"I believe that banking institutions are more dangerous to our liberties than standing armies.
If the American people ever allow private banks to control the issue of their currency,
first by inflation, then by deflation, the banks and the corporations that will grow up
around them will deprive the people of all property until their children wake up
homeless on the continent their fathers conquered." ~ Thomas Jefferson
President Obama is trying to pass health care reform. To many of us, this seems like a no-brainer. Why doesn't America take
care of its people at least as well as Australia, Austria, Belgium, Canada, Cuba, Denmark, Finland, France, Germany, Japan,
The Netherlands, New Zealand, Norway, Seychelles, South Africa, Spain, Sweden, Taiwan, and The United Kingdom?
People in this country are suffering medically, financially, and emotionally, because we do not as a nation take care of our
own. I have heard people screaming about socialism because national health care is being proposed. I beg to differ.
Socialism, like Christianity, is an ideal to which many have aspired but few have put into practice. I believe that people
are not afraid of socialism. They don't have the first idea what socialism is. They are afraid of totalitarianism. Totalitarianism
is an idea that has been put into practice many times, frequently by people who have claimed to be socialists, and we have
seen that we do not like it.
Threatening people with socialism is an old bleat, and for some reason, to some people, still an effective one. People toss
the word “socialism” around like PETA members throw red paint. (Read more…)
Work Is Not The Enemy
Doesn't it seem strange that we can have a shortage of skilled labor, a crumbling infrastructure, and rising unemployment?
How did we get into this fix? Are we lazy?
Our society has slowly redefined what it means to have a "good job." The portrayals in Hollywood and the messages from Madison
Avenue have been unmistakable. "Work less and be happy!"
For the last thirty years we've been celebrating a different kind of work. We've aspired to other opportunities. We've stopped
making things. We've convinced ourselves that "good jobs" are the result of a four-year degree. That's bunk.
I am afraid there has been a misunderstanding since that election in 2008, during which 66,882,230 Americans cast their votes
for you. Perhaps one of your trusted advisors has given you bum information. Maybe they told you that we voted for you –
walked, marched, prayed, fund-raised and knocked on doors for you – because we hoped you would try to reunite the country.
Of the total votes cast that long-ago November day, I'm guessing that about 1,575 people wanted you to try to reconcile the
toxic bipartisanship that culminated in those Sarah Palin rallies.
The other 66,880,655 of us wanted universal healthcare. (Read more…)
A Modest Medicare Proposal
Dear President Obama,
I understand you're thinking of dumping your "public option" because of all the demagoguery by Sarah Palin and Dick Armey
and Newt Gingrich and their crowd on right-wing radio and Fox. Fine. Good idea, in fact.
Instead, let's make it simple. Please let us buy into Medicare.
It would be so easy. You don't have to reinvent the wheel with this so-called "public option" that's a whole new program from
the ground up. Medicare already exists. It works. Some people will like it; others won't – just like the Post Office
versus FedEx analogy you're so comfortable with.
Just pass a simple bill – it could probably be just a few lines, like when Medicare was expanded to include disabled
people – that says that any American citizen can buy into the program at a rate to be set by the Centers for Medicare
and Medicaid Services (CMS) and the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) which reflects the actual cost for us to
buy into it.
So it's revenue neutral!
To make it available to people of low income, raise the rates slightly for all currently non-eligible people (under 65, like
me) to cover the cost of below-200%-of-poverty people – revenue neutral again.
Most of us will do damn near anything to get out from under the thumbs of the multi-millionaire CEOs who are running our current
insurance programs. Sign me up!
This lets you blow up all the rumors about death panels and grandma and everything else. Everybody knows what Medicare is.
Those who scorn it can go with Blue Cross. Those who like it can buy into it. Simplicity itself.
Of course we'd like a few fixes, like letting Medicare negotiate drug prices and filling some of the holes Republicans and
AARP and the big insurance lobbyists have drilled into Medicare so people have to buy "supplemental" insurance. But that can
wait for the second round. Let's get this done first.
Simple stuff: Medicare for anybody who wants it; Private health insurance for those who don't. Easy message. Even Max Baucus
and Chuck Grassley can understand it. Sarah Palin can buy into it, or ignore it. No death panels, no granny plugs, nothing
– just a few sentences.
Replace the "you must be disabled or 65" with "here's what it'll cost if you want to buy in, and here's the sliding scale
of subsidies we'll give you if you're poor, paid for by everybody else who's buying in." (You could roll back the Reagan tax
cuts and make it all free, but that's another rant.)
We elected you because we expected you to have the courage of your convictions. Here's how. Not the "single payer Medicare
for all" that many of us would prefer, but a simple, "Medicare for anybody who wants to buy in."
Never underestimate the ability of a tiny fringe group of losers to ruin everything.
For the last couple of weeks, we've all been laughing heartily at the wacky antics of the "birthers" – the far-right
goofballs who claim Barack Obama wasn't really born in Hawaii and therefore the job of president goes to the runner-up, former
Miss California Carrie Prejean.
Also, when Obama was sworn in as president, he forgot to give his answer in the form of a question.
And yet, every week, the chorus of conservatives demanding to see his birth certificate grows. It's like they're the Cambridge
police, Obama's in his house – the White House – and they need to see some ID.
And there's nothing anyone can do to convince these folks. You could hand them, in person, the original birth certificate
and have a video of Obama emerging from the womb with Don Ho singing in the background... and they still wouldn't believe
it.
Which raises the question: Why, in this country, is it always the religious right that won't take anything on faith?
So far, the reaction from Democrats is to laugh this off, and I understand why. If you seriously believe that President Obama
is an African sleeper spy, get out of your chat room and have your house tested for lead.
But we live in America, and in America, if you don't immediately kill arrant nonsense, no matter how ridiculous, it can grow
and thrive and eventually take over, like crab grass… or reality shows about fat people.
This flap might be a deluded right-wing obsession that is a total waste of time, but so was Whitewater, and look where that
ended up. A handful of Republican operatives, enraged at Bill Clinton's unprecedented economic growth and budget surpluses,
found a woman named Paula Jones, which led to a woman named Monica Lewinsky, which gave me enough material to eventually be
able to buy a big house in Bel-Air. Which I'm still conflicted about.
More recently we had the Swift Boat allegations against John Kerry, in which Kerry was accused of volunteering to serve in
Vietnam so he could jump in front of a bullet so he could get a medal and then throw it away to satisfy his urge to insult
real Americans. This was so stupid that Kerry refused to even discuss it.
And we all know how well that worked out.
And once these stories get out there, they're hard to stamp out because our media do such a lousy job of speaking truth to
stupid. Iraq, Vietnam and the Spanish-American War were all sold on lies that were unchallenged or even abetted by the media.
Kerry got destroyed and Clinton got impeached in large part because the media didn't have the guts to say, "This is nonsense."
Lou Dobbs has been saying recently that people are asking a lot of questions about the birth certificate. Yes, the same people
who want to know where the sun goes at night.
And Lou, you're their new king.
That's why it's so important that we the few, the proud, the reality-based, attack this stuff before it has a chance to fester
and spread. This isn't a case of Democrats versus Republicans. It's sentient beings versus the lizard people, and it is
to them I offer this deal: I'll show you Obama's birth certificate when you show me Sarah Palin's high school diploma.
Watch Bill Maher deliver this rant on HBO's "Real Time with Bill Maher."
WHO BENEFITS?
Who benefits when you reduce your carbon footprint?
Ask yourself, Who?
Who benefits when you adjust your thermostat a degree or two?
Who benefits when you recycle your newspapers,
Your glass, your plastic, your beer cans?
Who benefits when you unplug your charger;
When you set your computer to hibernate?
Who benefits when you replace an incandescent bulb
With a compact florescent?
Who benefits when you reuse your grocery bags
Or switch to canvas totes?
Does one individual receive royalties from every tote sold?
Or residuals whenever someone uses a tote?
Does any politician benefit? Does any rock star?
Who benefits?
You benefit.
Your children benefit.
Your grandchildren reap the dividends.
Now ask yourself
Who benefits in claiming Global Warming is a hoax?
Even if there's just a one percent chance of the
unimaginable coming due, act as if it is a certainty.
It's not about analysis, it’s about our response.
Justified or not, fact-based or not,
Our response is what matters.
Judging both from comments on this blog and from some of my mail, a significant number of Americans believe that the answer
to our health care problems – indeed, the only answer – is to rely on the free market. Quite a few seem
to believe that this view reflects the lessons of economic theory.
Not so. One of the most influential economic papers of the postwar era was Kenneth Arrow’s Uncertainty and the welfare economics of health care, which demonstrated – decisively, I and many others believe – that health care can’t
be marketed like bread or TVs. Let me offer my own version of Arrow’s argument.
There are two strongly distinctive aspects of health care. One is that you don’t know when or whether you’ll need
care – but if you do, the care can be extremely expensive. The big bucks are in triple coronary bypass surgery, not
routine visits to the doctor’s office; and very, very few people can afford to pay major medical costs out of pocket.
This tells you right away that health care can’t be sold like bread. It must be largely paid for by some kind of insurance.
And this in turn means that someone other than the patient ends up making decisions about what to buy. Consumer choice is
nonsense when it comes to health care. And you can’t just trust insurance companies either – they’re not
in business for their health, or yours. (Read more…)
Various Web sites and e-mails are reporting that cancer survival rates are much higher in the U.S. than in various European
countries. Some quote Mark Tapscott in the Washington Examiner, who quotes Jim Hoft in the American Issue Project, who quotes
Michael D. Tanner of the Cato Institute, who quotes … well, quite a group of conservative pundits and politicians are
involved. They appear to be using the same set of statistics to argue that national health care results in dramatically increased
mortality rates from breast, prostate and other cancers.
To check the facts, I went to the World Health Organization and made myself a chart. Using the most recent statistics available,
I compared the health outcomes of six Western nations. No nation’s health-care program is totally private, and no program
is totally nationalized. Government funds pay for a percentage of health-care expenses in all six countries: the United States
(45.8 percent), Germany (76.6 percent), Italy (77.1 percent), France (79.7 percent), the Netherlands (81.8 percent), and the
United Kingdom (87.4 percent).
Do mortality rates increase with a higher percentage of government funding? Here’s what I found:
The United States ties with Italy for the lowest cancer mortality rate of all six countries. Interestingly, the U.S. and
Italy also have the lowest smoking rates. The Netherlands and the U.K. have the highest smoking rates and also the highest
cancer death rates. The cancer mortality rate in the Netherlands is 15% higher than that of the United States and Italy.
But cancer accounts for less than a quarter of all deaths in the United States. Heart disease is an even bigger killer, and
cardiovascular mortality statistics are not so good in America. Of the six countries, the U.S. has the second highest mortality
rate, with 59 percent more heart-related deaths than France.
The U.S. also has the second highest death rate from injuries. American mortality in this category is more than 100 percent
higher than that of the Netherlands.
In the largest category, non-communicable diseases, the United States has the highest mortality rate of all six countries,
with 25% more deaths than France.
The adult mortality rate – the probability of dying between the ages of 15 and 60 – is highest in the United States.
The runner-up, France, is 20 percent lower, and Italy is 70 percent lower.
Personally, I don’t want to die from cancer. I don’t want to die from heart disease or other non-communicable
diseases either, and I’d rather not be smashed to death in an accident. In fact, I’d just as soon stay healthy
as long as possible, so I’d be very happy if the United States had the best health care in the world. Alas, we have
a long way to go.
Of the six countries I compared, the United States is at the bottom in terms of healthy life expectancy: 69 years here
compared to 71 in the Netherlands and the U.K., 72 in France and Germany, and 73 in Italy.
The U.S. is also at the bottom in terms of total life expectancy: 78 years here compared to 79 in the U.K., 80 in Germany
and the Netherlands, and 81 in France and Italy.
Please, when you see an email or Web page giving statistics to argue that the United States already has excellent health care
and doesn’t need to revamp the system, stop and ponder. Americans currently spend roughly twice as much per capita
on health care (counting both public and private sources) as these European countries.
What lots of Americans don’t realize is this: The U.S. government already spends more per capita on health care than
do the governments of these other countries — over 50 percent more than the Italian government spends, for example.
And yet the Italians manage cancer just as well as we do, and their health-care outcomes are better than ours in every other
category.
Hours before they were to leave office after eight troubled years, George W. Bush and Richard B. Cheney had one final and
painful piece of business to conclude. For over a month Cheney had been pleading, cajoling, even pestering Bush to pardon
the Vice President's former chief of staff, I. Lewis (Scooter) Libby. Libby had been convicted nearly two years earlier of
obstructing an investigation into the leak of a covert CIA officer's identity by senior White House officials. The Libby pardon,
aides reported, had become something of a crusade for Cheney, who seemed prepared to push his nine-year-old relationship with
Bush to the breaking point — and perhaps past it — over the fate of his former aide. "We don't want to leave anyone
on the battlefield," Cheney argued.
Bush had already decided the week before that Libby was undeserving and told Cheney so, only to see the question raised again.
A top adviser to Bush says he had never seen the Vice President focused so single-mindedly on anything over two terms. And
so, on his last full day in office, Jan. 19, 2009, Bush would give Cheney his final decision. (Read more…)
Socialism has been much in the news for some months. Recently, some GOP stalwarts charged President Obama with preaching the
heresy. John Boehner, the House minority leader, characterized Obama's stimulus package as, "one big down payment on a new
American socialist experiment."
"Socialism" is a pejorative term in American politics and needs to be carefully examined. It usually refers to increased government
control over the economy, or policies that promote the redistribution of wealth. There is no doubt that President Obama's
economic measures, passed and proposed, will raise tax rates on the richest Americans to pay for increased government funding
of health care, green energy and education. So the new president is indeed a redistributionist, but so was Ronald Reagan,
except that Obama's plans will transfer wealth from the rich to the poor, whereas Reagan's bills transferred wealth from
the poor and the middle class to the opulent. In fact, Obama's measures are puny, whereas Reagan's were massive. If the
Democrat is a "small" socialist, Reagan was the Great American Socialist.
Let's go back to the early 1980's. In 1981, Reagan signed a law that sharply reduced the income tax for the wealthiest Americans
and corporations. The president asserted his program would create jobs, purge inflation and – get this – trim
the budget deficit. However, following the tax cut, the deficit soared from 2.5 percent of GDP to over 6 percent, alarming
financial markets, sending interest rates sky high, and culminating in the worst recession since the 1930's. (Read more…)
The Great Tax Con Job
Thom Hartmann | Thursday, July 23, 2009 Republicans are using the T-word – taxes – to attack the Obama healthcare program. It's a strategy based
in a lie.
A very small niche of America's uber-wealthy have pulled off what may well be the biggest con job in the history of our republic,
and they did it in a startlingly brief 30 or so years. True, they spent over three billion dollars to make it happen, but
the reward to them was in the hundreds of billions – and will continue to be.
As my friend and colleague Cenk Uygur of The Young Turks pointed out in a Daily Kos blog recently, billionaire Rupert Murdoch loses $50 million a year on the NY Post, billionaire Richard Mellon
Scaife loses $2 to $3 million a year on the Pittsburgh Tribune-Review, billionaire Philip Anschutz loses around $5
million a year on The Weekly Standard, and billionaire Sun Myung Moon has lost $2 to $3 billion on The Washington
Times.
Why are these guys willing to lose so much money funding "conservative" media? Why do they bulk-buy every right-wing book
that comes out to throw it to the top of the NY Times Bestseller list and then give away the copies to "subscribers"
to their websites and publications? Why do they fund – to the tune of hundreds of millions of dollars a year –
money-hole "think tanks" like Heritage and Cato?
The answer is pretty straightforward. They do it because it buys them respectability and gets their con job out there. Even
though William Kristol's publication is a money-losing joke (with only 85,000 subscribers!), his association with the Standard
was enough to get him on TV talk shows whenever he wants, and a column with The New York Times. The Washington Times
catapulted Tony Blankley to stardom.
"Fellowships" and other forms of indirect sponsorship of right-wing talk show hosts have made otherwise-marginal shows and
their hosts ubiquitous, and such sponsorships of groups like Norquist's anti-tax "Americans for Tax Reform" regularly get
people like him front-and-center in any debate on taxation in the United States.
All so they could run a tax con on the American people, thus keeping Moon and Murdoch and Scaife and Anschutz (and others)
richer than you or I could ever even imagine. (Read more…)
Despite the best efforts of Republicans to root out any sign that Sonia Sotomayor has emotions that color her views on the
law, the Bronx Bomber kept a robotic mask in place.
A wise Latina woman with the richness of her experiences would more often than not know that a gaggle of white Republican
men afraid of extinction are out to trip her up.
After all, these guys have never needed to speak inspirational words to others like them, as Sotomayor has done. They've had
codes, handshakes and clubs to do that.
So when Republican Senator Jon Kyl, without so much as a howdy-do, went at Sotomayor, and soon was asking her if she agreed
with Barack Obama's contention, when he voted against John Roberts, that a judge's heart is important, the would-be justice
was as adroit as her idol Nancy Drew.
"No, sir," she said, indicating that the only bleeding-heart thing about her was the color of her jacket. She added that "it's
not the heart that compels conclusions in cases. It's the law."
(Read more...)
The Bronx judge, the Alaska pin-up girl, and the Republican Party
The Democrats have Sonia Sotomayor. The Republicans have Sarah Palin. That's all you really need to know. Between them, these
two women explain why the Republicans are doomed.
Sonia Sotomayor, a Latina who grew up in a Bronx housing project, is a shoo-in for the Supreme Court. Barack Obama knew exactly
what he was doing when he picked her. She is a symbol of Hispanic aspirations in a country where Hispanics are an increasingly
powerful political force. She's known for her ferocious drive and work ethic and, despite what you may hear, she appears to
be a moderate. She represents the American dream in action. The Republicans hate her.
Sarah Palin was the most scarily incompetent vice-presidential nominee in the history of the United States. She graduated
from the University of Idaho, where she majored in communications (still not her strong suit). She represents the Peter Principle
in action. The Republicans love her.
Guess which one has been attacked by Karl Rove for not having the intellect for the job? That's right. Sonia Sotomayor.
According to leading Republican pundits, Judge Sotomayor is a hot-tempered, dim-witted bigot whose judicial activism (read
nutty identity politics) could play havoc with the Constitution. Newt Gingrich, the former Republican House speaker, even
called her a “Latina racist.” Amazingly, these are the same people who continue to insist that Sarah Palin is
qualified to run for president of the United States. They insist she is the victim of a vicious smear job by the eastern media
elites. (Read more…)
… Finally, a Justice Department official has said that, even in the in the face of opposition from the White House,
Attorney General Eric Holder may move forward with an investigation of the harsh interrogation practices applied to suspected
terrorists. Holder will decide in the next few weeks whether to appoint a prosecutor.
I for one, and many citizens of this country, find it difficult to move on to the future without dealing with the 8 years
of hell this country was put through by the Bush administration. Over-reaching secrecy, torture, the loss of privacy, a war
of choice, and an economic meltdown only rivaled by the 1929 depression: this country needs accountability in order to move
forward.
Gerald Ford's pardon of Richard Nixon set a terrible precedent of ignoring presidential crimes. That precedent was repeated
by Bill Clinton when he stopped all investigations and prosecutions for Iran/Contra. Together, these decisions have created
an atmosphere of kingly power around the presidency – exactly what the Founders wanted to prevent.
President Obama has an opportunity now to shatter these terrible precedents by holding his predecessor accountable for this
and his cronies’ crimes. And if he fails to, Congress must. Never again should the citizens of this nation fear lawlessness
from the holders of the highest office in the land.
That's just a sampling of what right-wing media figures have been calling Media Matters for America over the past five
years – strange praise for simply recording and posting their hateful rants online... word for word.
I know something about this type of hate. I used to be part of the far-right media culture that thrives on tarring its enemies
with vicious slurs and baseless accusations – that is, before I came to my senses and walked away from it all. Today,
looking back on comments like these, it's clear that we must be doing something right.
I founded Media Matters in 2004 because, at the time, there was no organization devoted to monitoring conservative
misinformation and correcting their propaganda in the media in real time, and because there was no group dedicated to fighting
back against the efforts of hate-mongers to twist journalism to their ends. And in spite of the attacks against us, Media
Matters has been able to sharpen and increase its influence on the media every year. Given the reactions we've seen from
the conservative echo chamber, it's clear we are having an impact.
A Mystery
Is anyone else bothered by all of the hypocritical screaming about a despicable
$787 billion federal stimulus bill, which seeks to help Americans recover from the
$678 billion (and still growing) Iraq war cost, which seeks to help WHO do WHAT?
For decades, the conventional wisdom was that the Republican Party was the party of the military. And while no party has or
ever will monopolize military support, certainly Republicans had a good amount of support from some big names - from Eisenhower
to Powell.
In recent years, however, as Republicans have abandoned ideals that make our military strong - no nation building using our
Armed Forces, looking for strong alliances to join us in action, operating on a moral high ground when we do use force, and
commitment to a strong enough and large enough force - we've seen big names head towards supporting Democrats - from General
Wesley Clark and Major General Paul Eaton to General John Shalikashvili, General Joseph Hoar, and General Hugh Shelton. Oh,
and Colin Powell.
That shift towards Democrats, and especially President Obama and Hillary Clinton during the primary, is about to be fast tracked,
as Rush Limbaugh and Dick Cheney take control of Republican messaging, ideals, practices, and policies.
Ideals that include torturing detainees, hoping for a "24-like" moment that neatly helps dismantle terrorist networks, instead
of giving them their best recruiting tool. It goes against everything we learn in the Army Field Manual (which forbids torture),
and what we know works on the ground. For example, when we urgently needed information about insurgents in Iraq, we didn't
bring in a local leader and torture him, no matter what. Doing so would have only inflamed things and made it impossible for
us to effectively operate in an area again. (Read more…)
Why Can't I Own a Canadian?
http://www.humanistsofutah.org/2002/WhyCantIOwnACanadian_10-02.html
Radio personality, Dr. Laura Schlessinger, dispenses advice to people who call in to her show. Recently, she said that, as
an observant Orthodox Jew, she believes homosexuality is an abomination according to Leviticus 18:22 and cannot be condoned
under any circumstance. The following open letter to Dr. Laura was posted on the Internet. It's funny, as well as informative:
Dear Dr. Laura:
Thank you for doing so much to educate people regarding God's Law. I have learned a great deal from your show, and try to
share that knowledge with as many people as I can. When someone tries to defend the homosexual lifestyle, for example, I simply
remind them that Leviticus 18:22 clearly states it to be an abomination. End of debate. I do need some advice from you, however,
regarding some of the other specific laws and how to follow them:
When I burn a bull on the altar as a sacrifice, I know it creates a pleasing odor for the Lord. (Lev.1:9) The problem is my
neighbors. They claim the odor is not pleasing to them. Should I smite them?
I would like to sell my daughter into slavery, as sanctioned in Exodus 21:7. In this day and age, what do you think would
be a fair price for her?
I know that I am allowed no contact with a woman while she is in her period of menstrual uncleanliness. (Lev.15:19-24) The
problem is, how do I tell? I have tried asking, but most women take offense.
Lev. 25:44 states that I may indeed possess slaves, both male and female, provided they are purchased from neighboring nations.
My friend claims that this applies to Mexicans, but not to Canadians. Can you clarify? Why can't I own a Canadian?
I have a neighbor who insists on working on the Sabbath. Exodus 35:2 clearly states that he should be put to death. Am I morally
obligated to kill him myself?
A friend of mine feels that even though eating shellfish is an abomination (Lev. 11:10), it is a lesser abomination than homosexuality.
I don't agree. Can you settle this?
Lev. 21:20 states that I may not approach the altar of God if I have a defect in my sight. I admit that I wear reading glasses.
Does my vision have to be 20/20, or is there some wiggle room here?
Most of my male friends get their hair trimmed, including the hair around their temples, even though this is expressly forbidden.
(Lev.19:27) How should they die?
I know that touching the skin of a dead pig makes me unclean (Lev. 11:6-8), but may I still play football if I wear gloves?
My uncle has a farm. He violates Lev. 19:19 by planting two different crops in the same field, as does his wife by wearing
garments made of two different kinds of thread (cotton/polyester blend). He also tends to curse and blaspheme a lot. Is it
really necessary that we go to all the trouble of getting the whole town together to stone them? (Lev.24:10-16) Couldn't we
just burn them to death at a private family affair like we do with people who sleep with their in-laws? (Lev. 20:14)
I know you have studied these things extensively, so I am confident you can help. Thank you again for reminding us that God's
word is eternal and unchanging.
When is a tax cut for 98 percent of taxpayers portrayed as a tax increase? When some of the small handful of people whose
taxes will go up happen to control the nation's news media.
Last week, President Obama unveiled a budget outline that extends the Bush tax cuts for bogus all but the top two percent of taxpayers and makes permanent a tax credit of up to $800 for low- and middle-income workers that was included in
the recent stimulus package, among other tax cuts.
On the other hand, individual taxpayers with taxable income above $200,000 ($250,000 for families) per year would pay more
in taxes under Obama's plan, under which the tax rates paid on income in the top brackets would revert to their levels under
President Clinton in the 1990s – from 33 and 35 percent to 36 and 39.6 percent. Slate.com's Daniel Gross estimates that for someone with $350,000 in income, this will amount to about $1,500 a year in increased taxes.
So: Obama's plan cuts taxes for the vast majority of Americans, while raising them for the small number of people who make
more than $200,000.
If you want to see the bold future of alternative energy, don’t look to the relatively timid plan coming out of the
Obama White House. Instead, look to the green revolution exploding out of the least likely place you could imagine: the Persian
Gulf.
Yes, the oil-soaked monarchies of such Gulf States as Saudi Arabia, Qatar, and the United Arab Emirates are designing, developing,
funding, and building a visionary future of clean, renewable energy. It completely reconfigures the meaning of “ironic”
to see these OPEC oligarchs become the pioneers of a green world – but there they are. (Read more…)
Here at the end of this watershed week, one photograph keeps playing in my mind, and I want to share it with you. It's from
an Obama rally in St. Louis, Missouri, a couple of weeks ago —100,000 people.
Now look more closely at the background, at that old building with a copper dome turned green with age. That used to be the
courthouse where slaves were auctioned from the steps. In 1846, Dred Scott and his wife Harriett, both slaves, went there
to appeal to the court for their freedom. They said they had been living in states and territories where slavery was outlawed
and so should be let go.
They were, briefly, but soon were returned to slavery. When their appeal reached the United States Supreme Court, 11 years
later, Chief Justice Roger Taney refused to free them. He ruled that slaves did not have the rights of citizens because Harriet
and Dred Scott were, quote, "Beings of an inferior order, and altogether unfit to associate with the white race, either in
social or political relations, and so far inferior that they had no rights which the white man was bound to respect."
You know the storm that followed — civil war, Lincoln's assassination, the failure of reconstruction, Jim Crow, white
supremacy, lynching. So much blood shed; so much suffering; so many martyrs.
My grandchildren have a hard time understanding the America I try to describe to them from my own childhood in East Texas.
Across the Deep South whites still resolved to keep blacks in their place, often with a holy fervor.
Above all they were determined to keep blacks from voting; voting meant equality — power. When black veterans coming
home from fighting for their country, tried to register, they were assaulted and arrested. In South Carolina one black soldier
riding the bus home after 15 months in the South Pacific, angered the driver with some minor act that struck the white man
as uppity. At the next stop the veteran was taken off the bus by the local chief of police and beaten so badly he went blind.
The police chief was put on trial and acquitted, to the cheers of the courtroom.
In one Georgia county the only black to vote had also just come home from the war. As he sat on his porch the day after the
primary, he was shot and killed, and a sign posted on a nearby black church boasted: "The first nigger to vote will never
vote again."
Signs like that did not come down easily. It would take Montgomery, Birmingham, Selma. It would take the Civil Rights Act
and the Voting Rights Act, and countless individual acts of heroism. And it would take, finally, take someone like Barack
Obama, who, if he had been born a generation earlier, could have been lynched for the audacity of hope, but who now saw that
America was changing, is changing, has changed, and that he might be the agent for lifting from around our necks this great
stone from the past, by refusing himself to be haunted or ruled by it.
He will of course disappoint; all presidents do — and the first black president will be no more exempt from reality
and human nature than the 43 white men who came before him. We don't know what he will do in office. He has promised that
he will take us "there" without saying what "there" entails, or what hard choices must be made. We shall see.
But that is ahead of us. For now, it is only right that we remember how long it has taken to get here, and the price paid
by so many to bring us this far.
The reality of it hit me late in the week as I read in the San Francisco Chronicle of a woman named Johnnie Marie Ross.
Forty years ago, in 1968, she was 19 and the mother of two, and she was shattered by the assassination of Martin Luther King,
Jr. To cope with her pain she wrote a poem:
"So rest in peace in the name
of the father and the son,
for your dream has not ended
but in reality just begun."
When she read her poem aloud at a local church service, young black people from the neighborhood passed the collection plate
and sent her to Dr. King's funeral in Atlanta. "He was our everything," she told the Chronicle reporters. "He was
our hope for the future." But after his death, she said, "We were afraid... like we would be killed if we stood up."
That was 40 years ago. Johnnie Marie Ross, now 59, says she has lived in fear ever since.
No more. On Tuesday she voted and walked home with a flag in her hand and a song on her lips.
“Hallelujah,” she sang, over and over. “Hallelujah.”
A simple fact of life is that any system based on the use of nonrenewable resources is unsustainable.
Despite all the warnings that we are headed for an ecological and environmental perfect storm, many Americans are oblivious
to the flashing red light on the earth's fuel gauge. Many feel the "American way of life" is an entitlement that operates
outside the laws of nature. At the Earth Summit in 1992, George H.W. Bush forcefully declared, "The American way of life
is not negotiable." That way of life requires a highly disproportionate use of the world's nonrenewable resources. While
only containing 4% of the world population, the United States consumes 25% of the world's oil. The centerpiece of that way
of life is suburbia. And massive amounts of nonrenewable fuels are required to maintain the project of suburbia.
The suburban lifestyle is considered by many Americans to be an accepted and normal way of life. But this gluttonous, sprawling,
and energy-intensive way of life is simply not sustainable. Few people are aware of how their lives are dependent on cheap
and abundant energy. Are these Americans in for a rude awakening? In a fascinating new documentary, "The End of Suburbia:
Oil Depletion and the Collapse of the American Dream," the central question is this: Does the suburban way of life have a
future? The answer is a resounding no.
No combination of alternative fuels can run and maintain our current system as it is now. There will eventually be
a great scramble to get out of the suburbs as the global oil crisis deepens and the property values of suburban homes plummet.
[
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The top ten causes of death in the Unites States for 2004 were: heart disease with 654,092 reported deaths; cancer with 550,270
deaths; stroke with 150,147; chronic lower respiratory disease with 123,884; accidents with 108,694; diabetes with 72,815;
Alzheimer’s disease with 65,829; influenza and pneumonia with 61,472; kidney disease with 42,762; and septicemia with
33,464 deaths.
Of the 108,694 accidental deaths, 46,933 were caused by motor vehicle traffic, 19,250 by unintentional poisoning, and 18,535
by unintentional falls. These figures are typical and representative of what one could expect from year to year.
So where exactly does terrorism fit into this picture?
Between 1961 and 2003 the U.S. Department of State identifies 3,296 private U.S. citizen deaths resulting from terrorist incidents.
The September 11th attacks represent 3,025 of the total and the Oklahoma City bombing 166.
With such low death rates, the odds of a private U.S. citizen dying by terrorist attack are approximately one in 9.3 million.
Yet despite such diminutive possibilities, our government presently operates as though terrorism is the greatest and only
threat our citizens face. I am in no way implying terrorism is not a threat — it is, and it must be addressed. I merely
suggest we put terrorism prospects and other dangers facing the American people into some sort of sane and logical context.
[read more ]
Creating Conservatives Every American child born today inherits a $35,000 debt. Roughly $30,000
of that debt is a direct result of the past three Republican administrations.
Pretend that you are a person who believes that only those with great wealth and property – the aristocracy
– should control the US government, and thus the US economy. But you are nervous. Less than 5% of American adults are
a part of that aristocracy, but the Constitution lets the other 95+% vote, too.
So, how do you convince that massive, working-class majority that you are "their kind of folks"?
Band together with other aristocrats. Create social, business and political associations. Take over a major political
party.
Form corporations to protect your personal wealth and property, multiply your power, and reduce your tax liability.
Use your massive wealth to overwhelm Progressive politicians, elect Conservatives who support your views, and “influence”
others to pass legislation that you favor.
Buy up major broadcast and print media. Use them to promote Conservative views, limit opposing ideas, and control the
spread of unfavorable news.
Create catchy “code words” that describe Conservatives as patriotic, brave, and morally superior, while
painting Progressives as elitist, cowardly, and selfish. Remember: The bigger the lie, the more people will believe
it.
Divide Americans into "Us" vs "Them" – Red vs Blue, Religious vs Ungodly, Poor vs Elite, Heartland vs Coastland,
Patriotic vs America-hating, Flag-pin vs Not.
Appeal to greed. Convince the masses that being "Conservative" is their path to aristocracy, too. Brand all taxes
as unfair and Socialistic. Promote the myths of "me first" and "go it alone".
Appeal to fear. Maintain constant war, constant threats of war, and a stable of evil enemies poised to rape and pillage.
Appeal to bigots. Use race, sexual orientation, religion, ethnicity, education, immigration status, income level, hairstyle
– anything to inflame bigotry and prevent unity.
Appeal to ignorance. Spread rumors; lie about opponents; publicize shocking but insignificant events to distract attention
from serious problems and mistakes.
Promote ignorance. Ridicule public schools and their teachers; cut their funding by tying it to test scores; attack
science and promote Creationism; end the study of Constitutional rights; push charter schools and vouchers for parochial schools.
Claim that corporations provide America’s jobs. Keep saying it as you ship those jobs overseas to 3rd-world countries.
Bust the unions. Blame them for high prices, low productivity, weak profits, and excess power for workers.
De-regulate and “privatize” as much of America as possible. The huge profits from public needs like health
care, education, prisons, ports, highways, military contractors, etc., must go to private corporations.
Help the “swing states” to suppress voting, especially in districts that traditionally vote for Progressives.
Exploit the desire for fast vote results over accurate vote counts. Then push to require computer voting machines,
which can manipulate election results while generating profits.
REMEMBER: Aristocracy requires inherited wealth. The capital gains tax and the “death tax” must be repealed.
