.

In Audacity Of Hope, Obama said of his political appeal: “I serve as a blank screen on which people of vastly different political stripes project their own views.”

Obama got into office by misleading Democratic voters. He ran to the left of Hillary Clinton. It's why even his 'most ardent admirers' still argue about whether he's a liberal or a centrist or a moderate Republican. He convinced centrists that he was a centrist. He convinced liberals he was a liberal posing as a centrist. "Privately, Obama describes himself as a Blue Dog Democrat." Do you consider Blue Dogs to be centrists? I don't.

Back in early 2008, when Candidate Obama talked about admiring Reagan and what he wanted to emulate about him, "I think RonaldReagan changed the trajectory of America in a way that, you know, RichardNixon did not and in a way that BillClinton did not", do you seriously believe that he was saying that he wanted to go even farther right of the BushCheney administration he was coming in after? Yet that's exactly what he's done.
About Barack Obama
Read the Article at HuffingtonPost

Reappraising Obama

Obama took single payer off the table because a public option couldn't be part of any deal, and if single payer had remained on the table, a public option would have been the compromise position.

It really is that simple.

Obama was put into power to keep the status quo of corporations and banks continuing their stranglehold on the people. What ACA does is expand what existed, only with more (mandated) customers for junk insurance that doesn't stem medical bankruptcies, doesn't keep costs down, doesn't cover everyone.

It was a brilliant play by Obama, not doing what he and Democrats were put into power to achieve (affordable, quality medical treatment for everyone), while having people believe he and Democrats did achieve it.
About Barack Obama
Read the Article at HuffingtonPost

Eric Holder To Stay In Obama Administration Beyond First Term: Report

Monday, November 19, 2012

You don't know what you're talking about.

"There hasn't been any serious investigation of any of the large financial entities by the Justice Department, which includes the FBI," says William Black, an associate professor of economics and law at the University of Missouri, Kansas City, who, as a government regulator in the 1980s, helped clean up the S&L mess. Black, who is a Democrat, notes that the feds dealt with the S&L crisis with harsh justice, bringing more than a thousand prosecutions, and securing a 90 percent conviction rate. The difference between the government's response to the two crises, Black says, is a matter of will, and priorities.

http://www.thedailybeast.com/newsweek/2012/05/06/why-can-t-obama-bring-wall-street-to-justice.html

"Zero Accountability": Obama’s Refusal to Prosecute Wall Street Crimes - http://www.democracynow.org/2012/7/5/zero_accountability_glenn_greenwald_on_obamas

Journalists James Steele and Don Barlett, the twice Pulitzer Prize-winning team who wrote America: What Went Wrong?, and The Betrayal of the American Dream, talk about the media’s failure to hold Wall Street or politicians accountable for financial crimes and mismanagement - http://www.democracynow.org/blog/2012/8/1/part_2_barlett_and_steele_on_media_govt_failure_to_hold_wall_st_accountable_for_financial_crimes
Read the Article at HuffingtonPost

Eric Holder To Stay In Obama Administration Beyond First Term: Report

So much for a changed Obama, beholden to the Democratic Party's base.

I'd sure like to hear from those most ardent supporters of Obama's who, before the election, swore that he'd be delivering on those 2008 campaign promises if given a second term.
Read the Article at HuffingtonPost

Obama Myanmar Trip: Asia Visit Takes President Into Time Warp

I guess you've forgotten that it was Obama who cut the deal to extend Bush's tax cuts, as well as Obama who cut the deal with the insurance and pharmaceutical industries behind Congress's back for ACA.

Just last week: Obama Prepares To 'Barn-Storm' The Country, Slamming Republicans, If They Don't Cut A Fiscal Cliff Deal

Obama likes being out of the country when US-approved hostilities (Gaza) take place.

So are you a political operative paid to spread disinformation online, or just one of the fawning, star-struck ObamaZombies?
About Barack Obama
Read the Article at HuffingtonPost

Obama Myanmar Trip: Asia Visit Takes President Into Time Warp

Obama always leaves the country when there's a military operation taking place that might call for Obama to weigh in or our involvement needs to be downplayed.
About Barack Obama
Read the Article at HuffingtonPost

Israel Airstrike Hits Al Aqsa, Hamas TV Station, In High-Rise In Downtown Gaza City

Elites Will Make Gazans of Us All
By Chris Hedges
Read the Article at HuffingtonPost

Israel Airstrike Hits Al Aqsa, Hamas TV Station, In High-Rise In Downtown Gaza City

Chris Hedges:

"Gaza is a window on our coming dystopia. The growing divide between the world's elite and its miserable masses of humanity is maintained through spiraling violence. Many impoverished regions of the world, which have fallen off the economic cliff, are beginning to resemble Gaza, where 1.6 million Palestinians live in the planet's largest internment camp. These sacrifice zones, filled with seas of pitifully poor people trapped in squalid slums or mud-walled villages, are increasingly hemmed in by electronic fences, monitored by surveillance cameras and drones and surrounded by border guards or military units that shoot to kill. These nightmarish dystopias extend from sub-Saharan Africa to Pakistan to China. They are places where targeted assassinations are carried out, where brutal military assaults are pressed against peoples left defenseless, without an army, navy or air force. All attempts at resistance, however ineffective, are met with the indiscriminate slaughter that characterizes modern industrial warfare.

In the new global landscape, as in Israel's occupied territories and the United States' own imperial projects in Iraq, Pakistan, Somalia, Yemen and Afghanistan, massacres of thousands of defenseless innocents are labeled wars. Resistance is called a provocation, terrorism or a crime against humanity. The rule of law, as well as respect for the most basic civil liberties and the right of self-determination, is a public relations fiction used to placate the consciences of those who live in the zones of privilege. Prisoners are routinely tortured and "disappeared." The severance of food and medical supplies is an accepted tactic of control. Lies permeate the airwaves. Religious, racial and ethnic groups are demonized. Missiles rain down on concrete hovels, mechanized units fire on unarmed villagers, gunboats pound refugee camps with heavy shells, and the dead, including children, line the corridors of hospitals that lack electricity and medicine.

The impending collapse of the international economy, the assaults on the climate, the resulting droughts, flooding, precipitous decline in crop yields and rising food prices are creating a universe where power is divided between the narrow elites, who hold in their hands sophisticated instruments of death, and the enraged masses. The crises are fostering a class war that will dwarf anything imagined by Karl Marx. They are establishing a world where most will be hungry and live in fear, while a few will gorge themselves on delicacies in protected compounds. And more and more people will have to be sacrificed to keep this imbalance in place.

Because it has the power to do so, Israel—as does the United States—flouts international law to keep a subject population in misery. http://truth-out.org/opinion/item/12821-elites-will-make-gazans-of-us-all

Read the Article at HuffingtonPost

Dan Lungren, Drug Warrior, Loses Bid For Reelection

Dan Lundgren, a smart Sarah Palin with a fraction of Mitt Romney's capacity for compassion.
Read the Article at HuffingtonPost

Israel Airstrike Hits Al Aqsa, Hamas TV Station, In High-Rise In Downtown Gaza City

If you believe that you're safe, unaffected by what is going on in Gaza, because you're only reading or watching reports, think again: Exposure to the traumatic images and reports causes health- and life-threatening stress with serious and long-lasting consequences.

War changes you even when you're not directly in harm's way.

I am by no means suggesting that the media stop publishing these events. As citizens in democratic republics, we must be informed about what our governments are doing "in our names". But don't for a moment take comfort in being thousands of miles away, and therefore it's not happening to you.
Read the Article at HuffingtonPost

Nancy Pelosi: No Fiscal Cliff Deal Without Tax Hikes For Rich (VIDEO)

Sunday, November 18, 2012

US corporations are not over-taxed.

As measured in terms of share of GDP, the US has the lowest corporate tax burden of any OECD nation. While the official tax bracket may seems high -- 35 percent -- if you take into account various loopholes and tax dodges, the effective tax rate is considerably lower, around 27 percent, which comes in as slightly higher than average for OECD members. And according to ace tax report David Cay Johnston, the bigger you are, the less you pay -- the effective tax rate for the biggest US corporations is only about 15 percent.
Read the Article at HuffingtonPost

Nancy Pelosi: No Fiscal Cliff Deal Without Tax Hikes For Rich (VIDEO)

We spend as much as the top two dozen countries on the world's nations' top defense spending list, combined.

We could cut our defense budget in half and still spend almost 4 times what China spends as the world's second most expensive defense budget.

We could get rid of 75 percent of our aircraft, ships, missiles, and bombs, and still have the most advanced, largest mechanized military in the world.

Official spending figures are estimated to be less than half of actual defense spending (since several Pentagon departments have untraceable near-unlimited budgets), and there are lots of defense-related spending programs not included in those official figures as well (the official figure is around $800 billion, although best estimates calculate actual spending is over $1.5 trillion).

We have military bases all over the world, our CIA has been mischief-making and overthrowing democratically-elected governments around the world, we keep expanding hostilities and wars. We have enough arms to blow the world up hundreds of times over.

By "money makers", you mean those who actually perform the labor that makes a company profitable and not the shareholders who reap the fruits of working men and women's labor, don't you?
Read the Article at HuffingtonPost

Obama Asia Trip: Myanmar Visit To Encourage Democracy

What happened to Obama Prepares To 'Barn-Storm' The Country, Slamming Republicans, If They Don't Cut A Fiscal Cliff Deal

Obama likes being out of the country when US-approved hostilities (Gaza) take place.
Read the Article at HuffingtonPost

Fiscal Cliff: Democrats Stiffen Spine Against Trimming Benefits

Hundreds of thousands of workers took to the streets as part of a “European day of action and solidarity,” organized by the European TradeUnionCongress (ETUC). Unions in Spain and Portugal held ageneral strike. Eighty were arrested in Madrid as protests turned violent, and police used rubber bullets in Milan and Rome.

Spaniards angered by budget cuts and plans to partly privatize their national health service, have held a rally in Madrid.

The IMF, the EuropeanCentralBank and the EuropeanCommission is forcing Greece to sell off its national treasures and resources, antiquities.

France has announced a massive redistributive tax program which would send the top tax rate soaring and increase taxes broadly on the top 10% of society:

FrenchPrimeMinister Ayrault has said that nine out of 10 citizens will not see their income taxes rise in the new budget and has confirmed that there is to be a new 75% tax rate for people earning more than 1m euros (£800,000; $1.3m) a year.

The 75% rate would be on income earnings, but there will also be a wealth tax on holdings above 1.31 million euros, and a cap on tax deductions, as well as a reduction on the tax burden at low incomes.

There should be tax HIKES on corporations and the rich. There should be massive cuts to the military. Banks should be threatened with nationalization unless they begin lending to small businesses. There have been more than 3.5 million home foreclosures but there are 11 million more in the pipeline — There must be principal write-downs.

Democratic politicians should be beating this drum and pushing the People’sBudget instead of working off of a set of corporate lobbyists’ plans. It reduces the deficit by $5.1 trillion and it beats Obama’s AND Republicans’ plans.

As Krugman has said, the Progressives’ budget:

“balances the budget through higher taxes and defense cuts, plus some tougher bargaining by Medicare (and a public option to reduce the costs of the AffordableCareAct). The proposed tax hikes would fall on higher incomes, raising the cap on payroll taxes (takes care of SocialSecurity’s solvency forever)... and unlike the Ryan plan, it actually makes sense.”

Read the Article at HuffingtonPost

Nancy Pelosi: No Fiscal Cliff Deal Without Tax Hikes For Rich (VIDEO)

In so far as Richard Wolffe is concerned, he, like all Washington pundits/journalists/party hacks/talking heads, has had conflicts of interest that put them at odds with the sketchy editorial policies that mainstream media have concocted that allow them to flick over the public.

Where Wolffe is is of no matter (he was off of MSNBC for a short while, and has been back for a long time). I mentioned Wolffe because he had unique access to Obama and the administration's insiders that worked on ACA. He knows their thinking. If you believe differently, then where is that push for a public option that was promised for "after" it passed? Obama, incidentally, wasn't just "not for it"; he actively prevented it from happening.
Read the Article at HuffingtonPost

Nancy Pelosi: No Fiscal Cliff Deal Without Tax Hikes For Rich (VIDEO)

Had Romney won, had Republicans taken the Senate, had they overturned ACA they would have put through legislation almost identical to it and passed it saying that it wasn't the same as ACA. All so that they, Republicans, could "earn" the same kind of pay-offs in campaign contributions from the insurance and pharmaceutical industries that Obama and Hillary Clinton got in 2008, but that Romney and Republicans got in 2012.

Obama received almost 3 times the amount of contributions from the insurance industry as McCain (Hillary Clinton was the second biggest recipient of insurance industry contributions).

You wouldn't have known the difference, because the only way that you decide what to be for or against is by what your 'team''s captain tells you to be for or against.
Read the Article at HuffingtonPost

Nancy Pelosi: No Fiscal Cliff Deal Without Tax Hikes For Rich (VIDEO)

“Human beings are simple creatures. If Obamacare was a "giveaway" to the insurance industries... why weren't they happy about it? In fact, why are so many companies against it? Why are Republicans deathly opposed to it?

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As to why are Republicans "deathly opposed to it" (I'll assume you're referring to the little 'r's, Republican voters), it's because they, like you, determine what they're for or against by what their team's leaders tell them to be for or against. If Republicans had written and passed ACA, little 'r's would be for it.

Hey, wait just a minute! Republicans and the insurance industry did write ACA! It originated in the rightwing think tank, the Heritage Foundation. And Mitt Romney implemented it in Massachusetts when he was the governor.

The insurance and pharmaceutical industries aren't trying to kill ACA - They love it. They wrote it.
ACA was written by Liz Fowler, former executive at WellPoint (Max Baucus hired her as senior counsel to him as the chairman of the Senate Finance Committee - so much for Candidate Obama's pledge on restricting lobbyists from writing our laws).

The regulations were created by the insurance industry and the regulations and legislation are being implemented and overseen by the insurance industry. Obama put the foxes in charge of this chicken coop (former WellPoint executives Liz Fowler and Steve Larsen) to write both the legislation and the regulations, and enforce the regulations. Fowler's most notable actions to date has been issuing waivers to businesses that don't want to have to provide insurance to their employees.

As far as why businesses don't support it, that's kind of a no brainer, don't you think? They want to be in their own business, and not have the expense and headache of providing insurance to employees. Of having the ability to get medical treatment tied to your job. Businesses were our strongest allies in getting Medicare For All, single payer, through and into law. Funny how Obama, right out of the gate in 2009, took single payer off the table, before negotiations ever began, isn't it?
Read the Article at HuffingtonPost

Nancy Pelosi: No Fiscal Cliff Deal Without Tax Hikes For Rich (VIDEO)

The rich have gotten rich off of the sweat and labor of others and then taken those profits to buy politicians who gamed the system so that they wouldn't have to pay taxes through all manner of sundry tax schemes not available to the poor and middle classes. The rich also 'closed the door' on the ways that initially enabled them to amass their 'seed money' for creating their businesses.

That's the true nature of capitalism: It seeks to eliminate all competition (that's why it need to be regulated). Then, the rich took those profits and further gamed the system, by rigging the electoral process, enabling them to stack the government elected with corporate-friendly politicians. Business interests over the People's interests.

Over the course of US history, corporations have managed to game our political system, and done it so effectively that the two-party system competes to serve corporate interests while defending that service as, "What's good for GM (corporations) is good for America (We the People)".

Democrats (controlled by the DLC, and that's important to remember) and Republicans are corporate tools. Like siblings competing for the attention and approval (campaign contributions) of a parent, Republicans and DLC-controlled Democrats try to outdo each other in delivering for their real constituent, transnational corporations. The trick for them has been to make it seem as if they were really working on behalf of WeThePeople.

Democratic voters have mistakenly believed that Obama and Democrats were for the poor and middle classes, workers and unions, strong regulations on banks, Wall Street, investigations, prosecutions, restitution of what has been robbed from the middle class and poor for the past 30+ years, environmental clean-up, clean, sustainable renewable energy (and that isn't nuclear), putting an end to the wars and occupationsn, affordable, quality universal healthcare (which Obama's healthcare legislation is not), and more.

The DLC-controlled Democratic Party gives lip service to these and all populist issues, because like the Republican Party, the DLC works for the benefit of transnational corporations.

I am an old, OLD liberal Democrat. A New Deal Democrat. I've never voted for a Republican in my many years of voting nor will I. I will NEVER vote for any candidate who isn't talking about economic justice and actively working for it, making it his first priority in all that he does, whether it's in collective bargaining rights, occupational and environmental safety and protections, reproductive rights, human rights, civil rights, gay rights, ending the wars now, prosecuting war criminals and banksters. As it stands now, I can't see voting for any Democrat again.
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Nancy Pelosi: No Fiscal Cliff Deal Without Tax Hikes For Rich (VIDEO)

Do you see the blue high-lighted text? Those are hyperlinks. They back up what I'm saying.

If you have any reference sources to back up what you're saying, post them.

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Nancy Pelosi: No Fiscal Cliff Deal Without Tax Hikes For Rich (VIDEO)

And before I dispense with you entirely, let's talk about the oft-claimed "all or nothing" charge made by the Democrats-In-Name-Only 'centrists':

DINOs are mighty cavalier about giving away the programs hard fought for by liberals, programs that created the greatest middle class in the history of human civilization. The "foot in the door" that you speak of is the establishment of Republican (pro-corporate) policies that drain resources and rights from the People and vest them with the rich/the 1%/the Corporate Motherboard. The "foot in the door", that concretizes the insurance industry as the gatekeeper to medical treatment, an industry that adds nothing to the medical model, exists only to profit from denying people medical treatment.

Experience tells me that people who view themselves as moderates do so because they have no skin in the game. When we get to their issues, they quickly drop the "can't we all get along" bipartisan attitudes, and want what those who they had insulted for being "extreme" wanted.
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Nancy Pelosi: No Fiscal Cliff Deal Without Tax Hikes For Rich (VIDEO)

I don't think you know what you are talking about

Paul Krugman is not quoted by anyone but a very left wing of the dems

==================================

Not true, but we've established that what you believe to be accurate is based on what you hear quoted from other people whom you listen to. You have no ability to assess information on your own, and that's how we've gotten into this mess. There are far too many people like you, voting, out of ignorance, as if it was American Idol.
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Nancy Pelosi: No Fiscal Cliff Deal Without Tax Hikes For Rich (VIDEO)

The real problem we're facing is a president and a Democratic Party that, for whatever reason (naivete or a convenient cover for their own corruption), stubbornly clings to the 'bipartisanship model' ("Can't we all get along?") style of legislating and governing that hasn't worked for decades, if ever. I don't know how many ways Republicans can say "Go frick yourselves" before Obama and Democrats play to win -- Probably as long as there are people who give Obama and Democrats a pass.

We've been doing it your way, putting the lesser of two eviIs into office, for 20 years now, and the government and the DemocraticParty keeps moving farther to the right. That's because your way is to lie to the American people and put Republicans-in-Democrats'-clothing into office.

At the rate this is going, Republicans won't have to bother getting Roe overturned (why bother outlawing abortion when you've made it virtually impossible to obtain one?).

Regulating banks and Wall Street won't be necessary because the top 1 percent will have ALL of the money.

The disabled and elderly will be dead, so privatizing Social Security won't be much of an issue.

Schools will be all privatized under Democrats and only those employed and making a great salary will be able to send their children to good charter schools. PBS has had its funding slashed under Democrats so children will have no commercial-free children's programming and will be rank-and-file corporate slaves.

And the wars, expanded under Obama and Democrats (beyond what BushCheney did) will still be going on when your children have children.

If you are on the left, if you and I are on the same side and want real Democratic policies, and going about getting them your way (protecting Obama, reelecting DLC/Third Way/No Labels Democrats) is getting Republican policies, NOT Democratic policies, when do you realize that maybe you don't know what you're talking about?

When do you realize that you've become that classic definition for 'insan!ty' ("Doing the same thing over and over again, expecting different results")?

Do you ever realize it?
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Nancy Pelosi: No Fiscal Cliff Deal Without Tax Hikes For Rich (VIDEO)

Obama and Democrats today (and Democrats for the past couple of decades, or since the DLC took over control of the DemocraticParty) are promoting Republican policies. You forget that Democratic politicians voted along with Republicans to support GeorgeWBush's policies. Democrats all but disappeared during the Bush administration (BarbaraBoxer wrote mystery novels while collecting a salary from the Senate; PatrickLeahy got to act in a movie about his favorite comic book hero, Batman, while collecting his salary from the Senate).

Democrats should have been working to obstruct Bush and block Republicans every way they could, but they actually argued on behalf of Bush. How many times did we hear Democrats defend Bush's nominations on everything from cabinet posts to judges, citing "executive branch rights", "A president deserves to have whomever he wants on his cabinet" or "on the SupremeCourt"? Out of Democrats' mouths!

Alito, Roberts, and Thomas made it through a Democratically-controlled Judiciary Committee and Senate. And Democrats voted to confirm Thomas (52-48), Alito (58-42) and Roberts (78-22) and Scalia (98-0). There is nothing that Bush-Cheney, and Reagan-Bush for that matter, did that Democrats couldn't have blocked. Democrats signed on to all of it.

Democrats did it and had as their talking points to quiet dissent among the base of the DemocraticParty, "The pendulum will swing back and Democrats will be in power and get these rights, and make it all right again".

But when Democrats got back into power, they didn't do that. They aren't doing that. Democrats in Congress have refused to perform their Constitutionally required responsibility of overseeing the executive branch, both during Bush (after 2006) and now under Obama. Between HenryWaxman, JoeLieberman, PatrickLeahy, JayRockefeller, Democrats have been co-conspirators with Republicans.

And why wouldn't Democrats change, do anything differently when there are apologists, people like Obama's 'most ardent supporters', who keep his and their numbers high, who keep reelecting them no matter what their treachery. "Because the Republicans are worse" -- That's some mantra. It's no different than Bushies voting for Republicans because BinLaden's picture gets flashed at them all over the media the weekend before elections.
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Nancy Pelosi: No Fiscal Cliff Deal Without Tax Hikes For Rich (VIDEO)

As an old old liberal Democrat, an FDR Democrat, my positions on issues are in line with the platform of the Democratic Party; it's the politicians in the Democratic Party who are ignoring the platform of the party.

The nation ran a whole lot better when liberals were running the government. Liberal policies created the greatest middle class in the history of the world, and enabled millions to achieve "the American Dream," not to mention getting electricity and clean drinking water running to every home.
Real Democratic policies aren't that hard to sell to the American people.

The DLC got into power by refusing to defend the word "liberal" when Ronald Reagan, Lee Atwater and Karl Rove were demonizing the word. Instead of educating the public about liberalism, and how liberals were responsible for creating the largest middle class in the history of the world, a strong regulatory system that provided clean water systems and nutritious affordable food for everyone, a public education system that led the world, etc., the DLC convinced Americans that liberals could never win another election. The DLC attributed to ideology what is more accurately explained by lousy campaigns outgunned by election dirty tricks and fraud.

When informed of the issues, most Americans agree with liberal policies. Neither they, nor I, would characterize themselves as far-anything or extreme, but mainstream. For example, nobody likes the idea of abortion, but most Americans do not want the government involved if they find themselves in the predicament of an unwanted pregnancy. And if you frame it as, "You like to kill babies?!?!?!?!", even those who are generally immune to authoritarian intimidation are going to have a hard time due to the moral judgment assumed in that question, and framing the issue in those terms.

If the Bush years taught us anything, it's that anyone can sell anything to Americans, if you're stolid and relentless in your sales pitch and tactics. It's not that Bush and Rove were geniuses and knew something that nobody else knew; Bush and Rove were just more ruthless in doing what politicians and the parties had gone to great lengths to hide from Americans -- If you keep at it, escalate your attacks, don't take "no" for an answer and never back away, you will wear the opposition down.

Read the Article at HuffingtonPost

Nancy Pelosi: No Fiscal Cliff Deal Without Tax Hikes For Rich (VIDEO)

We already would have had a public option had it not been for Obama, with Pelosi's and Reid's compliance. We actually would have already had real healthcare reform legislation (single payer universal healthcare), but Obama had to get it off the table before negotiations ever began. Because if affordable, quality medical care for everyone is the goal, everything else pales next to single payer. And that's why Obama had to get it off the table.

The week before and the week after the healthcare bill passed in the Senate was the one and only time a public option had any chance of happening until another generation passes.

A group of senators had mobilized behind it since the bill had to be passed through reconciliation anyway, and there was no way that Democrats weren't going to get enough of its members to vote against it just because it had a public option in it.

Obama nixxed it.

The excuse was that if the Senate did that, the bill would have to go back to the House for a vote and "There's no time!"

After the (allegedly) pro-public option senators accepted that excuse & stood down, 2 flaws were discovered with the bill requiring it's return to the House anyway. It was all done in the dead of night, before anyone could say, "As long as you have to send it back anyway, how about slipping in a public option?"

Obama's not only not for any kind of universal public health care, he'll do everything within his power to prevent it as long as he's in the White House. Because that was the deal that he made. Those who believe that Obama's healthcare legislation is "incremental change", it institutionalizes the insurance industry as the gatekeepers to medical treatment (requiring having a job, too), which is something that everybody wanted to end. And there never will be a public option or any kind of affordable, quality medical care for all as long as Obama and DLC-controlled Democrats are in office: "There Won't Be Any Public Option--Obama Never Was For It". Watch it and weep.
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Nancy Pelosi: No Fiscal Cliff Deal Without Tax Hikes For Rich (VIDEO)

There's rarely a majority in Congress to pass anything at all until a campaign has been mounted to sell it.

And when a president and his political party are swept into power to deliver affordable, quality medical treatment for all as Obama and Democrats were in 2008, and the one method that can accomplish it (and also happens to solve other unique problems facing us at the time, i.e., a crashing economy, joblessness, etc.) that president not only doesn't use his bully pulpit to sell, but unilaterally takes off the table, removes from even discussing it, then the fix is in and that president is corrupt to the core.

Obama took single payer (MedicareForAll) off the table, because if the goal is to get affordable quality medical care for all then everything else pales in comparison.

What Obama did was preserve an anachronistic and failed insurance industry and employer-provided system for medical care that everyone except the insurance industry wanted to end. It's government sanctioned racketeering.

What you believe about Obama wanting single payer, much less a public option, is without any foundation. As a matter of fact, all of the evidence points to a scheme to eliminate public healthcare of all kinds.

In February 2010, when proponents of a public option were finally making some headway between the time that the House passed its version of healthcare reform and the time that the Senate passed its version (and it's important to remember that Obama never pressured BlueDogs or Joe Lieberman, never used the power of the White House and never took to the bully pulpit to advocate for a public option), Obama held a 'make it or break it bipartisan summit' at the WhiteHouse which was gamed to prevent public option proponents from getting real reform, (affordable quality medical care for everyone). PO proponents were shut out of the negotiations. Why wasn't Anthony Weiner or any proponents of public healthcare, of a public option, of single payer, at that summit?

The summit was gamed to let insurance companies retain their lock on the path to getting healthcare.
Whether it's Republicans saying no or Democrats saying yes, to attend this summit you must have accepted that the insurance industry's ability to make profits off of you be preserved and protected, despite it bankrupting the American people individually and the nation at large.

Insurance adds NOTHING to the medical model. The insurance industry is the 'Don Fanucci' (Godfather, Part II) of medical care; the insurance industry is "wetting its beak", letting you get medical care (maybe, if you can afford the deductibles, the co-pays, and if your illness is covered by your policy, but) only if you pay them a gratuity up front.
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Nancy Pelosi: No Fiscal Cliff Deal Without Tax Hikes For Rich (VIDEO)

You don't know what you're talking about.

The Progressive Caucus's budget and plan to balance the budget (reduces the deficit by $5.1 trillion)? It beats Obama's, Reid's AND Republicans' plans.

As Paul Krugman has said, the Progressives' budget "balances the budget through higher taxes and defense cuts, plus some tougher bargaining by Medicare (and a Public Option to reduce the costs of the Affordable Care Act). The proposed tax hikes would fall on higher incomes, raising the cap on payroll taxes (takes care of SocialSecurity's solvency forever)... and unlike the Ryan plan, it actually makes sense."
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Nancy Pelosi: No Fiscal Cliff Deal Without Tax Hikes For Rich (VIDEO)

Nancy Pelosi Says She'd Back Simpson-Bowles Plan

At the Democratic National Convention, Bill Clinton and Obama embraced Simpson-Bowles.

During the debates, both Obama and Romney agreed that they liked Simpson-Bowles.

Senate Majority Whip Dick Durbin told Andrea Mitchell that Obama’s going to use Simpson-Bowles as the template for budget talks.
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Obama: U.S. 'Fully Supportive Of Israel's Right To Defend Itself'

"Defending" ≠ Killing non-combatants
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Nancy Pelosi: No Fiscal Cliff Deal Without Tax Hikes For Rich (VIDEO)

Obama never pressured BenNelson (or BlancheLincoln, or any BlueDog). The Democratic leadership could've taken away committee chairs (BlancheLincoln's, too) of members in their caucus that filibustered a PublicOption for healthcare. They didn't.

The DNC could've taken away reelection funds. They didn't.

Reid could've actually forced Republicans and turncoat Democratic senators to filibuster. He didn't (and doesn't).

The ProgressiveCaucus could have kept their pledge about not voting for a bill that didn't include a robust PublicOption. They didn't.

Obama DID unleash the attack dogs to go after HowardDean when Dean said ACA was a lousy bill. Dean was then forced to get back into line. Obama went after Kucinich, the last remaining holdout on the ProgressiveCaucus, for threatening to vote no on the healthcare bill, and we all know how that ended.

Congress is as Democratic as it's going to be for the next generation. Everybody complains about Congress, but it's the other guys' elected representatives that they're complaining about, not their own.

In 2010, when Obama and Democrats had refused to use the political capital given by them when 10 million more voters voted for them, voters used their votes to dump incumbents -- On both sides of the aisle. Democratic voters dumped BlueDog incumbents big time; liberals only lost 3 seats.

The real problem is that Big Money/Big Business controls the political process, which includes high-priced propaganda campaigns that spin policy and candidates as things they're not. Corporations have been able to control politicians, candidates, the primary process, so that populist candidates can't get a seat at the table.

Neither party has campaign finance reform, eliminating money from our elections, on its agenda. They like it, and lobbyists, just fine; it's how they get rich, their career path, switchbacking between government and lobbying, their entire lifetimes.
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Nancy Pelosi: No Fiscal Cliff Deal Without Tax Hikes For Rich (VIDEO)

I am an old, OLD liberal Democrat, and there could be 100 "progressives" in the Senate and 435 in the House, and they and Obama would still find a way to deliver to corporations instead of the People blame it on Republicans. Because they're DLC/Third Way/No Labels (those who control the Democratic Party), aka Republicans-in-Democrats'-clothing.

Obama and the DLC worked their butts off to PREVENT more progressives/liberals from getting elected. Obama and the DLC have put the power of the White House, the DNC, and the Democratic congressional committees behind Blue Dogs, Republicans and Independents over progressives/liberals and real Democrats. Some, but not all, examples:

Blue Dog Blanche Lincoln over progressive Democrat Lt. Governor Bill Halter.

Republican-turned-Independent Arlen Specter over progressive Democrat Joe Sestak.

Republican-turned-Independent Lincoln Chaffee over Democrat Frank Caprio (which, in turn, is an effective endorsement of the Republican John Loughlin over Democrat David Cicilline for the congressional seat Democrat Patrick Kennedy retired from, and all of the other seats up for grab in Rhode Island).

Republican-turned-Independent Charlie Crist over liberal Democrat Kendrick Meek.

Republicans, with the smallest minority, have managed to thwart Democrats, who've had the greatest majority in decades. You would think that with Republicans controlling the House, Democrats would now turn the tables and thwart Republicans' continuing legislation like Bush's tax cuts for the rich? Are Democrats just stupld?

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Nancy Pelosi: No Fiscal Cliff Deal Without Tax Hikes For Rich

As a very old political activist, I don't know where the idea that winning an election in itself isn't a mandate, but it's nonsense: A win is a win, a transfer of power, and it's a mandate for whatever the term of office is.

That said, Obama didn't run on anything except being "the lesser of the two evils." He can and will do whatever the Corporate Masters want him to do. He'll be aided by politicians on both sides of the aisle, and none of it is good for ordinary Americans. There will be more privatization, less enforcement of regulations (with Republicans you get fewer regulations; with Democrats you get less enforcement of regulations -- The net result is the same). Unless.

Unless the People are willing to take to the streets.

About Bush Tax Cuts

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Nancy Pelosi: No Fiscal Cliff Deal Without Tax Hikes For Rich

It's not her wealth that raises skepticism about her; it's her actions that don't match her populist rhetoric.

About Bush Tax Cuts

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Nancy Pelosi: No Fiscal Cliff Deal Without Tax Hikes For Rich

The president announced, from the get-go, before any pressure by Republicans, that he doesn't really mean it when he says he won't budge, so my strongest hope is for Pelosi. She is more likely to get Democrats to stand strong against any deal to allow the rich to keep their Bush tax cuts.

Pelosi has much more backbone than Obama. What is wrong with him that after 4 years of being used as a door mat by the minority party, he still expresses his willingness to yield before negotiations even begin, before the Republicans even make their demands? That is gross incompetence as a negotiator.

=====================================

Nancy Pelosi has been no friend to Democratic voters. See here. And here.

Obama has been able to cut deals with Boehner that have been bad for the 99% because Pelosi has delivered the votes he needed, over the objections of her own caucus. The war supplemental that included the $108 billion in IMF funding, the healthcare bill with the anti-choice language and no public option, the deal to extend the Bush tax cuts and the Libya war defunding vote are just a few prominent examples.

The latest union- and job-killing free trade bills, S.Korea AFTA and CAFTA - Pelosi voted yea.

And H.R.347: Goodbye, First Amendment: ‘Trespass Bill’ will make protest illegal, outlaws protests in instances where some government officials are nearby, whether or not you even know it, anywhere in the country.- Pelosi voted yea.

And look who voted for NDAA - Pelosi!

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Nancy Pelosi: No Fiscal Cliff Deal Without Tax Hikes For Rich

Lie number 3) U.S. corporations are over-taxed.

Example: Republican presidential candidate Tim Pawlenty

We have the highest corporate tax rate, or one of them, in the OECD nations.

Actually, as measured in terms of share of GDP, the U.S. has the lowest corporate tax burden of any OECD nation. While the official tax bracket may seems high -- 35 percent -- if one takes into account various loopholes and tax dodges, the effective tax rate is considerably lower, or around 27 percent, which comes in as slightly higher than average for OECD members. And according to ace tax report David Cay Johnston, the bigger you are, the less you pay -- the effective tax rate for the biggest U.S. corporations is only about 15 percent.

There you have it, for future handy reference. Poor people do pay taxes, the biggest corporations don't pay enough, and the United States, as a whole, has a low tax burden overall.
About Bush Tax Cuts
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Nancy Pelosi: No Fiscal Cliff Deal Without Tax Hikes For Rich

Lie number 2) The U.S. suffers from high taxes.

Example: The Wall Street Journal's Stephen Moore:

What all this means is that in the late 1980s, the U.S. was nearly the lowest taxed nation in the world, and a quarter century later we're nearly the highest.

Totally untrue. As measured in terms of total tax revenue as a share of overall GDP the average tax burden for countries that are members of the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development in 2008 was 44.8 percent. The U.S. -- 26.1 percent. The U.S. pays less taxes, as a share of GDP, than Denmark, Sweden, Italy, Austria, France, Netherlands, Germany, United Kingdom, Canada, Spain, Switzerland and Japan.

Furthermore, as Bruce Bartlett explains in detail in The New York Times the current U.S. federal tax burden, measured, again, as a share of GDP, is only 14.8 percent -- a 60-year low.

KEEP READING
About Bush Tax Cuts
Read the Article at HuffingtonPost

Nancy Pelosi: No Fiscal Cliff Deal Without Tax Hikes For Rich

The Top 3 Lies About Taxes:

Lie Number 1.) Poor people don't pay taxes.

Example: From The Center on Budget and Policy Priorities:

At a hearing last month, Senator Charles Grassley said, "According to the Joint Committee on Taxation, 49 percent of households are paying 100 percent of taxes coming in to the federal government." At the same hearing, Cato Institute Senior Fellow Alan Reynolds asserted, "Poor people don't pay taxes in this country." Last April, referring to a Tax Policy Center estimate of households with no federal income tax liability in 2009, Fox Business host Stuart Varney said on Fox and Friends, "Yes, 47 percent of households pay not a single dime in taxes."

The Center on Budget and Policy Priorities' Chuck Marr and Brian Highsmith provide the definitive takedown of this myth.

In 2009, Congress' Joint Committee on Taxation found that 51 percent of households owed no federal income tax. According to Marr and Highsmith, that figure was inflated by special recession-related factors -- In a more typical year, "35 to 40 percent of households pay no federal income tax."

But that doesn't mean that these households pay no federal taxes at all. Far from it: Nearly all working Americans pay payroll taxes to fund Medicare and Social Security. In 2007, the poorest Americans -- taxpayers in the bottom fifth of income -- paid 8.8 percent of their income as payroll taxes. The next fifth paid almost ten percent. The top 20 percent of earners paid only 5.7 percent.

And of course, these numbers don't include state and local taxes or excise fees like gas taxes, which tend to have a regressive impact that hits poorer Americans harder. Bottom line: only 14 percent of Americans don't pay either federal income taxes or payroll taxes -- and that group is made up primarily of "low-income people who are elderly, unable to work due to a serious disability, or students."

The rich have gotten rich off of the sweat and labor of others and then have taken those profits to buy politicians who've gamed the system so that they wouldn't have to pay taxes through all manner of tax schemes not available to the poor and middle classes. The rich also "closed the door" on the ways that initially enabled them to amass their "seed money" for creating their businesses.

KEEP READING

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Nancy Pelosi: No Fiscal Cliff Deal Without Tax Hikes For Rich

There should be tax HIKES on corporations and the rich. There should be massive cuts to the military. Banks should be threatened with nationalization unless they begin lending to small businesses. There have been more than 3.5 million home foreclosures but there are 11 million more in the pipeline — There must be principal write-downs.

About Bush Tax Cuts

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