Supreme Court Health Care Law: Justices Come Down Hard On The Mandate

Agreed on Obama... but not real comfortable with your blurring of terms the term 'liberal,' 'progressive,' 'socialist,' and 'left wing.'

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

I don't think that I did that; I certainly didn't intend to.  

What I said: 

"The nearest I come to understanding why anyone believes Obama is a progressive is because Republican political operatives, propagandists, insist on cable programs and on political websites that he is. And they do it because their supporters have been trained to react like hungry dogs when raw meat is dangled in front of them to the words 'liberal', 'progressive' and 'socialism'."

I think Republicans try to make those words synonymous, with each other and with 'evil', in their followers' minds.

I also don't think there's anything trivial in what you're saying, or that what you're talking about is "trivial semantics".  On the contrary, I couldn't agree with you more.  And I think you did a bang-up job defining the terms.  Politicians take advantage and liberties with the language on purpose, and intentionally try to deceive the people into believing they mean one thing (what the people want to hear) when politicians actually mean something else entirely.
Read the Article at HuffingtonPost

Read more...

Supreme Court Health Care Law: Justices Come Down Hard On The Mandate

Seems I didn't.  I posted this about 15 minutes before your comment.  

Your snarky insult and ignorance as to what Lily Ledbetter actually is about tells me that you're more interested in defending your support of Obama and Democrats than in women's rights being "stomped".  

Because when faced with the facts, evidence that Obama and Democrats have been complicit in the downward spiral of the nation and the plight of the poor and middle class and women, you and Obama's 'most ardent supporters' dig your heels in and attack real democrats like me who are working out butts off to achieve what it is you claim to be fore.  You can't bring yourselves to admit you've been had by DLC-controlled Democratic politicians.  Until you can, until you and Obama's 'most ardent fans' hold him and Democrats accountable, there really is no hope for the country, of turning America's decline around.
Read the Article at HuffingtonPost

Read more...

Supreme Court Health Care Law: Justices Come Down Hard On The Mandate

Nothing really has been done to address the pay gap that exists between male and female employees. Since the Equal Pay Act of 1963 was signed into law, the pay gap has closed at less than half-a-cent per year. That trend is continuing, as the pay gap barely closed from 2009 to 2010:

Women made 77 percent of men’s earnings in 2009, the year the law passed. In 2010, that was virtually unchanged, as women’s wages rose to 77.4 percent of men’s. The gap is even larger for African Americans and Latinos: black women made 67.5 percent of all men’s earnings in 2009, while Latino women made 57.7 percent. In 2010, those figures ticked up to 67.7 percent and 58.7 percent, respectively.

Women make up half of the American workforce, and in two-thirds of American families, the mother is the primary breadwinner or a co-breadwinner. But they make less than their male counterparts in all 50 states, though the size of each state’s wage gap varies. While the gap continues to close in places like Washington, D.C., where women make 91.8 percent of men’s earnings, it is growing in others, like Wyoming, where women’s earnings dropped from 65.5 percent of men’s in 2009 to just 63.8 percent in 2010.

Because of the gender pay gap, women with the same education doing the same job as men earn far less over their working lifetimes. The wage gap costs $723,000 over a 40-year career for women with college degrees. In some industries, the gap can cost women close to a million dollars.

In November 2010, Senate Republicans killed efforts to close the pay gap when they unanimously voted to block the Paycheck Fairness Act, which would have updated the Equal Pay Act, closed many of its loopholes, and strengthened incentives to prevent pay discrimination.

Now that's an election issue that Democrats could run on if they were such fighters for women's rights, don't you think?
Read the Article at HuffingtonPost

Read more...

Supreme Court Health Care Law: Justices Come Down Hard On The Mandate

There was another bill out there that would not only have made the technical fix of Ledbetter, but updated the Equal Pay Act of 1963, closed loopholes and made a much bigger difference in closing the pay gap. There was no reason why the Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Act could not have been combined with the Paycheck Fairness Act back at the beginning of the first term, in 2009. But while the bill passed the House quickly, Democrats in the Senate didn’t get around to taking up the Paycheck Fairness Act until the lame duck session of 2010, and it predictably failed 58-41, with all Republicans opposing. There’s obviously no guarantee that the Paycheck Fairness Act could have passed earlier in the term. But it’s plausible to argue that leveraging Lilly Ledbetter, which was a campaign issue, into a real advance on equal pay could have paid off. As it is, the Senate quickly got filibustered with little fanfare in the lame duck.

The point is there were other options. But the legislation that could have made a difference was left behind. And it severely damages the credibility of the Administration and its allies to keep waving the bloody shirt of Lilly Ledbetter when it actually did pretty much nothing for the larger cause of equal pay and equal work.

KEEP READING
Read the Article at HuffingtonPost

Read more...

Supreme Court Health Care Law: Justices Come Down Hard On The Mandate

Let's look at the Lily Ledbetter Act.

Lily Ledbetter has been at the top of Obama's 'most ardent supporters' lists of his "accomplishments" and has gone unchallenged  because to explain the ridiculousness of it as an "Obama accomplishment" can't be done in a 10-word sound byte.  

To begin with, claiming Lily Ledbetter as Obama's achievement is like the driver of the winning car in this year's Le Mans race (Mike Rockenfeller) picking up a hitch-hiking Obama right before he crossed the finish line and saying Obama won the Le Mans.  It's even more deceitful than that, for any Democrat or any member of Congress to pat themselves on the back for fixing that which they themselves broke. But even that doesn't quite explain it.

Obama and Democrats got into power on a pledge to change the way Washington works. Little is ever said or explained about what that really means. I'm going to attempt it:

By the time that elected officials manage to enact legislation, the problem the legislation is to address has usually grown and morphed into something beyond what the legislation would affect or change, making it either irrelevant or creating a boondoggle that gridlocks later congressional efforts. Or, something else.

With Lily Ledbetter, it took 45 years to have the legislature address a problem (statute of limitations for filing equal pay discrimination lawsuits in the Civil Rights Act of 1964) in what never should've been agreed to by Democrats in the first place in 1964. Lily Ledbetter really had nothing to do with "landmark sex discrimination". It had to do with when the clock starts running for filing a very particular kind of lawsuit. It doesn't affect statutes of limitation for any other kind of lawsuit. It doesn't apply to the filing of all lawsuits. It's just for a particular class of lawsuits - For the filing of an equal-pay lawsuit.

And it wasn't 45 years of Congresses trying to fix it. It was a year and a half. It was in response to the Supreme Court's decision in 2007 in one woman's lawsuit. It's not going to affect millions, or thousands or even hundreds of others - Ironically, if it were to affect more women, it never would have passed, no matter what party held the Congress (because it would have meant more money paid out from corporations to women, and Democrats work for corporations just as Republicans do).

If you want to tout passage of Lily Ledbetter then you're going to have to take the blame for not following it up immediately with legislation for transparency in pay.  Being able to find out what everyone else is getting paid.  It's a joke without it.  It's like taking you to a Michelin star restaurant, blowing the aromas from the kitchen in your face, but not letting you eat anything at all.

KEEP READING
Read the Article at HuffingtonPost

Read more...

Supreme Court Health Care Law: Justices Come Down Hard On The Mandate

Then there's Lynn Woolsey, head of the Progressive Caucus, likes to brag that she was the first to bring a resolution to end the war in Iraq.  She, and congressional Democrats, and Obama, ran on ending the practice of paying for the wars through supplemental emergency spending bills, and putting the wars on budget (see why that is significant here).

Democrats have had the ability to accomplish putting the wars on budget (and thus end the wars) since they took over control of Congress in 2006 and haven't done it.  They haven't needed Republicans to do this for years and haven't done it. 

As the head of the Progressive Caucus, Lynn Woolsey led 79 of the 82 members of the caucus to pledge that they would not vote for any healthcare reform legislation that didn't include a public option.  
Woolsey then led the 79 to renege on the pledge.  And even when Obama didn't need the last holdout's vote (Dennis Kucinich's) to pass his health insurance windfall legislation, Obama did need to break Kucinich in a big public show in order to put down the public option/single payer movement.  Even then, it didn't save Kucinich from being redistricted out of office (he's rumored now to be considering a move to Washington state in order to remain in Congress).  

And unbeknownst to Lynn Woolsey's constitutents (it was never reported in her district's newspapers): Progressive Congresswoman Woolsey Endorses Pro-War Blue Dog Jane Harman Over Progressive Marcy Winograd

Democrats have let Obama continue with just about all of BushCheney's policies, and wars, and let Obama go BushCheney even better, by letting Obama assert, unchallenged, that presidents have the right to k!ll Americans with no due process or oversight, push for 'preventive detention' and no transparency of anything a president asserts should be his secret.   

Democrats have abdicated their Constitutionally-required role of oversight of the executive branch; they failed to perform it during the BushCheney administration, and still don't with one of their own in the WhiteHouse.

Shall I go on?

KEEP READING
Read the Article at HuffingtonPost

Read more...

Supreme Court Health Care Law: Justices Come Down Hard On The Mandate

On a women's rights, even the most pro-choice of Democrats in Congress, alleged stalwarts who've spent entire careers, decades in public office, have failed miserably to protect women's rights and have let it get to this point.  One example would be Barbara Boxer.  

In 2006, Democratic senators and the Democratic machine publicly supported Democratic candidate NedLamont who was running for senator in Connecticut against newly independent JoeLieberman.  Privately, working behind-the-scenes, Democratic senators and former president BillClinton were working to help Lieberman raise money to beat Lamont, and Republican AlanSchlesinger. Before Lamont won the primary, when Lieberman was still a Democrat, Boxer stumped for Lieberman.  She was asked how she could support him given that Lieberman supports hospitals receiving public monies refusing to give contraceptives to r@pe victims, and instead of dodging Lieberman, dropping him like the bad character he is, she dodged the issue.  

During the Bush-Cheney administration, she wrote two murder mysteries, because "It was always something I wanted to do if I had the time."  

In the 2010 midterm campaign, I asked rhetorically, "If Republicans win back control of Congress, do you think Democrats will be as effective at stymieing Republicans' agenda as Republicans have been the last two years at stymieing Obama's/Democrats' 2008 agenda?"  If what Democratic politicians did during the BushCheney years is any indication, no.  Let's look at some of the alleged champions of liberals' issues.

BarbaraBoxer has been a terrible champion of liberal issues, but only those paying attention know this. 

For example, as a member of Congress, you can't just be for or against something (like abortion) when it comes up for a vote. You have to be meticulous and actively work to set up the conditions surrounding your vote, to make sure it counts. Your 'yes' vote means nothing if there are more 'no' votes to cancel your vote/voice out. 

Knowing that, what did Boxer do the entire 8 years of the BushAdministration? She effectively went on sabbatical. She wrote murder mysteries ("Something I always wanted to do, if I ever had the time"). She, of course, took her senatorial salary all those years.

Boxer's support of JoeLieberman in 2006 exposed Boxer's very 'conditional' support of a woman's right to choose (and her general level of ignorance). 


KEEP READING



Read the Article at HuffingtonPost

Read more...

Supreme Court Health Care Law: Justices Come Down Hard On The Mandate

There is nothing that Republicans have done these past several decades without Democrats having signed on. 

We're at a point where women now can't get an abortlon in 92 percent of the counties in the US.  There are 3 states in the country that have only one abortion clinic, and other states heavily restrict abortlon, ban abortlons in clinics or any facility that receives public funds, or ban abortlon counseling or clinic recommendations.  Kansas has to fly in a physician to perform abortions once a week.

Obama's healthcare reform legislation = ending insurance coverage of abortlon services.

Read here, too.

What good is it that Democrats publicly state they're for protecting Roe vs. Wade when they join with Republicans to carve away the actual abilities for women to obtain abortions?  Republicans figured out "Why bother overturning Roe vs. Wade if, instead, we can just make abortion impossible to get?", and Democrats 'compromised' away access to abortion piecemeal.  

KEEP READING
Read the Article at HuffingtonPost

Read more...

Supreme Court Health Care Law: Justices Come Down Hard On The Mandate

neo conservatives and progressives are the same. Just look at the AHCA. It was a neo con plan vehemently fought by progressives then adopted by obama and vehemently defended by progressives. I find this fascinating and comical and sad at the same time. WTF has happened to America?

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

How are you defining "progressive"?  

The nearest I come to understanding why anyone believes Obama is a progressive is because Republican political operatives, propagandists, insist on cable programs and on political websites that he is. And they do it because their supporters have been trained to react like hungry dogs when raw meat is dangled in front of them to the words 'liberal', 'progressive' and 'socialism'.

As a well-connected and politically active and involved liberal, neither I nor any left-leaning Democrat or Independent I know believes Obama to liberal, progressive or socialist. Neoliberal, perhaps, (which has nothing to do with liberalism), but "Privately, Obama describes himself as a Blue Dog Democrat".

Blue Dog = (you might as well re-register as a ) Republican

About his own political appeal, Obama has said, “I serve as a blank screen on which people of vastly different political stripes project their own views.”

My own belief is that Obama is just a run-of-the-mill politician in the used-car sense. If he's a one term president, he will have delivered to the CorporateMasters of the universe, and for his loyalty to them he'll be rewarded with great riches from seats on corporate boards.  He'll hand the baton off to Republicans for the fleecing to continue. He will not have reversed the course of the previous administration, just as the administration previous to Bush's (Clinton) didn't reverse the course of HWBush's 'Global Economy'/New World Order and the Reagan-Bush 'trickle down'/Saudi oil empire before that.
Read the Article at HuffingtonPost

Read more...

Rachel Maddow Talks 'Drift,' The Military, President Obama And Reagan's Pajamas

Maddow dedicated the book "To former Vice President Dick Cheney, Oh please let me interview you".

She ended her program tonight wishing him "all the best from his recovery from his heart transplant".
Read the Article at HuffingtonPost

Read more...