Feb 27, 2013 12:22 PM
Pending federal budget cuts slated to take effect starting at the end of the week could force the closure of the Federal Aviation Administration’s Air Traffic Control Tower at Gabreski Airport in Westhampton this spring, according to U.S. Representative Tim Bishop’s office.
The cuts, known as “sequestration,” would go into effect on Friday, March 1, and slash approximately $600 million from the approximately $15.2 billion FAA budget for the remainder of the 2013 fiscal year. Once in effect, the FAA will be forced to close 100 towers nationwide—including six in New York State—starting around April 1.
Without the control tower, Gabreski Airport would convert to a “non tower” operating status, meaning that pilots would be responsible for the safe operation of the aircraft, according to Mr. Bishop. The Suffolk County-owned airport, which... more
The cuts, known as “sequestration,” would go into effect on Friday, March 1, and slash approximately $600 million from the approximately $15.2 billion FAA budget for the remainder of the 2013 fiscal year. Once in effect, the FAA will be forced to close 100 towers nationwide—including six in New York State—starting around April 1.
Without the control tower, Gabreski Airport would convert to a “non tower” operating status, meaning that pilots would be responsible for the safe operation of the aircraft, according to Mr. Bishop. The Suffolk County-owned airport, which... more
Bishop is letting us know how the Republican slash and burn cuts are not only a major drag on the national economy but they effect us here on Eastern LI.
As for the "alternative" to the looming cuts, the True Believers in the House would leave the dollar deletions untouched but allow the President the authority to decide whose ox was gored thus making him ...more bear the onus for THEIR insanity.
Here's an idea, perhaps the House Republicans should put their fiduciary obligations to the nation ahead of their sectarian obligations to their creed.
From Factcheck-
"Home • The FactCheck Wire • The ‘Obamaquester’ The ‘Obamaquester’
Posted on February 19, 2013
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The Line: “The president’s sequester.”
The Party: Republican
Editor’s note: This is the first of an occasional series ...more called “Party Lines” that will highlight misleading talking points by both parties.
This Republican talking point aims to blame President Obama for more than $1 trillion in automatic, across-the-board cuts in domestic and defense spending that — without action by Congress — are scheduled to take effect on March 1. House Speaker John Boehner, who said on Feb. 12 that “we are only weeks away from the devastating consequences of the president’s sequester,” has been using variations of the line on his website since at least September 2012. He and congressional Republicans recently have taken to using the hashtag #Obamaquester on Twitter to fault the president for the looming cuts. But the reality is that the pending cuts would not be possible had both Democrats and Republicans not supported the legislation that included them.
Here’s the background: In the summer of 2011, when Democrats and Republicans couldn’t agree on a way to cut spending in exchange for increasing the federal government’s borrowing limit, legislators settled on the Budget Control Act instead. The law capped federal discretionary spending to save almost $1.2 trillion over a 10-year period, but also mandated that a bipartisan, 12-person congressional committee find at least $1.5 trillion in additional cuts. If the committee failed to come up with a plan, another $1.2 trillion in cuts would occur automatically — half from defense spending and half from discretionary spending on domestic programs — through sequestration. The committee failed to reach an agreement, and the automatic cuts will now begin in March if Congress doesn’t stop them.
In his book “The Price of Politics,” veteran journalist Bob Woodward of the Washington Post wrote that it was, in fact, Obama’s then-director of the Office of Management and Budget, Jacob Lew, and White House Legislative Affairs Director Rob Nabors who brought the idea of sequestration to Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid before it was proposed to Republicans in Congress. That is the source of Republican claims that this is “the president’s sequester.”
But as Woodward wrote in his book, and as he subsequently explained to Politico, neither party wanted the automatic cuts to take effect or thought they would happen. The cuts were included as a mechanism to force members of the bipartisan committee to work out a deal to avoid them.
Politico, Oct. 23, 2012: “No one thought it would happen. The idea was to design something … that was so onerous that no one would ever let it happen. Of course, it did, because they couldn’t reach agreement,” [Woodward] said. “They all believed that the supercommittee was going to come up with a $1.2 trillion deficit-reduction plan, so there would be no sequestration. Of course, the supercommittee failed and so the trigger went off, which has all of these very Draconian cuts.”
The automatic cuts were supposed to take effect in January, but the president and Congress agreed to delay them until March 1 to give themselves more time to work out a deal. Now, as the new deadline for sequestration draws closer, many Republicans blame the president. And though it’s true that the idea of sequestration originated in the White House, there would be no possibility of automatic cuts had members of Congress — both Democrats and Republicans — not gone along with the idea.
The Budget Control Act passed in the House with 269 votes in favor — 174 from Republicans and 95 from Democrats. And the bill cleared the Senate with 74 “yea” votes, of which 28 were cast by Republicans. In fact, one of those voting in favor, Republican Sen. John McCain of Arizona, said on NBC’s “Meet the Press” on Feb. 17 that “Republicans deserve blame; I’ll take some blame for it.”
And Rep. Justin Amash, a Republican from Michigan who voted against the bill, has said that “it’s totally disingenuous” for Republicans who voted in favor of the bill to now blame the president for it. Amash told Buzzfeed: “The debt ceiling deal in 2011 was agreed to by Republicans and Democrats, and regardless of who came up with the sequester, they all voted for it. So, you can’t vote for something and, with a straight face, go blame the other guy for its existence in law.”
– D’Angelo Gore
Below is a list of some Republicans who have faulted the president for the sequester:
Rep. Martha Roby, Feb. 16: My district is home to Fort Rucker, the primary flight training base for Army Aviation. If the president’s sequester takes effect, Fort Rucker would lose 500 students training to be combat aviators and roughly 37,000 hours of aviation training. Source: Weekly Republican Address
Sen. Mitch McConnell, Feb. 13: Take the Obama sequester as just one example. The President had a chance last night to offer a thoughtful alternative to his sequester, one that could reduce spending in a smarter way. That is what Republicans have been calling for all along, and it is the kind of thing the House has already voted to do not once but twice. We want to work with him to actually make that happen. Source: Congressional Record
Rep. John Boehner, Feb. 12: We are only weeks away from the devastating consequences of the president’s sequester, and he failed to offer the cuts needed to replace it. Source: Press release
Rep. Jeff Miller, Feb. 10: The Administration’s sequestration threatens to reduce our military’s readiness and throw our nation into another recession. Source: Newsletter
Rep. Howard McKeon, Feb. 8: Today the White House finally broke their silence on the consequences President Obama’s sequester would have on domestic spending. Source: Press release
Rep. Peter Roskam, Feb. 5: The sequester is the president’s sequester. Source: CNBC’s “The Kudlow Report“
And from Politifact-
"Whose idea was it?
It was Obama’s idea, but Republicans agreed to it and provided key support.
The most detailed account on this point is in The Price of Politics, a book by Washington Post journalist Bob Woodward about the 2011 debt ceiling standoff. His reporting shows the White House developed the idea and presented it to Democratic leadership on July 28 and to Boehner’s team on July 30.
Both sides saw it as a way to force further negotiations later, according to Woodward. The Obama team thought there was "no chance" Republicans would allow defense cuts to happen, while Boehner said Democrats would cave to save domestic programs. Woodward quotes Boehner predicting the sequester "is never going to happen."
Republicans have repeatedly said the sequester was Obama’s idea, but they supported it early on and provided the votes needed to put it into law."
Who wants it to happen?
The prevailing -- stated -- opinion in both parties is "Sequestration: bad."
"Part of the whole reason (lawmakers) thought that the sequester would work was it was so stupid and awful," said Steve Ellis, vice president of Taxpayers for Common Sense.
What we’re witnessing now is a game of brinksmanship: Obama has proposed a plan to avert the cuts that combines closing tax loopholes with cutting federal spending; Republicans have offered their version with only spending cuts.
"They are putting forward proposals … that they know the other side is going to reject," Ellis said. "It’s like they’re holding out for total victory."
That’s the the outward account, anyway. Norman Ornstein, a scholar at the conservative American Enterprise Institute, says there’s a second, behind-the-scenes storyline:
"A sizable number of members of Congress want a sequester; the overwhelming majority of them are House Republicans who believe that this is the best way to get a down payment on spending cuts, and don't believe (or care) that national security might be at risk. They also are convinced that these cuts won't affect any real services, in part because they really believe that most government is wrongheaded, irrelevant or just waste and fraud. ...," Ornstein said. "Very few Democrats want a sequester; a few think it will backfire on Republicans, and so are secretly happy. But most would much prefer a deal to avoid it."
We are gaining jobs.....
The cuts will start Friday....unless there is some change in the sequester.
You need to turn off Fox and get the real information.
Cowards like you always attack welfare while letting corporations get away with murder.
Debt and Deficit. In the past 17 Presidential terms, nine were GOP led and eight Democratic. Of nine GOP Presidents, six added to debt/GDP and deficit/GDP as a percent. The only three that did not, had a Democratic House and Senate. Of eight Democrats, each one, reduced deficit/GDP and debt/GDP as a percent. That is 66 years of rhetoric of fiscal responsibility with zero net results for GOP. What makes matters even worse, is the fact that the president who ...more added a historical 20.7% to the debt has one unique aspect of his presidency – President G. W. Bush had a GOP majority House and Senate.
Spending. The Republican Party often talks about financial responsibility, but did you know that since 1978-2011, spending has gone up 9.9% under Democrats versus 12.1% under GOP.
Federal Debt. Republicans love to tell us how they will not close tax loopholes on millionaires and billionaires, yet never bring to our attention that from 1978-2011 debt went up 4.2% under Democrats versus 36.4% under the GOP.
GDP. The only thing that the Democrats have a higher numerical yield than the GOP led administrations, is the GDP. It’s a good thing to have it at 12.6% versus a GOP 10.7%. From 1960 to 2005 the gross domestic product measured in year-2000 dollars rose an average of $165 billion a year under Republican presidents and $212 billion a year under Democrats.
The good news for all Americans is that the teaparty extremists were rejected last election and will be again. This is a left of center country on issues ranging from gun control to climate and, although the teaparty lunatics yell the loudest, they make the least sense.
If anything, what the stats you’ve hijacked show (where is HHS when yo need him), is that republicans and democrats share in the demise of the country, but probably for different reasons. It’s sad for future generations that your apparent acceptable level of demise, for the sake of discussion, will lessen the pace of the demise. But sad it is as demise is most certainly in our future.
And, just FYI, they're making more than a dent with their movement. Biofuel and carbon neutral is the future, and these kids know it. #%*^ "Big Oil".
Quote:"One thing is for certain - conservatism has worked every time it’s been tried and it’s the foundation of what the country was established on."
Utter rot, ask any historian or political scientist of any political persuasion. The United States was founded on LIBERAL political principles. The Constitution is the paramount example of a LIBERAL political document and it is the foundation of a quintessentially LIBERAL government, ours. Every single ...more one of the Founding Fathers was a LIBERAL. The Conservatives were the Loyalists (i.e. the Tories) who chose the Crown over their fellow Americans.
Herbert Hoover reacted to the stock market crash with CONSERVATIVE economic policy, drastically curtailing the money supply and driving the country into an abysmal and lengthy depression. I don't know of a single economist who believes that his solution "worked".
Your retort to witch hazel's objective STATISTICS showing that the economic vitality of the country has historically been superior under Democratic control as compared to Republican is that it's all a coincidence. Your "argument" would have been more palatable had you produced some of your own objective STATISTICS to support your baseless OPINION.
1. National debt 2008-10 trillion. National debt 2012-16 trillion (currently 16.5 trillion)
2. National deficit 2008- 459 billion. National deficit 2011- 1.645 trillion.
It's time to stop blaming bush and look at the numbers. Obama is no Clinton.
Actually it was the Federal Reserve that curtailed the money supply through increased interest rates. Hoover did very little during the time related to the oncoming depression other than reassuring business executives since it started internationally, and he believed the economy would eventually fix itself. It took a liberal war ;) to revitalize American industry to turn the country around.
Your misstatement of Liberal philosophy is typical of muddled conservatives.
The truth is that 21st Century Liberals are the linear descendants of Jefferson, Franklin, Washington and the other great men who signed their names to our founding documents. Conservatives, on the other hand, are the political descendants of the Tories who despised them. (The Democrats, being degenerate Liberals, more often represent Liberal ideals than the Republicans, hence, we ...more usually vote for them.)
The pole star of Liberalism is "Equality" as espoused in The Rights of Man, The Declaration of Independence, The Constitution and The Bill of Rights. EQUALITY is the first cause of revolution cited by Jefferson, the second is INALIENABLE RIGHTS. These are the ideals that motivate Liberal political philosophy, whichever established party we wind up voting for. Since the Constitution is the embodiment of Liberal political principle, we jealously protect it.
For the past hundred and fifty years, the Democratic and Republican Parties have owned the government, representing populism and privilege respectively (and unprincipledly.) During those hundred and fifty years, the votes of Liberals have gone to that party which, at the time, protected Constitutional guarantees in addition to promoting that party's specific egoistic agenda.
Your confusion of Revolutionary Liberals with Libertarians (the latter being, in reality, little more than anarchists with combed hair) is due to their objection to the monarchical merchantilism that oppressed America. Liberals were opposed to it because it subordinated the American colonies (i.e. made them unequal), not because they believed free trade should subordinate patriotism.
As regards Hoover's response to the stock market crash, are you asserting that he did NOT pursue a conservative economic solution (even if, monetarily, it was administered by the Federal Reserve?) Your statement was, I believe, "[C]onservatism has worked every time it's been tried." Or are you arguing that his conservative economic solution did work as soon as the United States entered WWII?
And, wasn't it the mercantile magnates who exited the market without so much as a whimper heard about their actions via insider trading? They in turn consolidated power, and wealth by being liquid because they were in on the scam, while good hardworking people were looking for a bridge to jump from?
"Our laws are the output of a system which clothes rascals in robes ...more and honesty in rags."
~ Mary Lease
The Tories just like liberals today, embraced the continuous expansion of government that increasingly encroaches on freedoms; they were blindly loyal to the Crown, just as liberals are blinded today to one "superior" position, just as you've taken on the statistics.
The founding fathers were so incredibly far right by today's political standards, that they would be shunned, just as the left portrays Tea Party Patriots today. Yes the founders wrote of unalienable Rights – among them Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness. Current day liberals have absolutely no regard for life of the innocent unborn, sense of Liberty because they increasingly want more government, and they think Happiness is a guarantee where “wealth” should be redistributed as a result. Free speech is fine with liberals as long as you agree with their agenda. The founders counted on an unbiased media to keep democracy in check. We have a corrupt liberal media that protects and coddles a liberal president.
Modern liberalism is a proponent of redistribution. The Founders were not. Ben Franklin said, “When the people find that they can vote themselves money, that will herald the end of the republic.” Thomas Jefferson said, “The democracy will cease to exist when you take away from those who are willing to work and give to those who would not.” Entitlements have gone through the roof spearheaded by a liberal president who uses it to buy votes and power.
No, there was no muddled mistatement of liberal philosphy.
Greenspan was a conservative Republican, as well as Reagan, and the House of Bush. And which party ripped off the "entitlement" surplus in the last thirty years to support deficit spending? Yeah, "We" thought so...
An inventive rewrite of the Revolution with the Liberals now cast as Libertarian Conservatives. But should it not be the Loyalists, then, who are Tea Party Conservatives? After all, they are just trying to prevent the disintegration of the nation caused by the Libertarian Conservatives' demand for entitlements. The Indians would be Isolationist Conservatives intent on preventing the Libertarian Conservative from further interfering in their lives. And the slaves would ...more be Objectivist Conservatives who respect their servitude as an entirely appropriate manifestation of the "virtue of selfishness" as practiced by the Libertarian Conservatives and the Tea Party Conservatives.
In fact, as a result of this brilliant new conservative exegesis, the American Revolutions ought properly to be renamed, "The American Misunderstanding", for the sake of clarity since it is obvious now that everyone was on the same page.
We Liberals, fortunately, do not need to blue pencil history since the principles of Liberalism on which our behavior is based were written down by The Founding Fathers and are referenced for instruction whenever needed. We don't need to resort to Swiftian fiction as do the conservatives in an attempt to conceal the fact that the only "principle" on which their behavior is based is acquisitive self-interest.
The founders were also generous. They did not cling to power, they distributed it outward. They kept taxes low. When surplus revenues arose, they spent them on roads and other infrastructure projects of broad, general benefit. Fast forward present day, Liberals today have no problem taxing the rich, giving the money to a poor, and calling that generous. But it lacks the key requirements of the founders Liberality, because there is insufficient freedom in it, and it lacks key requirements of reasonableness and purpose. There would have been no clearer mark of wastefulness and extravagance according to the founders, than borrowing in order to give.
Now, I have no doubt you look at present day liberalism in this light, and in some respects I can buy the argument given the well intentioned endeavors. But, in the end and present day, present day liberalism is way off the mark of free will and attaining the correct end result. Current day Conservatism and the focus of the Tea Party Patriots is much more closely aligned with the virtues of the founding fathers and their definition of liberalism.
They were AGAINST corporate power, which leads to abuse.
They were AGAINST "God on the throne".
They were AGAINST socioeconomic disparity.
They were AGAINST too much power, residing in too few hands.
They were AGAINST money in politics, and corporations being involved in politics.
They were AGAINST central banks.
They were AGAINST EVERYTHING THIS COUNTRY HAS BECOME.
“The challenge remains. On the other side are formidable forces: money, political power, the major media. On our side are the people of the world and a power greater than money or weapons: the truth.
Truth has a power of its own. Art has a power of its own. That age-old lesson – that everything we do matters – is the meaning of the people’s struggle here in the United States and everywhere. A poem can inspire a movement. ...more A pamphlet can spark a revolution. Civil disobedience can arouse people and provoke us to think, when we organize with one another, when we get involved, when we stand up and speak out together, we can create a power no government can suppress. We live in a beautiful country. But people who have no respect for human life, freedom, or justice have taken it over. It is now up to all of us to take it back.”
~ Howard Zinn, A Power Governments Cannot Suppress
Exactly my point. We didn't get to the brink of economic collapse and bankruptcy because of conservative principles. We got here because of the lack of them.
I agree with the socioeconomic disparity claim if it entails protecting individual freedoms to help the poor by enabling economic productivity that creates more jobs. The founders would view the current focus on income-growth disparity as poisonous. The more government ...more attempts to equalize incomes, the less an economy produces.
Yes,folks,CPAC has secured the wisdom of Mitt "47%" Romney.Sarah "I can see Russia from my house" Palin and Rick "Man On Dog" Santorum to addressi its annual convention.
Who did it snub in favor of these pillars of wisdom?
None other than the one republican with the highest approval rating in either party.New Jersey Governor Chris Christie.
I guess the first C in CPAC stands for Crazy.
From factcheck.org-
"Q: Has the Obama administration started a program to use "taxpayer money" to give free cell phones to welfare recipients?
A: No. Low-income households have been eligible for discounted telephone service for more than a decade. But the program is funded by telecom companies, not by taxes, and the president has nothing to do with it. "
Beware of conservaitves lying.They do it ...more alll the time.
This is why I usually post the entire link to debunk your talking points-
From factcheck-
"SafeLink is run by a subsidiary of América Móvil, the world’s fourth largest wireless company in terms of subscribers, but it is not paid for directly by the company. Nor is it paid for with "tax payer money," as the e-mail claims. Rather, it is funded through the Universal Service Fund, which is administered by the Universal Service ...more Administrative Company, an independent, not-for-profit corporation set up by the Federal Communications Commission. The USF is sustained by contributions from telecommunications companies such as "long distance companies, local telephone companies, wireless telephone companies, paging companies, and payphone providers." The companies often charge customers to fund their contributions in the form of a universal service fee you might see on your monthly phone bill. The fund is then parceled out to companies, such as América Móvil, that create programs, such as SafeLink, to provide telecommunications service to rural areas and low-income households."
Here's the entire post from factcheck-
"The Obama Phone?
Posted on October 29, 2009 , Updated on Nov. 5, 2009
Q: Has the Obama administration started a program to use "taxpayer money" to give free cell phones to welfare recipients?
A: No. Low-income households have been eligible for discounted telephone service for more than a decade. But the program is funded by telecom companies, not by taxes, and the president has nothing to do with it.
FULL QUESTION
Is this e-mail true?
I had a former employee call me earlier today inquiring about a job, and at the end of the conversation he gave me his phone number. I asked the former employee if this was a new cell phone number and he told me yes this was his "Obama phone."
⬐ Click to expand/collapse the full text ⬏
I asked him what an "Obama phone" was and he went on to say that welfare recipients are now eligible to receive (1) a FREE new phone and (2) approx 70 minutes of FREE minutes every month. I was a little skeptical so I Googled it and low and behold he was telling the truth. TAX PAYER MONEY IS BEING REDISTRIBUTED TO WELFARE RECIPIENTS FOR FREE CELL PHONES.. This program was started earlier this year. Enough is enough, the ship is sinking and it’s sinking fast. The very foundations that this country was built on are being shaken. The age-old concepts of God, family, and hard work have flown out the window and are being replaced with "Hope and Change" and "Change we can believe in." You can click on the link below to read more about the "Obama phone"…just have a barf bag ready. https://www.safelinkwireless.com/EnrollmentPublic/home.aspx Google: Safelink Wireless
FULL ANSWER
Welfare recipients, and others, can receive a free cell phone, but the program is not funded by the government or taxpayer money, as the e-mail alleges. And it’s hardly new.
How It Works
SafeLink Wireless, the program mentioned in the e-mail, does indeed offer a cell phone, about one hour’s worth of calling time per month, and other wireless services like voice mail to eligible low-income households. Applicants have to apply and prove that they are either receiving certain types of government benefits, such as Medicaid, or have household incomes at or below 135 percent of the poverty line. Using 2009 poverty guidelines, that’s $14,620 for an individual and a little under $30,000 for a family of four, with slightly higher amounts for Alaska and Hawaii.
SafeLink is run by a subsidiary of América Móvil, the world’s fourth largest wireless company in terms of subscribers, but it is not paid for directly by the company. Nor is it paid for with "tax payer money," as the e-mail claims. Rather, it is funded through the Universal Service Fund, which is administered by the Universal Service Administrative Company, an independent, not-for-profit corporation set up by the Federal Communications Commission. The USF is sustained by contributions from telecommunications companies such as "long distance companies, local telephone companies, wireless telephone companies, paging companies, and payphone providers." The companies often charge customers to fund their contributions in the form of a universal service fee you might see on your monthly phone bill. The fund is then parceled out to companies, such as América Móvil, that create programs, such as SafeLink, to provide telecommunications service to rural areas and low-income households.
History
The SafeLink program has actually been offering cell phones to low-income households in some states since 2008, not beginning "earlier this year," as the e-mail claims. But the program is rooted in a deeper history.
When phone lines were first laid out in the late 19th century, they were not always inter-operable. That is to say the phone service created by one company to serve one town may not have been compatible with the phone service of another company serving a different town nearby. The telecom companies themselves saw the folly in this arrangement, and so in 1913, AT&T committed itself to resolving interconnection problems as part of the "Kingsbury Commitment."
That common goal of universal service became a goal of universal access to service when Congress passed The Telecommunications Act of 1934. The act created the FCC and also included in its preamble a promise "to make available, so far as possible, to all the people of the United States, a rapid, efficient, Nation-wide, and world-wide wire and radio communication service with adequate facilities at reasonable charges.” There was a fear, expressed by telecom companies themselves, that market forces alone might encourage companies to pass on providing service to hard-to-reach places. This would both hurt the people who wouldn’t have service as well as existing customers who wouldn’t be able to reach them. So the new FCC was tasked with promoting this principle of "universal service."
This informal practice was codified when the Universal Service Administrative Company (USAC) was created as part of the 1996 Telecommunications Act to "ensure all Americans, including low-income consumers and those who live in rural, insular, high cost areas, shall have affordable service and [to] help to connect eligible schools, libraries, and rural health care providers to the global telecommunications network." The USAC includes four programs to serve rural areas, high cost areas, rural health care providers, and schools and libraries. Since 1997, USAC has provided discounted land line service to low-income individuals. (A more limited program to offer assistance to low-income individuals was created a decade earlier; the telecommunications act expanded and formalized it.) According to Eric Iversen, USAC director of external relations, the Universal Service Fund more recently began funding programs that provide wireless service, such as the pre-paid cellular SafeLink program mentioned in the chain e-mail.
The president has no direct impact on the program, and one could hardly call these devices "Obama Phones," as the e-mail author does. This specific program, SafeLink, started under President George Bush, with grants from an independent company created under President Bill Clinton, which was a legacy of an act passed under President Franklin Roosevelt, which was influenced by an agreement reached between telecommunications companies and the administration of President Woodrow Wilson.
Wilson Phones, anyone?
– Justin Bank
Update, Nov. 5: A public relations representative from SafeLink Wireless contacted us to note that the América Móvil subsidiary that operates the SafeLink program and receives funds from the USF is TracFone Wireless, based in Miami, Fla. "
***** US NATIONAL DEBT!*****
Senate Democrats have not passed a budget since 2009
Everyone go to www.usdebtclock.org and get hypnotized,
STOP THE OUT OF CONTROL SPENDING NOW! BEFORE ITS TO LATE!
They don't want to talk about creating jobs anymore,since the republicans abandoned helping anyone but corporations and the rich.
I’m still waiting for your suggested program (funded by tax payers) that could be cut ...more to SAVE THE TOWER!! Hey, how about the Postal Service. Heee hee heeeeee…
Or maybe you don't like someone always in your business like Cass Sunstein, Mayor Bloomberg! and Janet Nap.
This is what your hostile progressive movement to squelch the 10th amendment feels like. Socialism,Communism and Fascist movements share certain common features, including the veneration of the state, a devotion to dear leader, and an emphasis ...more on spreading around the wealth.
A world where individual rights, responsible behavior and personal successes are wiped out for the good of the hive.
Corporate fascism = Merry Ol' England = Present day Corporations
If you've been to a National Park, thank a Progressive. If you've eaten safe food, and drank clean water thank a Progressive. If your children don't work in sweatshops, thank a Progressive. If you are a woman and have the right to vote, thank a Progressive.
Your rants are an insult to those who model themselves after the Progressive ...more Party of 1912.
You won't be visiting National Parks, you can't afford to feed your family, and you probably don't care if the water is clean or dirty.
National Park System
Safe Food and Drug Act
Trust Busting
If you want to thank ANYONE for screwing the American People, you can thank Ronald Reagan for being a puppet of Donald Regan. You wouldn't know an honest to Providence Progressive if they walked up and explained to you how aristocracy and oligarchy have destroyed our Congress, our markets, and a good portion of the world. If America was more like Iceland, her roots would ...more not be betrayed.
Making any comparison of the US to Iceland which has a population of 320,000, is utterly ridiculous. As one of the wealthiest nations post WW II, they by leaps and bounds are able to sustain their economy even with universal health care and banking collapse the US experienced in 2008, due to the absense of variable the US does not have the ...more convernience or luxury to ignore to include no standing army, a small/healthy population and some of the most restrictive immigration laws and citizenship laws on the books, to include, jususguinas, aka, no birth citizenship. In short, it's apples and oranges.
Apparently, we are too weak to do that...
(Reuters) - Bob Woodward on Wednesday criticized Barack Obama's handling of the automatic U.S. budget cuts set to take effect this week, calling he's decision to hold back on military deployments "madness."
Or is it just plan old Barackathome narcissism…
Much like Hitler, Obama feels his supporters have failed him, by not affording him unilateral, imperial control in his second term…
They ...more must be punished… The nation must be punished, for it’s failure to recognize him as king, and their audacity to question his spending.
Just as the German nation had to be punished for ‘failing’ Hitler, now America must be punished for ‘failing’ Obama.
Silly little minions simply don;t know their place.
The truth is the 2% not being spent, even spending 19% more than last year is negligible, and could be easily dealt with my simply not giving money away to a single foreign state for a year…
But it won’t be… The cuts will be targeted for maximum punitive value against the American public.
All hail the emperor!
BOB WOODWARD: A 'Very Senior' White House Person Warned Me I'd 'Regret' What I'm Doing
Bob Woodward said this evening on CNN that a "very senior person" at the White House warned him that he would "regret doing this," the same day he has continued to slam President Barack Obama over the looming forced cuts known as the sequester.
CNN host Wolf Blitzer said that the network invited a White House official to debate Woodward on-air, but the White House declined.
"It ...more makes me very uncomfortable to have the White House threatening reporters, 'You're going to regret doing something that you believe in,'" Woodward said.
"I think they're very confused,"
Over the past weeks, President Obama has been running around the country like Chicken Little spreading falsehoods about sequester, all in the hopes of blaming a 2% budget cut (which he proposed and signed into law) for an anemic economy that might be headed into a double-dip recession. Simply put, the White House and its media are pushing this fabricated Narrative in the hopes of shifting blame away from Obama's failed economic policies and ...more onto the GOP and a lack of government largess.
If our economy crashes, Obama wants to blame sequester; he wants to argue that our economic woes are caused by a government that isn't big enough, and that he needs a Democrat-controlled House to correct that. It's an audaciously dishonest plot, and it almost worked. The monkeys in the wrench, though, have been little things called facts, a Republican Party refusing to blink, and one brave and honest reporter. Thank you Mr Woodward!
From TPM-
Conservatives Regret Taking Woodward’s ‘Threat’ Story Seriously
Now that the correspondence between Bob Woodward and the White House has been revealed as tame and cordial, conservative commentators are reacting with disappointment to the veteran journalist's claim that he was threatened over his sequestration reporting.
Politico on Thursday posted the emails between Woodward and White House economic adviser Gene ...more Sperling, who told Woodward, "as a friend, I think you will regret staking out that claim."
"Looks like we were played," The Daily Caller's Matt Lewis wrote Thursday morning.
RedState editor Erick Erickson was also surprised after reading the emails:
Erick Erickson ✔ @EWErickson
Ok wow. Finally read the email to Woodward. I must now move to the "not a threat" camp.
3:12 PM - 28 Feb 13
The Washington Examiner's Byron York agreed:
Byron York @ByronYork
After reading Sperling-Woodward email, it's nowhere close to a threat. Agree with @mattklewis: People who made big deal of this got played.
Fox News political analyst Brit Hume tweeted that it is hard to imagine feeling threatened by Sperling:
On one hand, only Woodward can say if he felt threatened by WH email. On the other, hard to imagine feeling threatened by Gene Sperling.
3:27 PM - 28 Feb 13
Keith Urbahn, Donald Rumsfeld's former chief of staff, tweeted:
Keith Urbahn @keithurbahn
Vintage Woodward: Cherry-pick a friendly exchange, make it sinister & vault himself into the media. Did it with Rummy in State of Denial.
2:37 PM - 28 Feb 13 "
Looks like you people got played.
Like a fiddle.
fiddle fiddle fiddle.
Lanny Davis, who served under President Bill Clinton as special counsel to the White House, told Washington, D.C.'s WMAL this morning that the Obama White House had also threatened the Washington Times over his column, warning that the Times would suffer limited access to White House officials and might have its White House credentials revoked. Davis, a Democrat, is seldom ...more critical of the Obama administration's policies.
Davis was speaking with News editor Larry O'Connor, who co-hosts a morning show on WMAL. Davis said he had never spoken publicly about the threats before, but they seemed relevant after the White House told legendary reporter Bob Woodward that he would "regret" insisting that the White House had come up with the idea of the budget sequester, which President Barack Obama is now urging Congress urgently to revoke.
Everybody knows that fox rots your brain.
nuff said.
nuff said.
As you would say, Thanks for playing
Your misstatement of Liberal philosophy is typical of muddled conservatives and further more in defense of Jay Sears...
To Funny
The Jay Sears case is clear evidence of the fraudulence of conservative claims to respect the Constitution. They would thoughtlessly trample on the 1st and 4th Amendments therein because they find them inconvenient. Were it the 2nd Amendment that was involved, on the other hand, there would be no end to their arguments to protect the suspect's rights. The simple fact is that conservatives look at the Constitution as if it were a buffet. Depending on their self-interest ...more in a particular case, they either choose a bit or ignore it, their only principle being "will this get me what I want."
Liberals defend the Constitution even if doing so excites public opprobrium. We revere it as the work of genius that has made us who we are.
- - -
Quote: "Since I only have one more week of vacation I am not even going to aggravate my self with a further response ...LOL"
What a shame that your languor has deprived us of what your prior posts suggest would have been scintillating repartee.
Make no mistake sir...if those pictures where of one of my children more than the 1ST and 4Th amendments would have been trampled...
and further more my "languor is none of your business is it.
You stuck you foot in your mouth and nothing is going to change that.We see you clearly now, and sunlight is the best disinfectant.
You should ask your therapists about your feelings on the Jay S. case.
Thanks once again to conservative readers for chiming in reliably with concrete examples of the behavior to which my post refers:
Joe, we understand, if Constitutional guarantees stand in opposition to your own opinions (especially if viscerally held), you will disregard them.
Undocumented Democrat, your confabulation is only matched by your malice. Your opinions never are troubled by the absence of fact.
Cafeteria Constitutionalism ...more & ignorant accusation, standard products of conservative thought.
What are you smoking?
You are startled? Why? After all, our guys wrote it.
Carry on...
Save the Tower, Tim. Save the Tower!!!!
The republicans prefferred to protect the yacht and plane owners,the people with big summer homes and corporate welfare.
Those people need to pay their fair share without having loopholes to hide money in.
They're cheating the American people because they have special
rights.
Benghazi
Fast & Furious
Hagel
Lew
2nd amendment attacks
\That's why the republican party is dying and ony 22% of Americans identify themselves as republicans.
The crazy bigots from the tea party are to thank for it.They're making the republican party irrevelent.
The only ones crying about it are the teabaggers.
You guys,who depend on fox (news?),Breitbart and Rush Limbaugh to supply you with your latest Obama Derangement talking points.
The MSM won't waste it's time on your allegations-the only ones who listen are you yourselves.
If you listen carefully,you can hear the whole world laughing at you.
Of course, captain jackboot has to pull the "I'm a better patriot than you" crap.
He does it all the time when he can't formulate a cogent response.
And "blah,blah,blah" is another intelligent response.
Babbling idiots.
Think about that it. That a government drowning in debt should cut back by 2.2 percent — and the country survives. That a government now borrowing 35 cents of every dollar it spends reduces that borrowing by two cents “and nothing bad really happens.” Oh, the humanity!
A normal citizen might think this a good thing. For reactionary liberalism, however, ...more whatever sum our ever-inflating government happens to spend today (now double what Bill Clinton spent in his last year) is the Platonic ideal — the reduction of which, however minuscule, is a national calamity.
Good God, people might get the idea that we can shrink government and live on.
Hence the president’s message. If the “sequestration” — automatic spending cuts — goes into effect, the skies will fall. Plane travel jeopardized, carrier groups beached, teachers furloughed. And a shortage of junk-touching TSA agents.
The Obama administration has every incentive to make the sky fall, lest we suffer that terrible calamity — cuts the nation survives. Are they threatening to pare back consultants, conferences, travel and other nonessential fluff? Hardly. It shall be air-traffic control. Meat inspection. Weather forecasting.
A 2011 Government Accountability Office report gave a sampling of the vastness of what could be cut, consolidated and rationalized in Washington: 44 overlapping job training programs, 18 for nutrition assistance, 82 (!) on teacher quality, 56 dealing with financial literacy, more than 20 for homelessness, etc. Total annual cost: $100 billion-$200 billion, about two to five times the entire domestic sequester.
Are these on the chopping block? No sir. It’s firemen first. That’s the phrase coined in 1976 by legendary Washington Monthly editor Charlie Peters to describe the way government functionaries beat back budget cuts. Dare suggest a nick in the city budget, and the mayor immediately shuts down the firehouse. The DMV back office, stacked with nepotistic incompetents, remains intact. Shrink it and no one would notice. Sell the firetruck — the people scream and the city council falls silent about any future cuts.
After all, the sequester is just one-half of 1 percent of GDP. It amounts to 1.4 cents on the dollar of nondefense spending, 2 cents overall.
Because of this year’s payroll tax increase, millions of American workers have had to tighten their belts by precisely 2 percent. They found a way. Washington, spending $3.8 trillion, cannot? If so, we might as well declare bankruptcy now and save the attorneys’ fees.
The problem with sequestration, of course, is that the cuts are across the board and do not allow money to move between accounts. It’s dumb because it doesn’t discriminate.
Fine. Then change the law. That’s why we have a Congress. Discriminate. Prioritize. That’s why we have budgets. Except that the Democratic Senate hasn’t passed one in four years. And the White House, which proposed the sequester in the first place, had 18 months to establish rational priorities among accounts — and did nothing.
When the GOP House passed an alternative that cut where the real money is — entitlement spending — President Obama threatened a veto. Meaning, he would have insisted that the sequester go into effect — the very same sequester he now tells us will bring on Armageddon.
Good grief. The entire sequester would have reduced last year’s deficit from $1.33 trillion to $1.24 trillion. A fraction of a fraction. Nonetheless, insists Obama, such a cut is intolerable. It has to be “balanced” — i.e., largely replaced — by yet more taxes.
Which demonstrates that, for Phill, this is not about deficit reduction, which interests him not at all. The purpose is purely political: to complete his BHO's Election Day victory by breaking the Republican opposition.
At the fiscal cliff, Obama broke — and split — the Republicans on taxes. With the sequester, he intends to break them on spending. Make the cuts as painful as possible, and watch the Republicans come crawling for a “balanced” (i.e., tax-hiking) deal.
In the past two years, House Republicans stopped cold Obama’s left-liberal agenda. Break them now, and the road is open to resume enactment of the expansive, entitlement-state liberalism that Obama proclaimed in his second inaugural address.
But he cannot win if “nothing bad really happens.” Indeed, he’d look both foolish and cynical for having cried wolf.
Obama’s incentive to deliberately make the most painful and socially disruptive cuts possible (say, oh, releasing illegal immigrants from prison) is enormous. And alarming.
Here's President Obama during his ...more news conference yesterday saying something that is absolutely, one-hundred percent false.
Starting tomorrow everybody here, all the folks who are cleaning the floors at the Capitol. Now that Congress has left, somebody’s going to be vacuuming and cleaning those floors and throwing out the garbage. They’re going to have less pay. The janitors, the security guards, they just got a pay cut, and they’ve got to figure out how to manage that. That’s real.
is really crippling us is the 17 TRILLION dollar debt and a president that doesn't
know how to cut spending and grow jobs. We are up to our necks and not just us
but our children and grandchildren. Spending has to stop somewhere and I can't
see that the 85 billion in cuts is going to hurt us. But Obama will try his hardest to make sure that the cuts hurt and then try to blame everyone else.
Sequester was Obama's ...more idea......he
owns it. Now he needs to stop whining and get to work.
FINALLY, this "president" has done something that only he can bare the shame for. He can not circumvent Congress on this and make them irrelevant. This "sequester" as his and HIS alone.
From Factcheck
"The ‘Obamaquester’
Posted on February 19, 2013
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The Line: “The president’s sequester.”
The Party: Republican
Editor’s note: This is the first of an occasional series called “Party Lines” that will highlight misleading ...more talking points by both parties.
This Republican talking point aims to blame President Obama for more than $1 trillion in automatic, across-the-board cuts in domestic and defense spending that — without action by Congress — are scheduled to take effect on March 1. House Speaker John Boehner, who said on Feb. 12 that “we are only weeks away from the devastating consequences of the president’s sequester,” has been using variations of the line on his website since at least September 2012. He and congressional Republicans recently have taken to using the hashtag #Obamaquester on Twitter to fault the president for the looming cuts. But the reality is that the pending cuts would not be possible had both Democrats and Republicans not supported the legislation that included them.
Here’s the background: In the summer of 2011, when Democrats and Republicans couldn’t agree on a way to cut spending in exchange for increasing the federal government’s borrowing limit, legislators settled on the Budget Control Act instead. The law capped federal discretionary spending to save almost $1.2 trillion over a 10-year period, but also mandated that a bipartisan, 12-person congressional committee find at least $1.5 trillion in additional cuts. If the committee failed to come up with a plan, another $1.2 trillion in cuts would occur automatically — half from defense spending and half from discretionary spending on domestic programs — through sequestration. The committee failed to reach an agreement, and the automatic cuts will now begin in March if Congress doesn’t stop them.
In his book “The Price of Politics,” veteran journalist Bob Woodward of the Washington Post wrote that it was, in fact, Obama’s then-director of the Office of Management and Budget, Jacob Lew, and White House Legislative Affairs Director Rob Nabors who brought the idea of sequestration to Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid before it was proposed to Republicans in Congress. That is the source of Republican claims that this is “the president’s sequester.”
But as Woodward wrote in his book, and as he subsequently explained to Politico, neither party wanted the automatic cuts to take effect or thought they would happen. The cuts were included as a mechanism to force members of the bipartisan committee to work out a deal to avoid them.
Politico, Oct. 23, 2012: “No one thought it would happen. The idea was to design something … that was so onerous that no one would ever let it happen. Of course, it did, because they couldn’t reach agreement,” [Woodward] said. “They all believed that the supercommittee was going to come up with a $1.2 trillion deficit-reduction plan, so there would be no sequestration. Of course, the supercommittee failed and so the trigger went off, which has all of these very Draconian cuts.”
The automatic cuts were supposed to take effect in January, but the president and Congress agreed to delay them until March 1 to give themselves more time to work out a deal. Now, as the new deadline for sequestration draws closer, many Republicans blame the president. And though it’s true that the idea of sequestration originated in the White House, there would be no possibility of automatic cuts had members of Congress — both Democrats and Republicans — not gone along with the idea.
The Budget Control Act passed in the House with 269 votes in favor — 174 from Republicans and 95 from Democrats. And the bill cleared the Senate with 74 “yea” votes, of which 28 were cast by Republicans. In fact, one of those voting in favor, Republican Sen. John McCain of Arizona, said on NBC’s “Meet the Press” on Feb. 17 that “Republicans deserve blame; I’ll take some blame for it.”
And Rep. Justin Amash, a Republican from Michigan who voted against the bill, has said that “it’s totally disingenuous” for Republicans who voted in favor of the bill to now blame the president for it. Amash told Buzzfeed: “The debt ceiling deal in 2011 was agreed to by Republicans and Democrats, and regardless of who came up with the sequester, they all voted for it. So, you can’t vote for something and, with a straight face, go blame the other guy for its existence in law.”
– D’Angelo Gore
Below is a list of some Republicans who have faulted the president for the sequester:
Rep. Martha Roby, Feb. 16: My district is home to Fort Rucker, the primary flight training base for Army Aviation. If the president’s sequester takes effect, Fort Rucker would lose 500 students training to be combat aviators and roughly 37,000 hours of aviation training. Source: Weekly Republican Address
Sen. Mitch McConnell, Feb. 13: Take the Obama sequester as just one example. The President had a chance last night to offer a thoughtful alternative to his sequester, one that could reduce spending in a smarter way. That is what Republicans have been calling for all along, and it is the kind of thing the House has already voted to do not once but twice. We want to work with him to actually make that happen. Source: Congressional Record
Rep. John Boehner, Feb. 12: We are only weeks away from the devastating consequences of the president’s sequester, and he failed to offer the cuts needed to replace it. Source: Press release
Rep. Jeff Miller, Feb. 10: The Administration’s sequestration threatens to reduce our military’s readiness and throw our nation into another recession. Source: Newsletter
Rep. Howard McKeon, Feb. 8: Today the White House finally broke their silence on the consequences President Obama’s sequester would have on domestic spending. Source: Press release
Rep. Peter Roskam, Feb. 5: The sequester is the president’s sequester. Source: CNBC’s “The Kudlow Report“
Politifact looked at this as well and here's what they found-
"Sequestration hits; we sort the facts
By Molly Moorhead
Published on Wednesday, February 27th, 2013 at 4:36 p.m.
The canons fire Friday in Washington’s latest fiscal showdown -- sequestration -- since President Barack Obama and Republicans in the House of Representatives failed to hammer out a last-minute deal.
Until a compromise is reached, federal agencies will be hit with across-the-board budget cuts that are the result of a law passed in 2011, which neither side wants to claim now.
In Washington, the claims are flying about who’s to blame for this mess, and what will be left in puddles on the floor.
At PolitiFact, we’ve looked into numerous statements about the impact of the sequester’s sweeping cuts.
Obama, in a speech at the White House, said the policy is indiscriminate and "won’t consider whether we’re cutting some bloated program that has outlived its usefulness, or a vital service that Americans depend on every single day. It doesn’t make those distinctions."
We found that he glossed over the discretion that agency heads will have in distributing the cuts, but he’s right that sequestration does not take into account which programs are needed vs. which are extraneous. Our rating: Mostly True.
He earned another Mostly True when he said that "the majority of the American people agree with me" on his approach to reducing the deficit with a mix of spending cuts and tax increases.
But our fact-checking also found that the president has exaggerated some of the specifics about the sequester.
Obama said "hundreds of thousands of Americans will lose access to primary care and preventive care like flu vaccinations and cancer screenings" under sequestration. One widely cited estimate found that sequester cuts to two programs alone would leave 246,000 people without the types of services Obama mentioned. But those two programs were aimed specifically at flu vaccines and cancer screenings. They didn’t provide general primary care. We rated the claim Half True.
He also warned that "tens of thousands of parents will have to scramble to find child care for their kids." But Obama’s numbers are more of a worst-case scenario than a proven number. We gave him another Half True.
Obama waded into hyperbole when he said that as a result of sequestration, federal prosecutors would have to "let criminals go." It’s clear that U.S. Attorney’s offices are looking at a funding cut that would hinder prosecutions in some fashion. However, officials will have a fair amount of discretion in prioritizing what types of cases to pursue, possibly cutting back on civil cases rather than criminal ones. And the cuts wouldn't directly affect "criminals" at all, but rather suspects whose guilt has not been determined. Obama’s overreach earned a Mostly False.
And if criminals running wild doesn't sound scary enough, Rep. Ami Bera, D-Calif., said in a speech on the House floor that unless the sequester is avoided, "homes are going to burn." Yes, federal firefighting dollars will be cut under sequestration, but that hardly guarantees a neighborhood inferno. That statement earned a Mostly False.
Education Secretary Arne Duncan made the claim that sequestration is already forcing layoffs of teachers. Many school districts, we found, are preparing for such cuts, but no pink slips are being handed out yet. Again, Mostly False.
Republican House Majority Whip Kevin McCarthy made a dubious numbers claim in arguing that sequestration should be replaced only by spending cuts, not new tax revenues. "There's more money going in than any other time," he told Fox News. But the raw dollar amount of government revenue is a meaningless figure -- what matters is the percent of GDP. Our rating: Mostly False.
Finally, we looked at Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood’s assertion that sequestration will delay commercial flights. The FAA says the budget cut will force it to furlough air traffic controllers, without whom the nation’s air travel can’t fully function. Experts told us that the agency has considerable flexibility in keeping controllers on the job. Still, furloughs are a looming reality. Prepare for even longer waits at the airport, folks. This one’s Mostly True."
Looks like the American people are with the president on this one and the republicans are the ones willing to throw the country under the bus for political gain.
youp o s
If you don't know who Andrew Brietbart is, don't worry, the only people who do are those who read breitbart.com. He was a journeyman ideological zealot. His death, however, coming as it did a year ...more ago at the height of Tea Party influence, was prophetic. The vaporizing Tea Party, and the careers of its lunatic House Republicans, including mad old MIchele, will soon be just as dead.
So let it close.
According to the Treasury Department, the national public debt now stands at $16,687,289,180,215.37.
On the first day of Obama’s first term, the debt was $10.626 trillion.
Chinese general who threatened nuclear strike on U.S. visits Washington this week
Maj. Gen. Zhu Chenghu / du.edu
March 4, 2013 7:00 pm
A Chinese general who once threatened to use nuclear weapons against hundreds of U.S. cities will visit the Pentagon this week as part of a U.S.-China military exchange program. I guess since he practicly owns it he figures he owes him a tour. Nice going Barry
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Intragovernmental Holdings - Just under one-third of the Federal debt is owed to about 230 other Federal agencies. How does this happen? Some agencies, like the Social Security Trust Fund, take in more revenue from taxes than they need right now. Rather than stick this cash under a giant mattress, these agencies buy U.S. Treasuries with it.
Which ...more agencies own the most Treasuries? Social Security, by a long shot. Here's the detailed breakdown:
•Social Security (Social Security Trust Fund and Federal Disability Insurance Trust Fund) - $2.72 trillion
•Office of Personnel Management (Federal Employees Retirement, Life Insurance, Hospital Insurance Trust Funds, including Postal Service Fund) - $1.12 trillion
•Dept. of Health and Human Services (Federal Supplementary Medical Insurance Trust Fund) - $69 billion
•Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation - $35 billion
•Department of Transportation (Airport and Highway Trust Fund) - $20 billion
•Department of the Treasury (Exchange Stabilization Fund) - $23 billion
•Department of Labor (Unemployment Trust Fund) - $21 billion
•Other Programs and Funds - $933 billion. (As of September 2012. Source: Treasury Bulletin, Monthly Treasury Statement, Table FD-3:Government Account Series)
Debt Held by the Public - Foreign governments and investors hold 48% of the nation's public debt. The next largest part (21%) is held by other governmental entities, like the Federal Reserve and state and local governments. Fifteen percent is held by mutual funds, private pension funds, savings bonds or individual Treasury notes. The rest (16%) is held by businesses, like banks, and insurance companies and a mish-mash of trusts, businesses and investors. Here's the breakout:
•Foreign - $5.311 trillion
•Federal Reserve - $1.66 trillion
•State and Local Government, including their pension funds - $709.1 billion
•Mutual Funds - $864.9 billion
•Private Pension Funds - $605.2 billion
•Banks - $305.2 billion
•Insurance Companies - $259.1 billion
•U.S. Savings Bonds - $184.7 billion
•Other (individuals, government-sponsored enterprises, brokers and dealers, bank personal trusts and estates, corporate and non-corporate businesses, and other investors) - $1.14 trillion. (Federal Reserve as of Januray 2, 2013; All others as of June 2012. Source: Treasury Bulletin, Ownership of Federal Securities, Table OFS-2)
This debt is not only Treasury bills, notes, and bonds but also TIPS, Savings Bonds, and State and Local Government Series securities.
As you can see, if you add up debt held by Social Security, and all the retirement and pension funds, a large part of the U.S. Treasury debt (30%) is held in trust for people's retirements. If theoretically the U.S. were to default, foreign investors would be angry, but the greatest harm would befall the average U.S. citizen.
It is stunning that any legislator would cost 750,000 Americans their jobs, and risk the recovery (or a double-dip recession) in order to save stupendously wealthy corporations the onus of actually bearing their statutory tax burden. Yet we have over a hundred of them running loose ...more in the House. One hopes that the Affordable Care Act will allow them the mental health care that they so obviously need once they are off the government payroll in 2014.
The people voted for a balanced approach-increased revenue and cuts. The president offered cuts but the republicans won't agree to them.They insist on playing the obstruction game they've played for the last four years.
The republicans won't negotiate in good faith,as usual.
Gallup has consistently recorded Obama's job approval rating at or above fifty-percent. Since Friday, though, the three-day average dipped to a startling 46%.
Better say uncle fast Barry
No wonder the republican party is falling apart-they have no idea what they stand for.
I don't put much stock in Gallup-after all,they predicted that Romney would win by a landslide.
Not that the republicans haven't beEn trying to suppress the voting rights of anyone,right?
It's quite sad, really...
I think it warrants a third time through. I found it to be a shining light on D.C. politics, dysfunction, and the psychological games people play.
"Here [in D.C.] ruining people is considered sport."
~ Vince Foster
However, if that private company were subsidized by government funding, I'm sure the numbers would get real interesting, real quick...
He's greasing us for the continued lack luster economy... from his press conference Friday... "growth cut by over one-half of 1 percent...750,000 fewer jobs...every time that we get a piece of economic news, over the next month, next two months, next six months, as long as the sequester is in place, we’ll know that that economic news could have been better if Congress had not failed to act.....It’s happening ...more because of a choice that Republicans in Congress have made."
It was nice to see the media question Obama a bit about his (lack of) leadership. To whcih the imperial leader reminded us that he's not a dictator as he cut the reporter off in mid sentence... What a clown...
Jessica.
Q Mr. President, to your question, what could you do -- first of all, couldn’t you just have them down here and refuse to let them leave the room until you have a deal? (Laughter.)
THE PRESIDENT: I mean, Jessica, I am not a dictator. I’m the President. So, ultimately, if Mitch McConnell or John Boehner say, we need to go to catch a plane, I can't have Secret Service block the doorway, right? So --
Q But isn’t that part of leadership? I’m sorry to interrupt, but isn’t --
THE PRESIDENT: I understand. And I know that this has been some of the conventional wisdom that's been floating around Washington that somehow, even though most people agree that I’m being reasonable, that most people agree I’m presenting a fair deal, the fact that they don't take it means that I should somehow do a Jedi mind-meld with these folks and convince them to do what’s right. Well, they're elected. We have a constitutional system of government. The Speaker of the House and the leader of the Senate and all those folks have responsibilities.
~ Obi Wan Kenobi
"That green-blooded son of a *****! It's his revenge for all those arguments he lost."
~ Leonard "Bones" McCoy
I Second that premise good insight Fairwind!
Indeed!
The list is shorter...
An internal government email sent Monday instructed an official with a subdivision of the U.S. Department of Agriculture to make sure that sequester-related cuts inflict as much pain as possible to make sure “you are not contradicting what we said the impact would be.”
When Charles Brown of the Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service asked “if there was any latitude” in how officials might allocate ...more sequester cuts to reduce negatively impacting fish inspections, Brown received the following reply:
“We have gone on record with a notification to Congress and whoever else that ‘APHIS would eliminate assistance to producers in 24 states in managing wildlife damage to the aquaculture industry, unless they provide funding to cover the costs.’ So it is our opinion that however you manage that reduction, you need to make sure you are not contradicting what we said the impact would be.”
Lawmakers say the email is further evidence that the Obama Administration is seeking to inflict maximum pain for the minimal $85 billion in cuts.
"This email confirms what many Americans have suspected: The Obama administration is doing everything they can to make sure their worst predictions come true and to maximize the pain of the Sequester cuts for political gain,” said Rep. Tim Griffin (R-AK).
The $85 billion in sequester cuts represents just .5% of the national debt.
***** US NATIONAL DEBT!*****
Senate Democrats have not passed a budget since 2009
Everyone go to www.usdebtclock.org and get hypnotized,
STOP THE OUT OF CONTROL SPENDING NOW! BEFORE ITS TO LATE!
It's over.
The market just hasn't figured out that the dollar is done yet.
Much like the Denarius, Peso, Deutschemark, Chinese "Flying Money", Baht, Continental, Krone, Marrka, Assignats, Francs, Livres, Lire...
Joe said "That because we are not interested in closing any more loopholes. It's about spending cuts this time around clown... no obstruction... no new taxes. Just CUTS CUTS CUTS"
I say, Now we are getting somewhere!
The senate must pass a budget now!
Seems the focus should now be on reducing spending.
"Kevin McCarthy says federal government has more revenue now than ‘any other time’
Share this story:
There’s no need to raise taxes as part of reducing the nation’s deficit, says House Majority Whip Kevin McCarthy.
Broad, blunt spending cuts known as the sequester go into effect March 1 unless Congress steps in. Democrats ...more would prefer to reduce the deficit partly by raising taxes.
But the California Republican argued on Fox News that any solution should cut spending only — there’s plenty of revenue, he said.
"There's more money going in than any other time," he told host Greta Van Susteren on Feb. 25, 2013. "In the last four decades, on average, we brought in 17.9 percent of GDP. Now we're going to bring in 19.1."
Is the federal government collecting more than it ever has — more than it has on average the last 40 years?
Here’s what we found.
‘The last four decades’
McCarthy talked about "percent of GDP," a common tool of economists evaluating the impact of tax policies over time. They prefer to compare tax revenues as a percentage of the overall U.S. economy, the gross domestic product.
It’s fairly easy to see why — using raw numbers wouldn’t account for inflation or changes in population, for example.
Was McCarthy correct that the federal government used to collect, on average, 17.9 percent of the gross domestic product, and that the number will rise to 19.1 percent?
McCarthy’s office pointed us to reports from the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office.
A recent CBO analysis says that, indeed, federal revenue is projected to rise with changes in the law, such as the recent end to Bush tax cuts on households making more than $450,000 a year.
"Revenues are projected to grow from 15.8 percent of GDP in 2012 to 19.1 percent of GDP in 2015 — compared with an average of 17.9 percent of GDP over the past 40 years," CBO’s analysts conclude.
So McCarthy accurately cites a reputable source when he says the federal government has collected an average of 17.9 percent of the nation’s gross domestic product over four decades, and now is "going to bring in 19.1."
(We should mention that even with higher revenue, CBO projects that deficits will increase "because of the pressures of an aging population, rising health care costs, an expansion of federal subsidies for health insurance, and growing interest payments on federal debt.")
But what about McCarthy’s claim that "there's more money going in than any other time"? That’s messier.
‘More money’
So, remember how percentage of GDP is a useful tool for comparing revenue over time?
The government will pull in 16.9 percent in 2013, lower than the average over the last 40 years, according to the Congressional Budget Office. That’s not more money than at "any other time," as McCarthy said.
What about in 2015, when the government is projected to bring in 19.1 percent?
That’s still lower than revenue as a percentage of GDP in seven years of the last 40 — also not more money than at "any other time."
Federal revenue as a percentage of gross domestic product
1981: 19.6 percent
1982: 19.2 percent
1997: 19.2 percent
1998: 19.9 percent
1999: 19.8 percent
2000: 20.6 percent
2001: 19.5 percent
Source: Congressional Budget Office
The only reason tax revenues as a percent of GDP isn't higher is because people earn less taxable income during recessions and government spending is at record levels.
My condolences Phil this must be a difficult time for you.
Imagine that...
As to your post about putting the Senate on Medicaid and paying them 42K per year if they don't pass a budget: I agree wholeheartedly!!! How about stopping ALL payment and benefits if they fail to uphold their sworn constitutional duties?
The Senate is a great example of why there should be term limits. IMHO a citizen shoule be allowed to serve 2 terms in Federal ...more Government, 2 in the House or 2 in the Senate or 1 in each, unless you become Prez or VP, you're out on yer azz back into the real world!!!!
We can'r forge that these folks are our EMPLOYEES, they work for us, not the other way around.
Eliminate coporate money in politics, and that will solve at least 70% of the problem. Eliminate ANY coroporate invlovement in civic life, considering it's one of the principles this country was FOUNDED UPON, and you'll see this B.S. start to clean up real quick.
Bet you wouldn't
it's the other principle this country was FOUNDED UPON... but you seem to be willing to over look that most of the time
The Articles of Confederation were done away with, and replaced by the Constitution and Bill of Rights because a strong central government was required to align the states, and promote unity. Under the Articles each state was printing it's own currency, brokering their own deals with foreign powers, and the fledgling United States was in complete disarray. The idiotic narrative spewed by "the right" that the Founders feared government is totally ...more false. The one thing they feared the most was corporations being the extended arms of despot monarchs, which may as well have come under the heading dictator, and of course the absolute power of a monarch.
There really ended up being two sides over time, and the Federalists were for the most part industrialists from the north. The Anti-Federalists for the most part were slave owners who seceded from the Union so they would have the right to continue the practice of humanitarian abuses and reap profit at the expense of a race of people deemed inferior by aggrandizing elitist zealots.
You need to forget everything they taught you in school, because that history is B******T. And, just for good measure, it bears mentioning that Eli Whitney NEVER invented the cotton gin. There were working models in China decades before him. He just modified it enough to push his version (he had acquaintances in the patent system), and screwed others out of a patent who actually beat him to it.
It also bears mentioning that the Commerce Clause and the Necessary and Practical Clauses beat the 10th Amendment to the punch, and all it really did was mop up the leftovers from the floor. The amendment was merely afterbirth.
Ignorance, and arrogance indeed walk hand in hand...
We're where we are, because there are/have been too many who are so willfully blind, they can't tell the difference.
Being caught lying again and again and again is never a good thing for a U.S. president. A number of recent polls have proven that point, and the point that Obama was not able to get away with dishonestly blaming sequester on the GOP. A poll from Reuters released today brings even worse news. President Chicken Little's approval rating has collapsed to 43%; a drop of seven points since February 19.
The Reuters poll also shows that Obama and ...more his media failed dramatically when it came to blaming sequester on Republicans. Thirty-eight percent blame "all the political actors involved." A mere 27% blame only the GOP. Six-percent blame only Obama and Democrats.
its Hour 7 I am watching it on C SPAN started at 11:47 says he will speak until he gets an answer or can speak no longer "Wont let Obama shred the constitution.
Bravo Mr. Paul... Call the networks tell them we want coverage NOW
That is illustrated by the shortest bar on the graph I posted.
The longest bar on that graph-actually, the five longest bars on that graph-are all republicans who drove spending up in their terms.
Reagan drove it up the most.
and the sheeple who follow them agree.
***** US NATIONAL DEBT!*****
Senate Democrats have not passed a budget since 2009
Everyone go to www.usdebtclock.org and get hypnotized,
STOP THE OUT OF CONTROL SPENDING NOW! BEFORE ITS TO LATE!
They haven't put up anything worth voting on,since, according to the constitution, budgets originate in the House of Representatives.
Sen. Rand Paul declared victory Thursday after Attorney General Eric Holder assured him that the president cannot use a drone to kill a noncombatant American on U.S. soil -- an assurance Paul had sought during his 13-hour filibuster the day before.
"Hooray!" Paul responded when the letter was read to him for the first time during an interview with Fox News. "For 13 hours yesterday, we asked him that question, so there is a result and a victory. Under duress and under public humiliation, ...more the White House will respond and do the right thing."
He's a nut.
The. Greatest. Thing. In. The. World. just happened on CNN.
On her morning show, the outgoing Soledad O'Brien was all set to rip into Fox News Chairman Roger Ailes for describing President Obama as "lazy" in an upcoming biography. The quote in question was published yesterday in an exclusive excerpt given to Vanity Fair.
If past is prologue, there's little doubt O'Brien intended to bring race into the discussion. But O'Brien ...more obviously hadn't done even the minimal amount of homework, you know, like reading the full Ailes quote.
Here's the part of the Ailes quote O'Brien read on the air (the bolded portion is what O'Brien was obviously unaware of and did not read on the air):
Obama’s the one who never worked a day in his life. He never earned a penny that wasn’t public money. How many fund-raisers does he attend every week? How often does he play basketball and golf? I wish I had that kind of time. He’s lazy, but the media won’t report that. He noticed my arched eyebrows and added, “I didn’t come up with that. Obama said that, to Barbara Walters.” (What Obama said was that he feels a laziness in himself that he attributes to his laid-back upbringing in Hawaii.)
The chyron read: "Ailes lets loose. Calls president "lazy," Biden "dumb."
O'Brien turned to her panel and said that was "not nice" Then, after an awkward pause, this happened:
The Blaze's Will Cain: Everyone's latching on to the fact that [Ailes] called the president lazy. … Roger Ailes did go on to say that 'I'm only quoting from the president directly.' He talked about an interview that President Obama gave to Barbara Walters where he said, 'I grew up in Hawaii, which is pretty laid back'. Roger Ailes wasn't coming up with that on his own. He made a point of mentioning that.
Soledad O'Brien: So "pretty laid back" to "lazy" is a little bit of a leap to me.
CNN's John Berman: Barack Obama used the word "lazy."
O'Brien: Interesting. I didn't know that.
Cain: He did. Obama said he feels a laziness in himself that he attributes to his laid back upbringing in Hawaii.
O'Brien: Hmm. Interesting.
It was all so beautifully awkward.
But how could she not know? How could she not have read the full paragraph -- especially if she intended to take this debate where I think she intended to, which was race.
CNN needs to yank O'Brien yesterday.
Seems you and Al sharpie are the only ones that don't get it !
I dont quite understand what your trying to get at ?
"The comment about Obama was reportedly made during last year's presidential primary season as Ailes was briefed about Democratic operative Hilary Rosen's remark that Ann Romney had never worked a day in her life.
Advertise | AdChoices“Obama’s the one who never worked a day in his life. He never earned a penny that wasn’t public money. How many fund-raisers does he attend every week? How often does he play basketball and golf? I wish I had ...more that kind of time," Ailes said, according to the excerpt.
"He’s lazy, but the media won’t report that,” he said, then added that Obama had admitted being lazy in an interview with Barbara Walters
In a 2011 interview with Walters, Obama said, "There is a deep down, underneath all the work I do, I think there’s a laziness in me," adding, "It’s probably from, you know, growing up in Hawaii, and it’s sunny outside and sitting on the beach.’”
Calling Obama lazy was a personal attack aimed at him in a racial context.
It's what the right does.
Which means all the time.
When Al Sharpton yells "dog whistle" its because he is the only one who heard it
The U.S. economy added 236,000 jobs in February, according to a Labor Department report released Friday. That's much stronger growth than in January, when employers hired a revised 119,000 workers.
The gains were broad-based as offices, restaurants, construction firms and hospitals all added jobs.
Meanwhile, the unemployment rate dipped to 7.7%, as 12 ...more million workers were counted as unemployed. The drop was partly because more people said they got jobs, but also because 130,000 people dropped out of the labor force.
The increase in jobs and decrease in the unemployment rate were better than expected. Stocks rose modestly in early trading Friday, with the Dow hitting yet another record high.
Context is everything .. at least when it come to reporting, But when it comes to protecting BHO and his failed economic policies, the media willfully lies by omission to manufacture a reality in which Obama's policies have succeeded. Check out this piece comparing Obama's "recovery" to Reagan's recovery, compleate with added historical "context".
that's what you're calling socialism.
.
that's what you're calling socialism.
The labor force participation rate fell again as potential workers stopped looking for work. …If the LFP rate was where it was in January 2009, the unemployment rate would be 10.8%. …
The share of the unemployed out of work for 27 weeks or longer increased to 40.2% from 38.1% in January.
The employment-population ratio is exactly where it was ...more a year ago, at an almost rock-bottom 58.6%.
If Barack Obama had an "R" after his name, the media would be doing a proper job of clarifying a number of crucial economic facts, including the most important one: That the unemployment rate decreasing due to people dropping out of the labor force is terrible news, not good news.
But when it comes to protecting their idol from his failures, the media or P will never stop lying.
Do nothing-yet things are improving.
Talk about lazy.
It's just fact that if the labor force was as large today as when Obama took office, we would be looking at an unemployment rate closer to 11%.
The great trick BHO's media is playing right now is the manufacturing ...more of a New Economic Normal that makes it possible to pretend Obama's failed economic policies are not. This is done through reporting which purposely excludes any kind of historical "CONTEXT"... What the media and White House count on is that we've either forgotten what a real economic recovery looks like, or that we're too young to remember the Reagan Miracle.
The republicans are costing us jobs.
Jobs they said were their first priority-(after making Obama a one-term president.How did that work out for you guys?)
235,000 private sector jobs created.Without the help of the republicans.Unemployment back to 2008 levels.Syock market hitting record ...more highs.
Do you people have any clue of what socialism is?
What you're proposing is austerity,which isn't working anywhere (except Estonia) and is a failed economic policy.
During the depression FDR increasede government spending to help us fight the depression,but in 1937 began an austerity program after pressure from republicans-and drove us into a double dip recession.You can use all of the Hannity/Limbaugh/fox talking points ...more you want,Things are improving and your OBama Derangement Syndrome won't let you admit that things are improving.
All you have is hate.
And you're wrong.
***** US NATIONAL DEBT!*****
Senate Democrats have not passed a budget since 2009
Everyone go to www.usdebtclock.org and get hypnotized,
STOP THE OUT OF CONTROL SPENDING NOW! BEFORE ITS TO LATE!
But this week’s dramatic economic news, ...more timed with the start of Obama’s second term, suggests that the political debate, if not the actual economy, is at an important milestone. On Wall Street, the Dow Jones industrial average reached new levels, shooting well above 14,000...exceeding the closing records set in October 2007 just before the Big Crash. On Friday, a new jobs report finally gave Obama what he's wanted for four years: an unemployment rate.
Yes not an honest one but still below where he started as president, 7.7 percent. The Labor Department said nonfarm payrolls vastly outpaced expectations by increasing 236,000 in February, dropping the unemployment rate to the lowest level since December 2008, from 7.9 percent in January. Also this week, the Federal Reserve Board reported that Americans have recovered the staggering $16 trillion lost in wealth since the recession.
So, let’s call it, Phil... As of March 8, 2013, this has become Obama’s economy.
All of it.
2 wars on a credit card for future generations to pay for and 2 tax cuts during wartime.
If you want to live like a republican,vote democrat.
You can tell your followers here and whichever Kool-Aid drinkers who will listen;the republicans have been driving us toward deficit spending since Reagan.Only fools beleive that they are the party of "fiscal responsiblility".
everyone knows it.
Do they know what you think of them?
Google OccupyGeorge to see where your wealth has been redistributed since the '60's. It's pictures, so it will be easy to "get"...
I am still amazed at how he can spout these lies with a straight face
Oh,that's right-the republicans abandoned jobs a long time ago.They weren't participating anyway,but they still send their lackeys out to make vitriolic posts against the President.
“The modern conservative is engaged in one of man's oldest exercises in moral philosophy; that is, the search for a superior moral justification for selfishness.”
~ John Kenneth Galbraith
You are not the "elite", or the "aristocracy" to which the context of the statement alluded to.
Oh, wait, that's right. You have probably never read Galbraith...
"People of privilege will always risk their complete destruction rather than surrender any material part of their advantage."
~ John Kenneth Galbraith
Google OccupyGeorge
I can cut through the crap and sum this all up in a few short sentences:
It is MY responsibility to market my labor and to make that labor more valuable through self improvement, targeted education and a full understanding of the market that I choose to work in. It is MY responsibility to make myself more valuable than my competition and to negotiate a pay package that is mutually beneficial to myself and my employer.
PS. I don't need a union to market my labor...I can speak for myself.
And more so, he doesn't even know how many of his fellow Americans do just that, and get nothing more for it.
@ UD: There is no true "free market". Just the propaganda machine that has repeated the lie so often too many fools actually believe it. After you've finished Barofsky's firsthand account of the economic meltdown, get back to us...
Let’s take a few simple ...more examples.
GUNS: People don’t kill people, guns do.
ENTITLEMENTS: You are not responsible for the series of events that led you here, big business and the rich have caused your misfortune.
FORECLOSURE: You didn’t buy a house you couldn’t afford; the bank should have never given you that loan. It’s their fault.
PREGNANCY: Instead of taking responsibility for your actions, here is an easier way out.
BUSINESS: You didn’t build your own small business, someone else did.
AFFIRMATIVE ACTION: You can’t do it on your own merit, you need special privileges.
IMMIGRATION: It’s not your fault that you’ve entered the United States illegally; you can have all of the education, health care and benefits of our legal tax-paying citizens. Sorry if you were offended while illegally crossing our border.
At the end of the day, the liberal left is very happy with the direction this country is headed. It’s only the conservatives who aren’t. Liberals love higher taxes, more laws, more regulation and more government control. And they clearly have no issue with back-breaking debt. They take pride in the fact that entitlement programs such as welfare are growing by leaps and bounds. They believe that regardless of effort or risk, all individuals deserve the same reward. They believe that individuals, as a whole, are not capable of making good decisions or dealing with the consequences of their own actions. They take joy in removing God from public schools and institutions and genuinely believe there are no moral consequences for doing so. Any admission that personal responsibility has anything at all to do with the problems we are facing in this country is admitting that everything they work so diligently to promote is failing miserably.
The problem with our country is not rich people or a lack of regulation or too many guns or not enough taxes. The problem is the absolute refusal of government and individuals to take personal responsibility for their actions. Like a broken record, it’s always something or someone else’s fault.
News flash: “It’s not someone else’s fault, it’s yours.”
A government who believes at their core that individuals are not responsible for their own actions is a government who believes that individuals are not capable of making their own decisions. The current administration’s war on guns has nothing to do with violence. It has everything to do with not trusting its citizens.
There is a new breed of government dependents who have been trained into believing they are not good enough and that they can’t make it on their own merit. Worse yet, these individuals are rewarded with handouts for not trying. Then, they are consoled with the affirmation that their unfortunate situation is someone else’s fault. It is a liberal philosophy that absolutely kills work ethic and destroys the desire to overcome adversity. Those that do achieve success are told they did not do it on their own. The successful are penalized and vilified for refusing to be victims. Government leaders who want to control citizens are threatened by successful people who have a “take-charge” mentality. A victim personality is much easier to control.
But America wasn’t founded by victims; it was founded by people who took personal responsibility for their future. This is the key to success.
As a conservative, I believe in people. I feel sorry for the huge populous of citizens who have been brainwashed by the left into believing that their misfortune is someone else’s fault. I believe that people can make their own decisions and are ultimately in control of their own destiny.
But I also believe in fully taking responsibility for my own actions. Because of this, I know that most problems can be traced back to individual choices.
You post illustrates the psycopathy that is at the core of conservative ideology, manifesting an utter lack of compassion for any class other than your own.
Your solipsistic, selfish tunnel vision renders you unable to analyze events on any basis other than if they are a hindrance to your acquisitiveness (and, ergo, are "bad") or if they enable it.
You trumpet "personal responsibility" when what you really mean is "Don't touch my money!"
It is refreshing, ...more nonetheless, to read your cold-hearted, egoistic revelation. So often your colleagues in public life camouflage their defective emotional underdevelopment beneath a mask of bland normalcy.
Fortunately, reasonable men in this country will always thwart the establishment of your frigid, predatory paradise.
Nothing is for nothing and the rubber will hit the road peoplefirst and you will live long enough to see it
Score one for freedom of choice, Loser!
You just have a serious POVP.
After Watering Down Financial Reform, Ex-Senator Scott Brown Joins Goldman Sachs’ Lobbying Firm
Someday the lot of you just may wake up to discover the "real world", but I ain't holdin' my breath. Google: OccupyGeorge ...
Shocking New Evidence Reveals Depths of 'Treason' and 'Treachery' of Watergate and Iran-Contra
New evidence continues to accumulate showing how Official Washington got key elements of two major presidential scandals of the Nixon and Reagan administrations ...more wrong.
March 10, 2013
A favorite saying of Official Washington is that “the cover-up is worse than the crime.” But that presupposes you accurately understand what the crime was. And, in the case of the two major U.S. government scandals of the last third of the Twentieth Century – Watergate and Iran-Contra – that doesn’t seem to be the case.
Indeed, newly disclosed documents have put old evidence into a sharply different light and suggest that history has substantially miswritten the two scandals by failing to understand that they actually were sequels to earlier scandals that were far worse. Watergate and Iran-Contra were, in part at least, extensions of the original crimes, which involved dirty dealings to secure the immense power of the presidency.
Shortly after Nixon took office in 1969, FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover informed him of the existence of the file containing national security wiretaps documenting how Nixon’s emissaries had gone behind President Lyndon Johnson’s back to convince the South Vietnamese government to boycott the Paris Peace Talks, which were close to ending the Vietnam War in fall 1968.In the case of Watergate – the foiled Republican break-in at the Democratic National Committee in June 1972 and Richard Nixon’s botched cover-up leading to his resignation in August 1974 – the evidence is now clear that Nixon created the Watergate burglars out of his panic that the Democrats might possess a file on his sabotage of Vietnam peace talks in 1968.
The disruption of Johnson’s peace talks then enabled Nixon to hang on for a narrow victory over Democrat Hubert Humphrey. However, as the new President was taking steps in 1969 to extend the war another four-plus years, he sensed the threat from the wiretap file and ordered two of his top aides, chief of staff H.R. “Bob” Haldeman and National Security Advisor Henry Kissinger, to locate it. But they couldn’t find the file.
We now know that was because President Johnson, who privately had called Nixon’s Vietnam actions “treason,” had ordered the file removed from the White House by his national security aide Walt Rostow.
Rostow labeled the file “The ‘X’ Envelope” and kept it in his possession, although having left government, he had no legal right to possess the highly classified documents, many of which were stamped “Top Secret.” Johnson had instructed Rostow to retain the papers as long as he, Johnson, was alive and then afterwards to decide what to do with them.
Nixon, however, had no idea that Johnson and Rostow had taken the missing file or, indeed, who might possess it. Normally, national security documents are passed from the outgoing President to the incoming President to maintain continuity in government.
But Haldeman and Kissinger had come up empty in their search. They were only able to recreate the file’s contents, which included incriminating conversations between Nixon’s emissaries and South Vietnamese officials regarding Nixon’s promise to get them a better deal if they helped him torpedo Johnson’s peace talks.
So, the missing file remained a troubling mystery inside Nixon’s White House, but Nixon still lived up to his pre-election agreement with South Vietnamese President Nguyen van Thieu to extend U.S. military participation in the war with the goal of getting the South Vietnamese a better outcome than they would have received from Johnson in 1968.
Nixon not only continued the Vietnam War, which had already claimed more than 30,000 American lives and an estimated one million Vietnamese, but he expanded it, with intensified bombing campaigns and a U.S. incursion into Cambodia. At home, the war was bitterly dividing the nation with a massive anti-war movement and an angry backlash from war supporters.
Pentagon Papers
It was in that intense climate in 1971 that Daniel Ellsberg, a former senior Defense Department official, gave the New York Times a copy of the Pentagon Papers, the secret U.S. history of the Vietnam War from 1945 to 1967. The voluminous report documented many of the lies – most told by Democrats – to draw the American people into the war.
The Times began publishing the Pentagon Papers on June 13, 1971, and the disclosures touched off a public firestorm. Trying to tamp down the blaze, Nixon took extraordinary legal steps to stop dissemination of the secrets, ultimately failing in the U.S. Supreme Court.
But Nixon had an even more acute fear. He knew something that few others did, that there was a sequel to the Pentagon Papers that was arguably more explosive – the missing file containing evidence that Nixon had covertly prevented the war from being brought to a conclusion so he could maintain a political edge in Election 1968.
If anyone thought the Pentagon Papers represented a shocking scandal – and clearly millions of Americans did – how would people react to a file that revealed Nixon had kept the slaughter going – with thousands of additional American soldiers dead and the violence spilling back into the United States – just so he could win an election?
A savvy political analyst, Nixon recognized this threat to his reelection in 1972, assuming he would have gotten that far. Given the intensity of the anti-war movement, there would surely have been furious demonstrations around the White House and likely an impeachment effort on Capitol Hill.
So, on June 17, 1971, Nixon summoned Haldeman and Kissinger into the Oval Office and – as Nixon’s own recording devices whirred softly – pleaded with them again to locate the missing file. “Do we have it?” a Nixon asked Haldeman. “I’ve asked for it. You said you didn’t have it.”
Haldeman: “We can’t find it.”
Kissinger: “We have nothing here, Mr. President.”
Nixon: “Well, damnit, I asked for that because I need it.”
Kissinger: “But Bob and I have been trying to put the damn thing together.”
Haldeman: “We have a basic history in constructing our own, but there is a file on it.”
Nixon: “Where?”
Haldeman: “[Presidential aide Tom Charles] Huston swears to God that there’s a file on it and it’s at Brookings.”
Nixon: “Bob? Bob? Now do you remember Huston’s plan [for White House-sponsored break-ins as part of domestic counter-intelligence operations]? Implement it.”
Kissinger: “Now Brookings has no right to have classified documents.”
Nixon: “I want it implemented. … G*******t, get in and get those files. Blow the safe and get it.”
Haldeman: “They may very well have cleaned them by now, but this thing, you need to –“
Kissinger: “I wouldn’t be surprised if Brookings had the files.”
Haldeman: “My point is Johnson knows that those files are around. He doesn’t know for sure that we don’t have them around.”
But Johnson did know that the file was no longer at the White House because he had ordered Rostow to remove it in the final days of his own presidency.
Forming the Burglars
On June 30, 1971, Nixon again berated Haldeman about the need to break into Brookings and “take it [the file] out.” Nixon even suggested using former CIA officer E. Howard Hunt to conduct the Brookings break-in.
“You talk to Hunt,” Nixon told Haldeman. “I want the break-in. Hell, they do that. You’re to break into the place, rifle the files, and bring them in. … Just go in and take it. Go in around 8:00 or 9:00 o’clock.”
Haldeman: “Make an inspection of the safe.”
Nixon: “That’s right. You go in to inspect the safe. I mean, clean it up.”
For reasons that remain unclear, it appears that the Brookings break-in never took place, but Nixon’s desperation to locate Johnson’s peace-talk file was an important link in the chain of events that led to the creation of Nixon’s burglary unit under Hunt’s supervision. Hunt later oversaw the two Watergate break-ins in May and June of 1972.
While it’s possible that Nixon was still searching for the file about his Vietnam-peace sabotage when the Watergate break-ins occurred nearly a year later, it’s generally believed that the burglary was more broadly focused, seeking any information that might have an impact on Nixon’s re-election, either defensively or offensively.
As it turned out, Nixon’s burglars were nabbed inside the Watergate complex on their second break-in on June 17, 1972, exactly one year after Nixon’s tirade to Haldeman and Kissinger about the need to blow the safe at the Brookings Institution in pursuit of the missing Vietnam peace-talk file.
Ironically, too, Johnson and Rostow had no intention of exposing Nixon’s dirty secret regarding LBJ’s Vietnam peace talks, presumably for the same reasons that they kept their mouths shut back in 1968, out of a benighted belief that revealing Nixon’s actions might somehow not be “good for the country.”
In November 1972, despite the growing scandal over the Watergate break-in, Nixon handily won reelection, crushing Sen. George McGovern, Nixon’s preferred opponent. Nixon then reached out to Johnson seeking his help in squelching Democratic-led investigations of the Watergate affair and slyly noting that Johnson had ordered wiretaps of Nixon’s campaign in 1968.
Johnson reacted angrily to the overture, refusing to cooperate. On Jan. 20, 1973, Nixon was sworn in for his second term. On Jan. 22, 1973, Johnson died of a heart attack.
Toward Resignation
In the weeks that followed Nixon’s Inauguration and Johnson’s death, the scandal over the Watergate cover-up grew more serious, creeping ever closer to the Oval Office. Meanwhile, Rostow struggled to decide what he should do with “The ‘X’ Envelope.”
On May 14, 1973, in a three-page “memorandum for the record,” Rostow summarized what was in “The ‘X’ Envelope” and provided a chronology for the events in fall 1968. Rostow reflected, too, on what effect LBJ’s public silence then may have had on the unfolding Watergate scandal.
“I am inclined to believe the Republican operation in 1968 relates in two ways to the Watergate affair of 1972,” Rostow wrote. He noted, first, that Nixon’s operatives may have judged that their “enterprise with the South Vietnamese” – in frustrating Johnson’s last-ditch peace initiative – had secured Nixon his narrow margin of victory over Hubert Humphrey in 1968.
“Second, they got away with it,” Rostow wrote. “Despite considerable press commentary after the election, the matter was never investigated fully. Thus, as the same men faced the election in 1972, there was nothing in their previous experience with an operation of doubtful propriety (or, even, legality) to warn them off, and there were memories of how close an election could get and the possible utility of pressing to the limit – and beyond.” [To read Rostow’s memo, click here, here and here.]
What Rostow didn’t know was that there was a third – and more direct – connection between the missing file and Watergate. Nixon’s fear about the file surfacing as a follow-up to the Pentagon Papers was Nixon’s motive for creating Hunt’s burglary team in the first place.
Rostow apparently struggled with what to do with the file for the next month as the Watergate scandal expanded. On June 25, 1973, fired White House counsel John Dean delivered his blockbuster Senate testimony, claiming that Nixon got involved in the cover-up within days of the June 1972 burglary at the Democratic National Committee. Dean also asserted that Watergate was just part of a years-long program of political espionage directed by Nixon’s White House.
The very next day, as headlines of Dean’s testimony filled the nation’s newspapers, Rostow reached his conclusion about what to do with “The ‘X’ Envelope.” In longhand, he wrote a “Top Secret” note which read, “To be opened by the Director, Lyndon Baines Johnson Library, not earlier than fifty (50) years from this date June 26, 1973.”
In other words, Rostow intended this missing link of American history to stay missing for another half century. In a typed cover letter to LBJ Library director Harry Middleton, Rostow wrote: “Sealed in the attached envelope is a file President Johnson asked me to hold personally because of its sensitive nature. In case of his death, the material was to be consigned to the LBJ Library under conditions I judged to be appropriate. …
“After fifty years the Director of the LBJ Library (or whomever may inherit his responsibilities, should the administrative structure of the National Archives change) may, alone, open this file. … If he believes the material it contains should not be opened for research [at that time], I would wish him empowered to re-close the file for another fifty years when the procedure outlined above should be repeated.”
Ultimately, however, the LBJ Library didn’t wait that long. After a little more than two decades, on July 22, 1994, the envelope was opened and the archivists began the long process of declassifying the contents.
Yet, because Johnson and Rostow chose to withhold the file on Nixon’s “treason,” a distorted history of Watergate took shape and then hardened into what all the Important People of Washington “knew” to be true. The conventional wisdom was that Nixon was unaware of the Watergate break-in beforehand – that it was some harebrained scheme of a few overzealous subordinates – and that the President only got involved later in covering it up.
Sure, the Washington groupthink went, Nixon had his “enemies list” and played hardball with his rivals, but he couldn’t be blamed for the Watergate break-in, which many insiders regarded as “the third-rate burglary” that Nixon’s White House called it.
Even journalists and historians who took a broader view of Watergate didn’t pursue the remarkable clue from Nixon’s rant about the missing file on June 17, 1971. Though a few other historians did write, sketchily, about the 1968 events, they also didn’t put the events together.
So, the beloved saying took shape: “the cover-up is worse than the crime.” And Official Washington hates to rethink some history that is considered already settled. In this case, it would make too many important people who have expounded on the “worse” part of Watergate, i.e. the cover-up, look stupid. [For details, see Robert Parry’sAmerica’s Stolen Narrative.]
The Iran-Contra Cover-up
Similarly, Official Washington and many mainstream historians have tended to dismiss Ronald Reagan’s Iran-Contra scandal as another case of some overzealous subordinates intuiting what the President wanted and getting everybody into trouble.
The “Big Question” that insiders were asking after the scandal broke in November 1986 was whether President Reagan knew about the decision by White House aide Oliver North and his boss, National Security Advisor John Poindexter, to divert some profits from secret arms sales to Iran to secretly buy weapons for the Nicaraguan Contra rebels.
Once, Poindexter testified that he had no recollection of letting Reagan in on that secret – and with Reagan a beloved figure to many in Official Washington – the inquiry was relegated to insignificance. The remaining investigation focused on smaller questions, like misleading Congress and a scholarly dispute over whether the President’s foreign policy powers overrode Congress’ power to appropriate funds).
At the start of the Iran-Contra investigation, Attorney General Edwin Meese had set the time parameters from 1984 to 1986, thus keeping outside of the frame the possibility of a much more serious scandal originating during Campaign 1980, i.e., whether Reagan’s campaign undermined President Jimmy Carter’s negotiations to free 52 American hostages in Iran and then paid off the Iranians by allowing Israel to ship weapons to Iran for the Iran-Iraq War.
So, while congressional and federal investigators looked only at how the specific 1985-86 arms sales to Iran got started, there was no timely attention paid to evidence that the Reagan administration had quietly approved Israeli arms sales to Iran in 1981 and that those contacts went back to the days before Election 1980 when the hostage crisis destroyed Carter’s reelection hopes and ensured Reagan’s victory.
The 52 hostages were not released until Reagan was sworn in on Jan. 20, 1981.
Over the years, about two dozen sources – including Iranian officials, Israeli insiders, European intelligence operatives, Republican activists and even Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat – have provided information about alleged contacts with Iran by the Reagan campaign.
And, there were indications early in the Reagan presidency that something peculiar was afoot. On July 18, 1981, an Israeli-chartered plane crashed or was shot down after straying over the Soviet Union on a return flight from delivering U.S.-manufactured weapons to Iran.
In a PBS interview nearly a decade later, Nicholas Veliotes, Reagan’s assistant secretary of state for the Middle East, said he looked into the incident by talking to top administration officials. “It was clear to me after my conversations with people on high that indeed we had agreed that the Israelis could transship to Iran some American-origin military equipment,” Veliotes said.
In checking out the Israeli flight, Veliotes came to believe that the Reagan camp’s dealings with Iran dated back to before the 1980 election. “It seems to have started in earnest in the period probably prior to the election of 1980, as the Israelis had identified who would become the new players in the national security area in the Reagan administration,” Veliotes said. “And I understand some contacts were made at that time.”
When I re-interviewed Veliotes on Aug. 8, 2012, he said he couldn’t recall who the “people on high” were who had described the informal clearance of the Israeli shipments but he indicated that “the new players” were the young neoconservatives who were working on the Reagan campaign, many of whom later joined the administration as senior political appointees.
Neocon Schemes
Newly discovered documents at the Reagan presidential library reveal that Reagan’s neocons at the State Department – particularly Robert McFarlane and Paul Wolfowitz – initiated a policy review in 1981 to allow Israel to undertake secret military shipments to Iran. McFarlane and Wolfowitz also maneuvered to put McFarlane in charge of U.S. relations toward Iran and to establish a clandestine U.S. back-channel to the Israeli government outside the knowledge of even senior U.S. government officials.
Not only did the documents tend to support the statements by Veliotes but they also fit with comments that former Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Shamir made in a 1993 interview in Tel Aviv. Shamir said he had read the 1991 book, October Surprise, by Carter’s former National Security Council aide Gary Sick, which made the case for believing that the Republicans had intervened in the 1980 hostage negotiations to disrupt Carter’s reelection.
With the topic raised, one interviewer asked, “What do you think? Was there an October Surprise?”
“Of course, it was,” Shamir responded without hesitation. “It was.”
And, there were plenty of other corroborating statements as well. In 1996, for instance, while former President Carter was meeting with Palestine Liberation Organization leader Arafat in Gaza City, Arafat tried to confess his role in the Republican maneuvering to block Carter’s Iran-hostage negotiations.
“There is something I want to tell you,” Arafat said, addressing Carter in the presence of historian Douglas Brinkley. “You should know that in 1980 the Republicans approached me with an arms deal [for the PLO] if I could arrange to keep the hostages in Iran until after the [U.S. presidential] election,” Arafat said, according to Brinkley’s article in the fall 1996 issue of Diplomatic Quarterly.
As recently as this past week, former Iranian President Abolhassan Bani-Sadr reiterated his account of Republican overtures to Iran during the 1980 hostage crisis and how that secret initiative prevented release of the hostages.
In a Christian Science Monitor commentary about the movie “Argo,” Bani-Sadr wrote that “Ayatollah Khomeini and Ronald Reagan had organized a clandestine negotiation … which prevented the attempts by myself and then-U.S. President Jimmy Carter to free the hostages before the 1980 U.S. presidential election took place. The fact that they were not released tipped the results of the election in favor of Reagan.”
Though Bani-Sadr had discussed the Reagan-Khomeini collaboration before, he added in his commentary that “two of my advisors, Hussein Navab Safavi and Sadr-al-Hefazi, were executed by Khomeini’s regime because they had become aware of this secret relationship between Khomeini, his son Ahmad, … and the Reagan administration.”
In December 1992, when a House Task Force was examining this so-called “October Surprise” controversy – and encountering fierce Republican resistance – Bani-Sadr submitted a letter detailing his behind-the-scenes struggle with Khomeini and his son Ahmad over their secret dealings with the Reagan campaign.
Bani-Sadr’s letter – dated Dec. 17, 1992 – was part of a flood of last-minute evidence implicating the Reagan campaign in the hostage scheme. However, by the time the letter and the other evidence arrived, the leadership of the House Task Force had decided to simply declare the Reagan campaign innocent. [See Consortiumnews.com’s “‘October Surprise’ and ‘Argo.’”]
Burying the History
Lawrence Barcella, who served as Task Force chief counsel, later told me that so much incriminating evidence arrived late that he asked Task Force chairman, Rep. Lee Hamilton, a centrist Democrat from Indiana, to extend the inquiry for three months but that Hamilton said no. (Hamilton told me that he had no recollection of Barcella’s request.)
Instead of giving a careful review to the new evidence, the House Task Force ignored, disparaged or buried it. I later unearthed some of the evidence in unpublished Task Force files. However, in the meantime, Official Washington dismissed the “October Surprise” and other Iran-Contra-connected scandals, like Contra drug trafficking, as conspiracy theories. [For the latest information on the October Surprise case, see Robert Parry’sAmerica’s Stolen Narrative.]
As with Watergate and Nixon, Official Washington has refused to rethink its conclusions absolving President Ronald Reagan and his successor President George H.W. Bush of guilt in a range of crimes collected under the large umbrella of Iran-Contra.
When journalist Gary Webb revived the Contra-Cocaine scandal in the mid-to-late 1990s, he faced unrelenting hostility from Establishment reporters at the New York Times, Washington Post and Los Angeles Times. The attacks were so ugly that Webb’s editors at the San Jose Mercury News forced him out, setting in motion his professional destruction.
It didn’t even matter when an internal investigation by the CIA’s inspector general in 1998 confirmed that the Reagan and Bush-41 administrations had tolerated and protected drug trafficking by the Contras. The major newspapers largely ignored the findings and did nothing to help rehabilitate Webb’s career, eventually contributing to his suicide in 2004. [For details on the CIA report, see Robert Parry's Lost History.]
The major newspapers have been equally unwilling to rethink the origins – and the significance – of the October Surprise/Iran-Contra scandal. It doesn’t matter how much new evidence accumulates. It remains much easier to continue the politically safe deification of “Gipper” Reagan and the fond remembrances of “Poppy” Bush.
Not only would rethinking Iran-Contra and Watergate stir up anger and abuse from Republican operatives and the Right, but the process would reflect badly on many journalists and historians who built careers, in part, by getting these important historical stories wrong.
However, there must come a point when the weight of the new evidence makes the old interpretations of these scandals intellectually untenable and when treasured sayings – like “the cover-up is worse than the crime” – are swept into the historical dustbin.
Investigative reporter Robert Parry broke many of the Iran-Contra stories for The Associated Press and Newsweek in the 1980s. You can buy his new book, America’s Stolen Narrative, either in print here or as an e-book (from Amazon and barnesandnoble.com).
It's tough on those two issues because they are so recent, but there are people out there like Assange, and others who give people who choose to come forward a "forum" of sorts. Often time is the only thing on your side with BS like this.
The far right still wants to bring down the current president-we know why.
The Wash Post: Wednesday, March 13, 12:08 AM
The afterglow of obama’s reelection and inauguration appears to have vanished as increasingly negative views among Americans about his stewardship of the economy have forced his public approval rating back down below the 50 percent mark, according to a new Wash Post-ABC News poll.
I'll just let Z show you people to be fools for a while.
Or you can continue doing it yourselves.
Like cockroaches.
Somebody has to debunk you liars.
Wed. night, Little Eddie Schultz announced that his The Ed Show would be moving from weeknights to weekends. It will now only be on Saturday and Sunday, 5-7 PM. The garbage show has always struggled to find its audience, bouncing around the dial since its debut in April 2009.
Lets get to work ! LOL
And I say so what, work is good for you, even if I have money I will never stop working 100%
The people decided back then what kind of country they wanted-and the vision Ryan offered was rejected.
BTW, who are "the people" you refer to that decided "back then" what kind of country they wanted?
That's what the Ryan budget will do.
Posted on March 12, 2013
Share on linkedinShare on facebookShare on twitterShare on emailMore Sharing ServicesThe release of the House GOP budget by Rep. Paul Ryan has sparked a resurgence of false and misleading claims about the Affordable Care Act, which the budget seeks to largely repeal. On the Sunday talk shows, Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz, the head of the Democratic National Committee, and Sen. Ron Johnson, a Republican from Wisconsin, ...more each distorted the facts regarding revenues raised in the health care law. And Ryan wrongly said the law would take money away from Medicare and ration benefits for seniors.
■Johnson said there’s “$1 trillion in middle-income tax increases … in Obamacare.” But the new revenue generated by the Affordable Care Act falls mostly on high-income taxpayers, employers who fail to provide health care to their employees, and health care companies, such as drug manufacturers, medical device manufacturers and insurance providers.
■Wasserman Schultz said “there are not $1 trillion in taxes in Obamacare,” calling Johnson’s claim “completely untrue.” That’s wrong. The nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office says repealing the law will “reduce revenues by $1 trillion between 2013 and 2022,” meaning it will cost taxpayers that much if the law remains on the books.
■Ryan said the law’s reductions in the growth of Medicare spending amounted to “money that was taken from Medicare.” But the Treasury has to give Medicare the money credited to its trust fund — the money can’t be taken away.
■Ryan also repeated a popular talking point when he said that a 15-member “rationing” board would “determine what kind of benefits people get.” But the board, tasked with recommending ways to slow the growth of Medicare spending, can’t restrict benefits, according to the Affordable Care Act.
$1 Trillion in Taxes
Wasserman Schultz and Johnson had a spirited exchange over the revenue raised by the federal health care law during an appearance on ABC’s “This Week.”
Johnson, March 10: The fact of the matter is, we already have a $1 trillion in middle-income tax increases hitting us in Obamacare. They’re hidden, but it’s middle-class …
(CROSSTALK)
Johnson: … it’s certainly true, as well as another $600 billion. So, you’ve already got $1.6 trillion worth of tax increases hitting us in the next 10 years. That’s going to harm economic growth. George, the best way getting out of the situation is economic growth.
Wasserman Schultz: No, let — first of all, that is completely untrue. It is — there are not $1 trillion in taxes in Obamacare …
Wasserman Schultz is wrong.
House Speaker John Boehner asked the CBO to estimate the revenue effects of H.R. 6079, the Repeal of Obamacare Act. In a July 2012 letter to Boehner, the CBO said that repealing the new law would “reduce revenues by $1 trillion over the 2013-2022 period” — meaning, of course, that it will cost taxpayers $1 trillion over 10 years if not repealed.
CBO and the nonpartisan Joint Committee on Taxation produced the revenue estimates in the letter to Boehner. Table 2 of the CBO letter and the charts contained in a June 2012 preliminary report by JCT provide details on the revenue estimates. The CBO letter shows that total revenues — taxes, fees, penalties and associated revenue effects of the legislation — exceed $1.2 trillion over 10 years. The net amount, however, is $1 trillion after accounting for $242 billion in tax credits to help millions of Americans buy health care insurance.
More than $1 trillion of the $1.2 trillion in estimated revenues comes from higher taxes and penalties imposed on individuals for failing to obtain health insurance and employers for failing to provide health insurance. The Supreme Court ruled that the penalties can be considered a “tax,” as we have written before, so Johnson’s labeling of the revenues as a $1 trillion tax is not in dispute.
But Johnson exaggerates by describing the $1 trillion as “middle-income tax increases,” and he ignores the fact that the legislation will help millions of middle-income taxpayers buy insurance.
Let’s first look at who will pay most of the health care tab, which falls heavily on businesses and upper-income individual taxpayers.
The CBO letter to Boehner shows about $318 billion — a third of the $1 trillion in net revenues — would come from tax increases on upper-income taxpayers to help fund Medicare. (See Table 2, “Additional Hospital Insurance Tax.”) Beginning Jan. 1, taxpayers started paying an additional 0.9 percent Medicare tax on income above $200,000 (for individuals) and $250,000 (for families), and a 3.8 percent tax on investment earnings above those thresholds.
In addition to upper-income taxpayers, the law will impose new taxes and fees on businesses — particularly in the health care field. Another $165 billion in new revenue would come from an annual fee on drug manufacturers ($34.2 billion), a 2.3 percent excise tax on manufacturers and importers of some medical devices ($29.1 billion), and an annual fee on health insurance providers ($101.7 billion). (The revenue estimates for each industry come from a June 2012 JCT report used by the CBO for its report.)
In addition, the CBO says businesses that do not offer health insurance for their employees are expected to pay $106 billion in penalties over the 10-year period.
Those six provisions total $589 billion over 10 years. Two other changes in the business tax code push the total to more than $600 billion — about half of the $1.2 trillion in total new revenues.
This is not to say that some middle-income taxpayers won’t pay to help finance the expansion of health care for millions of Americans.
The CBO estimates that the law will raise about $106 billion from penalties on individuals who fail to buy insurance — the so-called “individual mandate.” But, as we have written before, less than half of the penalty revenue (about 46 percent) will come from taxpayers earning under $120,000.
Also, the CBO estimates that there will be $216 billion in “associated effects of coverage provisions on tax revenues.” Put simply, the CBO assumes that employees who drop or lose their employer-sponsored health care at work will receive higher pay to compensate them. As a result, the government will see an increase in tax revenues because wages are taxable and health benefits are not. The CBO, however, did not estimate which taxpayers might wind up paying more in taxes because of such coverage changes.
There will be other direct tax implications for individual taxpayers, including some middle-income taxpayers, such as limits on health care spending accounts that increase tax revenue. (A full list of the tax provisions can be found on the IRS website.)
Johnson also has made the point before that the “Obamacare taxes” will indirectly affect all taxpayers. In a response to the president’s State of the Union address, Johnson said: “The trillion dollars of Obamacare taxes have just kicked in. They will hit every man, woman, and child in America — either directly through taxes on your health care plan, or indirectly, through higher prices for health care in general.”
That may be. Richard Foster, Medicare’s chief actuary, testified in March 2011 that he expected higher taxes on certain medical devices to be passed on to consumers. But the fact is that most Americans will not see any direct tax increase from the law, and to describe the entire $1 trillion as “middle-income tax increases” goes way too far.
Johnson also ignores that the law will result in health care coverage for an estimated 27 million more Americans by 2017 — many of them middle-income Americans who will receive subsidies to help them purchase insurance through the exchanges that will be set up by the law.
Those who are not eligible for Medicare or Medicaid and earn up to 400 percent of the poverty level ($92,200 for a family of four and $44,680 for a single person in 2012) will receive federal subsidies to help defray the cost of health insurance. In a February report, the CBO projected that about 80 percent of the 25 million people purchasing insurance through the exchanges in 2023 would receive government subsidies.
Ryan’s Repeats
House Budget Committee Chairman Paul Ryan dredged up some old claims about the Affordable Care Act on “Fox News Sunday” when talking about his new budget plan, which was released March 12. Ryan claimed that the law was taking money away from Medicare, which isn’t the case, and that a board tasked with finding ways to curb the growth in Medicare spending would “determine what kind of benefits people get.” The law says the board can’t restrict benefits.
Fox News Host Chris Wallace asked Ryan about his budget’s $716 billion in Medicare cuts over 10 years — the same reductions in the future growth of spending that are part of the Affordable Care Act, and the same cuts Ryan opposed while campaigning as presidential nominee Mitt Romney’s running mate. During last year’s campaign, Romney said he would repeal these reductions in Medicare spending, and Ryan claimed that Obama had “turned Medicare into a piggy bank to fund Obamacare,” saying he would “stop the raid on Medicare.”
Now, Ryan includes those cuts in his latest budget, but still says he would “end the raid of Medicare from Obamacare.” Ryan had also included the Medicare cuts in budgets he proposed before getting the vice presidential nomination.
Ryan, March 10: What we also say is, end the raid of Medicare from Obamacare. You have to remember, all of that money that was taken from Medicare was to pay for Obamacare. We say we get rid of Obamacare, we end the raid and we apply those savings to Medicare to make Medicare more solvent and extend the solvency of the Medicare trust fund.
The problem is, the Affordable Care Act can’t take money away from Medicare. Instead it reduces the future growth of Medicare spending — primarily Medicare Part A, which is funded mainly by payroll taxes. We explained Part A’s financing in an Aug. 24 piece titled “Medicare’s ‘Piggy Bank.’ ”
The payroll taxes collected can’t be taken away from Medicare; instead, just as Ryan says his plan would do, savings from reduced spending are applied to Medicare to “extend the solvency of the Medicare trust fund.” The program doesn’t take in enough in taxes to pay for current benefits, so spending less than was expected in the future boosts Medicare’s finances.
When Medicare doesn’t need to spend payroll tax money right away, that money goes into the Medicare Part A trust fund. In lieu of the dollars, Medicare receives a Treasury bond that it can cash in anytime it wants. Treasury must pay the bond, even if it has spent the original money on something else (which is often the case).
So Obama simply can’t take this money away from Medicare.
Republicans have a point when they say the Affordable Care Act double-counts these Medicare savings as both prolonging the life of the trust fund, and paying for insurance coverage expansion under the law.
The nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office and Medicare’s chief actuary, Richard Foster, have both said that the law can’t do both things as once, even though government accounting conventions show the law doing just that.
But it’s still incorrect to say that the law would “raid” Medicare or somehow take Medicare money away from the program.
Also, Ryan doesn’t mention that the health care law further shores up Medicare’s future financing by $318 billion over 10 years by increasing the Medicare payroll tax rate for individuals making more than $200,000 a year and couples earning more than $250,000, and adding a tax on investment income for those upper-income earners.
Ryan went on to repeat an old, Republican claim we’ve heard many times before, saying that a board tasked with finding ways to reduce the growth in Medicare spending would be “rationing” care.
Ryan: It’s a program that basically puts Medicare under the control of 15 people on a board that will determine what kind of benefits people get. That’s a rationing board, however you slice it.
The board is the Independent Payment Advisory Board, and it can’t “determine what kind of benefits people get,” by law. The Affordable Care Act limits what the IPAB can and can’t do. And clearly in the “can’t” group is limiting benefits or eligibility, and increasing taxes or premiums:
Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act, page 490: The proposal shall not include any recommendation to ration health care, raise revenues or Medicare beneficiary premiums under section 1818, 1818A, or 1839, increase Medicare beneficiary costsharing (including deductibles, coinsurance, and copayments), or otherwise restrict benefits or modify eligibility criteria.
A Kaiser Family Foundation analysis said that the board would have to find savings from “Medicare Advantage, the Part D prescription drug program, skilled nursing facility, home health, dialysis, ambulance and ambulatory surgical center services, and durable medical equipment.”
The 15-member board’s recommendations for reducing spending could be overridden by a three-fifths majority vote by both Houses of Congress, or a new plan from Congress to cut spending by the same amount as what the IPAB recommends. Ryan made similar claims about the board during the vice presidential debate last year, and in making a case for his budget plan in May 2011.
– Eugene Kiely and Lori Robertson
He doesn't care about those without healthcare.just let 'em die.
Eugenics for the poor.
In all of cable -- all 94 ad-supported cable channels measured by Nielsen, Fox News placed fourth in primetime. By comparison, MSNBC placed 24th, HLN was 29th, and CNN hit 33rd
I would guess that he does so because he is reassured of the righteousness of his beliefs with each rejection by posters like you.
As for Ryan's budget, it would cut Medicare, Medicaid, poverty programs, and repeal Affordable Care, all while permitting GE, ExxonMobil, Koch Industries et al. continued avoidance of tens of billions of dollars annually in income taxes. It is hardly surprising that a man whose favorite ("avid", in his own words) hobby is terrorizing innocent ...more animals and inflicting lingering pain, suffering and death on them would be eager to do the same to his countrymen.
Fortunately the reactionary hysteria that momentarily propelled psychopaths like Ryan to the national stage has passed. We need only endure slightly less than two more years of his brand of solipsistic, cold-blooded fanaticism before reasonable, compassionate men once again run the House. (There will, however, never be any relief for the innocent animals that he tortures.)
CAIRO – Egypt’s biggest Islamist movement has strongly criticized a UN document aimed at combating violence against women for contradicting basic Islamic principles and undermining family values.
“This declaration, if ratified, would lead to complete disintegration of society,” the Muslim Brotherhood warned in a statement obtained by OnIslam.net.
It will keep 30 million people from getting healthcare,as well as everything HHS mentioned.
The right doesn't want to take care of the rest of the country,just those who can afford to pay for it while oppressed by republican regimes.
New Pope Francis I is a conservative in the mold of his predecessor, Pope Benedict XVI and Pope John Paul II. That’s especially true on the issue of abortion, which he called a “death sentence” for the unborn in 2007.
Viva La Papa!
Truth is it's Murder legal or not. Period
How do you feel about "Plan B"?
Sure, it’s easy to criticize Hollywood, but try to remember that the entertainment industry today is an intellectually demanding environment, fraught with cognitively challenging, even intractable, questions, like, to take one recent example: How can the cable mini-series “The Bible” be such a ratings hit when there is no audience for overtly religious entertainment programming?
According ...more to the latest Nielsens, released Tuesday, Sunday night’s telecast of “The Bible,” produced by husband-and-wife team Mark Burnett and Roma Downey for basic cable’s History channel, managed to attract more viewers than anything on broadcast network NBC … during the entire week.
"The law in most states (if not all) considers it murder when a fetus is killed during a commission of a crime, but not during an abortion. I never understood that. The age of the fetus is the same regardless. "
That is what happens whenn states are left to make those choices.Under federal law,a woman has the right to determine what happens to their body.It's their choice not yours to impose on them because you have a dominance fetish.
You yourself said that ...more you would rather kill 1000 frogs to save a dog. (your description of how you feel about abortion)
You support abortion rights according to what you posted.
"
Exactly Phil, medical procedure, which is why standard medical procedure precautions are necessary. To answer your question Phil, I'd have to say I'd save one dog instead of 1,000 frogs because I relate more closely to dogs but would be reacting more emotionally than rationally because dogs are better kissers.
Nov 14, 12 6:50 PM appended by Captn America
But hey, that's just me.
By Captn America (1544), Southampton on Nov 14, 12 6:50 PM"
Why do you hate the constitution?
Or do you just interpret it to support your own argument-that being that women should be subservient to you because you say so.
Why do you hate the constitution?
Or do you just interpret it to support your own argument-that being that women should be subservient to you because you say so.
When are you going to argue for the return of slavery,as per the states rights basis?
Abortion is a constitutionally protected right of women.
Why do you hate the constitution?
my advice on that subject
I wouldnt float large loans to companies based on campaign contributions that go bankrupt almost immediately----I wouldnt increase entitlement spending---I wouldnt initiate Gov takeover of Healthcare that will fail miserably mainly due to who wrote it and never read it---I wouldnt give billions away to countries who are just stealing the $ and laughing at you
Allen West (R-FL) told the CPAC audience on Thursday that there is nothing a liberal fears more than black conservatives.
"There is nothing on earth that a liberal progressive fears more than a black American who wants a better life and a smaller government," West said, noting that he is tired of liberals dividing Americans up into small groups
Bravo! Mr West you are a great American!
"In testimony at an Article 32 hearing -- the military's version of a grand jury or preliminary hearing -- West said the policeman, Yahya Jhrodi Hamoody, was not cooperating with interrogators, so he watched four of his soldiers from the 220th Field Artillery Battalion beat the detainee on the head and body.
West said he also threatened to kill Hamoody. Military prosecutors ...more say West followed up on that threat by taking the suspect outside, put him on the ground near a weapons clearing barrel and fired his 9 mm pistol into the barrel.
[...]
But while West's supporters call him a hero, military prosecutors said his actions amounted to torture and violated articles 128 and 134 of the Uniform Code of Military Justice."
Not exactly what this country stands for-unless your a conservative.
Then torture si okay,despite worldwide condemnation of it.
I don't support torture,that's a conservative position-a direction the conservatives want this country to continue as illustrated by the right's support for Alan West,who did in fact torture prisoners and was defended as a patriot.
The people of this country don't support torture as a policy for dealing with prisoners.
Unless they are conservatives.
The truth about Republicans.
Don't worry, you'll enjoy the YouTube...
the usual from the neo-fascist far right.
"...in 1964, Everett Dirksen (R-IL), the Republican Leader in the U.S. Senate, condemned the Democrats’ 57-day filibuster against the 1964 Civil Rights Act. Leading the Democrats in their opposition to civil rights for African-Americans was Senator Robert Byrd (D-WV). Byrd, ...more who got into politics as a recruiter for the Ku Klux Klan, spoke against the bill for fourteen straight hours. Democrats still call Robert Byrd “the conscience of the Senate.”
In his speech, Senator Dirksen called on the Democrats to end their filibuster and accept racial equality."
You see,the democratic party was once the conservative party,and the conservatives wanted slavery to continue.Now the conservatives are republican,and they aren't very fond of minorities or civil rights.
And, I might add, the LAST thing you should ever think of Carlin as is "just a comedian".
Artists are the voice of your society. When they are silent, dull, or drab, your society is on borrowed time...
Depolarize your mind, but grasp that society which surrounds you.
I didn't label "the truth about Republicans", all I did was share it.
I have have views which straddle "both sides of the fence", that's a fact.
Are you serious?
Does the term socialist ring a bell?
you were saying?
What an outstanding speaker, with a great vision and the ability to break it down to understandable bits for everyone understand. Go Senator Scott.!!!
"The tactics of conservatism vary widely by place and time. But the most central feature of conservatism is deference: a psychologically internalized attitude on the part of the common people that the aristocracy are better people than they are. Modern-day liberals often theorize that conservatives use "social issues" as a way to mask economic objectives, but this is almost backward: the true goal of conservatism is to establish an aristocracy, which is a social ...more and psychological condition of inequality. Economic inequality and regressive taxation, while certainly welcomed by the aristocracy, are best understood as a means to their actual goal, which is simply to be aristocrats. More generally, it is crucial to conservatism that the people must literally love the order that dominates them. Of course this notion sounds bizarre to modern ears, but it is perfectly overt in the writings of leading conservative theorists such as Burke. Democracy, for them, is not about the mechanisms of voting and office-holding. In fact conservatives hold a wide variety of opinions about such secondary formal matters. For conservatives, rather, democracy is a psychological condition. People who believe that the aristocracy rightfully dominates society because of its intrinsic superiority are conservatives; democrats, by contrast, believe that they are of equal social worth. Conservatism is the antithesis of democracy. This has been true for thousands of years. "
Making arguments that have superficial appeal to the dimwitted, but are actually nonsensical and probably not believed by the liberal himself (but in this case, anything is possible).
Like thye right not offering a jobs bill?
Like the right crying about Benghazi but conveniently forgetting about several embassy attacks during the Bush administration that killed scores more?
Cappie,the master of dimwitted superficiality has spoken.
Why don't you support federally implemented laws supported by the SCOTUS?
Where are the jobs bills?Why did the republicans abandon jobs and the American people?
Where was your concern when Americans were killed in embassies during the Bush administration,and if there was wrongdoing in Benghazi,why isn't that an issue except with the extreme right,who we know hates Obama for their usual reasons?
Unfortunately,some of the republicans who cried the loudest didn't attend them...
Where are the jobs bills?
Why hasn't the republicans responded to the American people who need jobs?
A failure in leadership by the republicans.
Bear in mind, also, that all the surviving witnesses remain hidden by the Obama Administration - the most alarming fact after the murder - since it reeks of a Soviet style silencing of the witnessing. Even Congress does not know who they are, where they are or why, though Congress has started to make it clear they're getting impatient on this matter, particularly, though even that seems Johnny-come-lately. Congress is usually apprised of the info of such info, according to House Rep Jason Chaffetz (R- Colorado), within 48 hours. It's going on 5 months. Unfortunately, this, too, plays into the idea that Libya and/or Obama wanted Stevens dead, as in the presumed original plan all would die. Then ex-seals Woods and Doherty screwed up the plan by disobeying stand-down orders and rescued 20 - 30 unwanted witnesses with whom the administration has no plan to deal with - witnesses Obama clearly does not want to speak, since witnesses from Algeria, for example, were made available immediately. So, while the House dithers, what happens to these survivors? Will they turn up with "tragic brain damage sustained in the attacks" or will the world be told that the original records were wrong, there was only one survivor, in Walter Reed, and that all doctors agree that his brain damage was caused by the attack? ("How dare you think otherwise? this Administration finds such speculations offensive")
The GOP House needs to issue subpoenas for Clinton (to return), a Grand Jury for Obama, immediately subpoena the records that will identify the remaining witnesses and subpoena them to testify and should not stand on ceremony. The GOP House needs to find its inner rage and they need to issue subpoenas for all of the above and they need to issue them now.
Maybe if O.W.S was not dealing drugs and defecating on police cars during there great grass roots charade we could take you a little more seriously. Just saying.
But Barack Hussein Obama has decided it is his duty to protect, ...more and defend islam, and the (false) prophet of islam.
Barack Hussein Obama said in Cairo in 2009 . . .
. . . "I consider it part of my responsibility as President of the United States to fight against negative stereotypes of Islam wherever they appear." Barack Obama
And again at the U.N. Obama directly attacked the 1st amendment when he uttered these words . . . “The future must not belong to those who slander the prophet of Islam.” . . . he attacked the first amendment in two ways, first it is not the presidents duty to play referee between religions, and second he is saying that those who vilify mohammad should have no future. And, the only way to deny someone a future is to kill them.
Anyone who beleives in Islam is a terrorist and doesn't deserve the protections of the constitution.
Look at the hippocracy in your own post.
"We didn't elect Obama so he could defend islam, we elect a president so he can defend the Constitution ....."
The constitution defends all religions that are practiced in this country,not just the ones you choose to defend.
Tell us,is ignorance truly bliss?
Inquiring minds want to know.
TUCKER CARLSON: This book is packed with all kinds of interesting information that I have never heard before. This jumped out at me, you talked about the grotesque, really disparity, between black and white unemployment rates. The black unemployment rate is much higher than white unemployment rate, but you say that wasn't always the case. You say that black labor participations were higher than that of whites up until about ...more 1930. What changed?
DR. THOMAS SOWELL: What Changed was the government intervention into the labor market. 1930 was the last year in which there was no federal minimum wage. They brought in the Davis-Bacon Act. In fact, people, some of the sponsors of the Davis-Bacon Act said that they were producing that Act precisely because blacks from the South, construction workers were coming up North and the construction companies were able to underbid the Northern companies and get government contracts. And so, this was meant to put a stop to that.
CARLSON: Amazing, so just to be totally clear, up until 1930 under the Roosevelt administration, of course that would have been the Hoover administration, but up until that point, there were lower unemployment rates in black neighborhoods than white neighborhoods and that has been the result, you think, of lack of government intervention?
SOWELL: Not always, but in 1930 that was certainly the case, and that was not the first time that it was the case. The huge gap that you see today, that all has occurred under minimum wage laws. (Hannity, March 15, 2013)
But it doesn't matter. He was not raised in America but in Indonesia, and has clearly brought the resentment of a third world radical loser to America. obama in 1968 was registered as a Muslim ...more at Jakarta's Roman Catholic Franciscus Assisi School under the name Barry Soetoro.
Being a Muslim , obama would have been required to study the Quran in Arabic for hours each day, and in obama’s autobiography, “Dreams from My Father,” he acknowledged studying the Quran every day in that school.
Phill I must ask, are you comfortable with this?
In a interview with the New York Times, obama described the Muslim call to prayer as “one of the prettiest sounds on Earth at sunset.”
The Times’ Nicholos Kristof wrote that Obama recited, “with a first-class [Arabic] accent,” the opening lines of the Muslim call to prayer.
The first few lines of the call to prayer state:
Allah is Supreme!
Allah is Supreme!
Allah is Supreme! Allah is Supreme!
I witness that there is no god but Allah
I witness that there is no god but Allah
I witness that Muhammad is his prophet
Later in life we now know as fact obama had practicing comunist parents and was admittedly heavily influenced by infamous communist agitator Frank Marshall Davis. all of this developed into the resentment of a raciest black man in America, Attending the Black Liberation Theology Church of Reverend Wright for 20 + years. You remember the deal Phil ( Rev Jeremah "US of KKK" Wright)
who also said :
"The question is not whether we will be extremist but what kind of extremist will we be. We must ask the question, 'Why are there forty million poor people in America? And when you... ask that question, you are raising questions about the economic system, about a broader distribution of wealth. When you ask that question you begin to question the white power structure and capitalistic economy.
And that is just scratching the surface of this mans radical associations a complete account would take the rest of the afternoon.
But since know one wanted to talk about those associations when it mattered, we must now realize obama's goal is to weaken America economically, diplomatically and militarily, that is what needs to be addressed now, not where he was born...whereever that was.
FINAL REPORT: Obama's Birth Announcements Fail To Indicate "Natural Born" Status
A new investigation of Obama’s birth announcements appearing in Hawaii’s two primary newspapers in August, 1961 shows, conclusively, they were the result of a registration record taken by the municipal health authority, not a medically verified “Live" birth documented as occurring at a Hawaiian hospital, per an officially defined "vital event" designated by the U.S. Department ...more of Health, National Vital Statistics Division protocols.
By Penbrook Johannson
Editor of the Daily Pen
In August, 1961, two announcements allegedly showing a “native” birth for Barack Obama were published in Hawaii’s two primary newspapers, the Sunday Advertiser and the Honolulu Star. For more than three years since Obama engaged his unvetted candidacy for the presidency, many of his supporters have mistakenly lauded these blurbish announcements as the "holy grail" of proof that he was born in the state of Hawaii.
However, a detailed investigation of the history and procedures used by Hawaii’s municipal health department, and its relationship with the newspapers, shows that not only was it a matter of official policy that Obama’s birth would have been announced in the paper regardless of where he was born, the information used to publish the announcements is not even confirmed through any eye-witness, medical authority or hospital representative in the state.
In 1961, the two newspapers shared the same address and facility for their publishing operations which means they received only one copy of the same vital records information from the Department of Health. Therefore, the format and content of information used in "vital event" public announcements, including births, deaths, divorces and marriage applications, were published identically by both papers, including any mistakes, omissions, order or context. No investigation was carried out by the papers' editors to determine if the information provided by the DOH was actually accurate or, in the case of birth announcements, if the address published and provided by the registrant had any association with the geographic location of the actual birth. More than 1200 birth announcements between 1960 and 1965 were shown to contain Hawaiian addresses for registrants of births outside of the state of Hawaii, including more than three hundred in which the child was born outside of the United States.
The two newspapers have long since collaborated into one organization.
Now, however, data from the archive of the U.S. Department of Health’s 1961 Report on Vital Statistics of the U.S – Volume 1: Natality, and Hawaii’s Administrative rules governing the creation of vital records finally reveals the truth about how these announcements were published and why they are mistakenly used by uneducated pundits to promote a misguided message about Obama's natal history.
The Daily Pen’s, Dan Crosby, engaged a two month long research project on location in Hawaii, to, once and for all, close the door on questions about the facts and bring the long-due invalidation of the authority of these fallow Hawaiian birth announcements, in quaint, remote newspapers, to confirm Obama's eligibility to be president.
Recall, for more than two years, major media personalities, such as Bill O’reilly, Chris Matthews and recently fired, Keith Olbermann have enjoyed a willful ignorance in support of Obama's legitimacy while poking fun with these announcements essentially saying to their viewers that the very presence of these announcements means only one of two exclusive options: 1. They are a legitimate and accurate indication of Obama’s geographic birth in Hawaii, or 2. They are the result of some crazy 50-year-long conspiracy concocted by members of Obama’s family and newspaper editors at the time in order to enable Obama to use the announcements some time later as primary evidence that he was born in Hawaii in the event he might run for president some day.
In his investigation, Crosby found confirmed and easily accessible evidence that neither of these choices apply to Obama’s records. In fact, the explanation is far less sensational and simple that it reveals that Mr. Obama (Barry Soetoro) simply benefitted from a commonly used administrative practice in the state of Hawaii which was applied for literally thousands of births which were registered there, but which did not occur there. In doing so, Obama appears to have benefitted from a coincidental set of passive circumstances in which the choice to register his birth in Hawaii also allowed him to engage native U.S. citizenship status, not Natural Born status.
The announcements were a fringe benefit to his eligibility facade which merely occur as a consequence of the non-native birth registration process. However, the primary reason for his family registering his birth in Hawaii was to make sure he was eligible for something far less significant than the presidency. His grandparents wanted to make sure Obama could receive state financial assistance and medical care as an infant of an unemployed, wayward teenage mother and a foreign dead-beat, alcoholic, bigamist.
“The birth announcements were printed from unconfirmed information provided to the Newspapers by the Department of Health who received the information from Obama's grandparents, not a hospital," says Crosby in a phone call from Oahu.
“This information was publish without the DOH or newspaper editors confirming the actual location of the birth in any hospital or location in Hawaii. I found thousands of birth registration records of children born outside of Hawaii who have their announcements published in these two newspapers."
Crosby says this information can be determined by cross-referencing public records with birth announcements and associating the addresses with a residential directory and the natality data provided by Hawaii to the U.S. Department of Health's U.S. Vital Records Report.
Recall that Hawaii Revised Statute 338-17.8 allows the state Health Department to register the foreign birth of any child as a native Hawaiian birth if the parents of that child can be proven to the satisfaction and criteria of the Director of the Department of Health only, they were residence of Hawaii within one year of the birth, regardless of the location of the birth. This law then mandates that the vital records registrar must register the birth with the vital records office in coordination with an official, original Hawaiian birth record. This law originated during Hawaii's territorial era beginning with births in 1911 and was most recently revised in 1982 to allow the Health Department's director to assume autonomous authority over the evaluation of applicants.
“The Health Department director has complete autonomy in determining whether a foreign applicant qualifies for an original birth record under Hawaii's administrative rules," added Crosby
"Essentially, this means that former Health Department director, Chiyome Fukino single-handedly determined the eligibility of Obama to be President of the U.S."
"Regardless," he continued, "They (newspaper editors) don’t even confirm 'native' birth status. The newspaper doesn’t care if the birth occurred in the local hospital. They don’t even print the address of the birth. They publish the address of the registrant, not the birth place. They merely published information provided to them directly and exclusively from the Department of Health in 1961, which means that any birth meeting the criteria of this law can be registered in Hawaii, and therefore is published in a newspaper announcement. Obama could have been born on Mars and it wouldn't matter to the DOH or the newspapers.”
“The birth location is mistakenly implied to be Hawaii by people because the address of the registrant is Hawaiian as it appears in this newspaper. I also found several birth records in Japan for birth's registered in Hawaii.”
A review of all the birth announcements in Hawaii in 1961 reveals other evidence suggesting a disconnect between the Department of Health and Hawaii’s hospitals.
First of all, as shown by Crosby, all the announcements show the parents as married and living at the same address.
“This is not merely a majority of the announcements, this is actually all of them. Every single one! Approximately 16,000 in all!” Crosby said.
He continued, “This is a significant indication that the newspapers actually do not investigate the information provided by the DOH (Department of Health). If they did, they would have seen that there are more than 1040 births recorded in Hawaii in 1961 in which the parents were not married and/or only the mother is recorded as the parent, yet the papers still publish Mr. and Mrs. ‘Whoever’ in the announcement because that is the information registered, not medically verified.”
If the DOH doesn’t include accurate information about the parents marital status for birth announcements, in all cases, what makes people conclude a native birth even though the DOH also omits accurate information about the location of the birth, as well? Crosby also discovered that the announcements are in a tale-tell order which exposes a shocking fact about Obama’s birth announcements.
"Also," says Crosby, "just an interesting little side-note, we have all been told that Obama's parents were married sometime in early 1961. There are thousands of marriage application announcements published in these newspapers between 1960 and 1962, which were also published from registration information provided by the same DOH vital records office as Hawaii's birth registration announcements. There is no marriage application announcement for Dunham and Obama Sr. anywhere in the volumes I've researched."
Crosby admittedly found that a marriage application registration was provided under different administrative rules in 1961 than those applied to information in birth announcements. A marriage is not a medical procedure like a live birth. However, he says that it fits the Obama "black out" theme that critical information about his parent's vague, fleeting relationship would also stem from the same suspicious vital records reporting municipality.
“Did anyone notice the birth announcements are not in any alphabetic order, or in order of birthdate?" asked Crosby, "This is because, in 1961, birth registration numbers were issued based on the location of the local Vital Records office in which the registration was recorded. The hospital does not assign these numbers, the DOH does. It appears that Obama’s birth was registered in an office not used by any of the hospitals' registration locations who only received medically verified "Live Birth" certificates from either Kapi'olani Medical Center, or Queen's Medical Center. These had access to a local registrar near those facilities,” said Crosby.
He continued, “It appears Obama’s birth was registered with the satellite office near his grandparent’s home some distance from the offices nearest to and most used by the hospitals, a location not commonly used by any medical facility. This particular office was commonly used by indigenous people of Hawaii wanting to record births of children outside of the city. This is why the U.S. Department of Health created the Certificate of Live Birth template in 1959 with a check box indicating whether or not the child was born in the city limits and if the residence of the mother was a farm or not. It appears Obama’s birth at least did not occur in the city of Honolulu and, at most, did not even occur in the state of Hawaii.”
In 1956, the National Vital Statistics Division of the U.S. Department of Health issued a revised template version of the “Certificate of Live Birth” form to be used by state municipalities to record and medically verify births. Since Hawaii had not yet become a state, these revisions to the template would not be used in Hawaii until 1959. Therefore, birth records created after 1959 were subject to demographic clarifications and metrics prescribed by the federal authority of the U.S. Department of Health, not the state of Hawaii.
“This also explains why Obama’s birth announcements appear in the succession of announcements where and when they do. His alleged “Certification of Live Birth” is not approved by any federal authority as an official source of demographic data or medical verification of his birth. It is merely a record of birth registration. Therefore, the order of printing of announcements in the local papers comes directly from the list which is ordered based on the birth registration office location, not the chronological or alphabetical order of the medically verified birth.”
Crosby says the difference between a "medically verified” live birth and a “birth registration” are significant. A live birth is witnessed by a doctor, a birth registration is simply recorded by administrative authority without witnessing the birth.
"Obama's birth registration announcement appears deeper in the column of the paper because his birth was not a medical certificate provided by a hospital like the births shown above his. Walk-in birth registrations are treated differently in the reporting process. They seem to get 'second billing' based on registration indexing," said Crosby
Crosby interviewed former U.S. Dept. of Health Vital Records administrator, Martin Hesch in order to gain understanding of the different procedures and authorities used to create vital records and public announcements in a medical verification process as opposed to merely registering a vital event with a municipal office.
“I think people want to believe a simple equation to this issue,” said Hesch, when asked why he thought so many people ignorantly believe what they are told about Obama’s records.
“Notice that none of the birth announcements published in Hawaii then show the address of the birth place. Why do you think that is?" Hesch asked rhetorically.
"Because the papers had no way of knowing in most cases...too many were born outside of Hawaii. That is why too many people wrongly think that a birth announcement in a local paper is somehow an automatic indication of a local birth. Unfortunately, they wrongly accept a locally appearing birth announcement as an indication of medically confirmed ‘local birth’ and that just simply is not the way it is in most cases in Hawaii in early part of its history. The media also wants Barack Obama’s natal circumstances and documentation to fit the traditional record model because it is too disturbing to them to think that they were so easily deceived… but we also now know they do not fit this model.”
Hesch went on to explain that there two primary authorities to consider when understanding vital records administration. First, you have the medical verification of a vital event, like a birth or death, which is established by a licensed medical professional. Then you have the administrative process implemented by the municipal authority which documents, records and files vital records for the purpose of reporting data to various federal agencies like the Census Bureau and the U.S. Department of Health, the CDC, FEMA, etc.
“Birth events and deaths are unique because they require medical verification in the form of official original documentation attested by a medical authority, and, most importantly, the possession of that original documentation is maintained by the local authority,” says Hesch.
“However, a birth registration does not require the original presiding medical professional because, ironically, a state's Department of Health will be headed by a medical doctor who professional title affords surrogate authority in declaring a 'live' birth."
Aside from obvious complications that may occur during birth, medical verification for births are necessary because in some intances, when a baby is born alive for a only a brief period, or if the child is still-born, the attendant must be legally qualified to determine if the baby was alive or deceased at the moment of birth. If the baby was born alive, the DOH must file a "Certificate of Live Birth" and a "Death Certificate", signed by the same doctor. If the baby is still-born, a "Certificate of Live Birth" is not filed, only a "Death Certificate" is. This is significant for manner in which the birth is treated for natality data reporting by the DOH.
"A registration can occur anywhere in the U.S. because an administrative process such as that used in birth registrations (not medical verifications), marriages, divorces or amendments to vital records are presided over by legislative rule, not medical diagnostics," says Hesch.
"This means that they are not exclusive to some originating medical authority where the event occurred. That is not to say that a judge in a divorce case, for example, would not require a medical record in making legal decisions, it just means that the standards used to document administrative processes are far different than those used to document a medically verifiable vital event in the U.S.”
Hesch explained this is why it is possible to publish a birth announcement for a non-native birth. The announcements in the newspapers are the result of the registration records held by the administrative authority, not the records created by the medical authority bound by local geography. A "Certificate of Live Birth" is used by the child's doctor to originate a medical history file, a birth registration is merely used to initiate and reference report data with the federal U.S. Department of Health, National Vital Statistics Division.
“The birth announcement is automatically triggered by the creation of the registration through administrative process, when the municipal record is provided to the newspaper, not the creation of a medical verification record by a medical doctor or hospital,” he said.
“The birth can actually occur anywhere and if the announcement does not disclose the location, there is no way to know from just the public announcement whether the vital event is a local occurrence or not.”
Hesch’s explanation brings clarity to Obama’s birth announcements. Conclusively, Obama’s birth was registered in the state of Hawaii, but the announcements were not an indication that it was medically verified as occurring there.
“So, let me get this straight. People who think that Obama's birth announcements indicate a Hawaiian birth actually believe that the newspaper editors of the 1960’s received thousands of different notices from thousands of different doctors from multiple hospitals and villages throughout Hawaii, and then they organized them in some highly coordinated manner for publication in non-computerized publishing system?” asked Hesch, laughing incredulously.
"That is utterly ridiculous," he continued, “that is why the DOH pools this information and provided it for public announcements and why the newspapers accepted the information from the DOH without verifying the facts. The verification process would have been staggering and way too time intensive to meet deadlines.”
“If people would turn off the T.V. and just investigate this stuff for five minutes, they would feel stupid when they realize how simple and unimpressive the reality of it is,” he said.
In fact, the evidence shows that the original medical verification, in the form of what would be an original, 1961 federal U.S. Department of Health "Certificate of Live Birth" signed by an attending physician and attested by a hospital administrator, simply does not exist in a form or content which would promote Obama’s “natural born status”.
Hesch agreed that there is probably information in the original medical birth record, regardless of its origins, which undermines Obama’s identity as a politician and that is the reason why Obama is refusing to disclose it.
“Oh, sure, he is hiding something,” he said, “...that is a fact, and that is the only reason NOT to disclose it. Because, if the original medical record supported his current identity, he would be stupid to keep it hidden. It would only support him in that case.”
When asked his opinion about Obama’s case, Hesch said that is a certainty in his mind that Obama’s birth documentation was subjected to administrative processes or amendments which probably undermine his ability to be a natural born citizen, and that his medically verified natal records show information that the local vital records authority is able to conceal under the guise of identity protection.
“Of course, it’s ridiculous,” said Hesch, “the Secret Service is not required here. This is natal information about a birth which occurred 50 years ago, not a public appearance where the president is under some threat. The only reason to hide the original record is to protect something Obama doesn’t want people to know about him and how that information adversely impacts his ability to be president. It’s plain and simple to me.”
In the medical verification process, a registered professional of a federal board must document the circumstances and metrics of a birth. However, the administrative process used to the document the event for municipal purposes is not bound by medical requirements to accurately express those same circumstances because the vital records data is applied under different authoritative functions. Census reports, vital records reports and demographic data serve a different purpose than health report data. Hesch explained that the reasons for this level of administrative complexity comes from Hawaii’s historically plural culture where you have indigenous, native Oceanic, Asian and, of course, American peoples mixing in the population. Since Hawaii is unique in this and that it was a remote, detached territory prior to becoming a part of the U.S., it was necessary to “customize” much of their vital records processes in order to include all those who would be eligible for U.S. citizenry after the island nation became a state. This meant that including non-native births was necessary because the islands of Hawaii were so permeable to migration.
Therefore, it has now been confirmed by authorities in Hawaii and abroad that Obama’s birth announcements appeared in two local Hawaiian newspapers without the birth having been medically verified as occurring in Hawaii. The announcements are automatically triggered from information provided by the Department of Health, not the hospital. Therefore, since we already know that Hawaii's Health Department registered foreign births, the announcements would include births for these registrations as well, along with local birth registrations.
As a final statement to Bill O’reilly, Chris Matthews and the remaining ignorant slew of media hacks, we would like to say this:
Your failure to investigate these facts has undermined your profession and made you look pathetically wanton as journalists. If you would have taken just two more steps in your shallow observations, just one more level down into the actual truth, you have come to the same facts about Obama’s natal history as the internet community has. Instead, you chose to glance at the drive-by message and believe what some deceitful political animal told you about the matter.
Now, Obama has made you look like a fool.
Now please Explain why you belive everthing you hear on MSNBC
Now when you get a chance, can you help me figure out how to fold the tin foil for my new hat?
You should really not only read Title 8, but if you still need the hat I'll donate the tinfoil...
For persons born between December 24, 1952 and November 14, 1986, a person is a U.S. citizen if all of the following are true (except if born out-of-wedlock):
1.The person's parents were married at the time of birth
2.One of the person's parents was a U.S. citizen when the person was born
3.The ...more citizen parent lived at least ten years in the United States before the child's birth;
4.A minimum of 5 of these 10 years in the United States were after the citizen parent's 14th birthday.
For persons born out-of-wedlock (mother) if all the following apply:
1.the mother was a U.S. citizen at the time of the person’s birth and
2.the mother was physically present in the United States or one of its outlying possessions for a continuous period of one year prior to the person’s birth.
5 Myths About the Revolutionary War Everyone Believes
By: J. Wisniewski March 16, 2013
Since fictional superheroes usually get cool origin stories, it makes sense that an actual global superpower needs to have one. Luckily for the United States, the Revolutionary War was precisely such a tale. Bloody, heroic, and seasoned with all kinds of awesome, the entire eight-year period was dripping with fantastic stories ...more and scrappy underdog moments.
Or was it?
#5. The War Was Between the Colonists and the British
The Myth
Myth? It's the goddamn American Revolution. Sure, the French stepped in late in the game, but by the time they bothered to put down their baguettes and wine, the colonists had already proven they were a solid bet. Even after the Americans won at Saratoga, French assistance was, well, French: underwhelming and plagued by indecision.
The Reality
In the centuries since the Revolutionary War, French contributions have been criminally downplayed. Somewhere between the real Yorktown and Mel Gibson's rather less accurate version, The Patriot, the monumental French war effort during the birth of America got forgotten, buried in the sand, and pissed on.
The truth is, the 13 colonies would never have earned their freedom without French intervention -- the whole battle for American independence was essentially a proxy war between Britain and France. To the French, America was nothing but another theater in their grand blood feud against Britain. They were all about making the Englishmen eat every last available dick, and since they noticed they could use the colonists' struggle for independence as a handy feeding pen, that's exactly what they did.
France began providing arms and ammunition as early as 1776 (the war started in 1775). In early 1777, months before Saratoga, the French sent American colonists 25,000 uniforms and pairs of boots, hundreds of cannons, and thousands of muskets -- all stuff that the colonists would've had a hard time surviving without, and all stuff they had no access to on their own. And that was just the tip of the iceberg: From supplies to advice to military reinforcements, France exercised all the fiscal restraint of a drunk businessman at a strip club when it came to funding the American war.
France provided a whopping 90 percent of the rebels' gunpowder. Let that sink in for a second. Without France, the entire American Revolution would have devolved into a bunch of dudes swinging their muskets as clubs within weeks.
Still, the most important French contribution to the revolution (or, if you're British, their ultimate dick move) was the least visible to Americans. As mentioned, the reason France pampered the Patriots was always selfish. They were out to weaken the British forces -- particularly their naval strength -- in order to take the fight to them, perhaps even conquer them. That's why, for much of the Revolutionary War, the British ships tasked with kicking America's ass had to survive 12 rounds with the French navy before they could even think of crossing the Atlantic. France gleefully fought the British, eventually teaming up with Spain, declaring a war, attacking from all sides, and even setting up an invasion force. In those battles, America's independence was a fart in the desert.
So, when the Colonial army was fighting for dear freedom, history books tend to conveniently forget that they did so with French money, equipment, and backup forces, while France and its other allies were busy pummeling the empire from every other side.
#4. Molly Pitcher, the Cannon Heroine
The Myth
Molly Pitcher (whose real name may or may not have been Mary Ludwig Hays McCauley) was the wife of a Colonial artilleryman. Not content with just swooning in the background while the men did the fighting, she proved herself to be as badass as any colonist warrior by entering the Battle of Monmouth. She started the fight by carrying water for the soldiers, but when her husband fell, Molly immediately jumped behind his cannon and calmly proceeded to rain hellfire at the Englishmen for the rest of the battle. Tons of paintings and historical accounts depict her fearlessly cannon-bombing the Brits.
The Reality
While several women certainly served in military roles during the Revolutionary War, there never was a Molly Pitcher.
Despite what 80 percent of U.S. history textbooks will tell you, that person never existed -- at least, not as the warrior heroine we know. It appears her cannon antics are pure legend, written into existence by patriotic historians who were eager to give America its own figurehead of female war heroism in the vein of France's Joan of Arc or Britain's Boudica.
Although the battle that made Molly famous took place in 1778, the first written mention of her as "Molly Pitcher" is from 1851, and she wasn't assigned an actual identity until 1876. You might recognize that as the year of the American centennial celebration, and as such the absolute best time to look for unbiased accounts of the United States' origins.
Amid the first-centennial hoopla, multiple towns laid claim to Molly Pitcher, giving her various identities, and giving her antics their own spin, with zero evidence to support their claims. When scholars pointed out various contradictions and issues within the stories, they were shouted down for being buzzkills and everyone returned to their centennial moonshine.
As for all the paintings of Molly wielding her cannon: Allow us to present Agustina de Aragon, heroine of the Spanish War of Independence, seen here indulging in her favorite pastime of kicking French ass.
She was a big hit in Spain for obvious reasons, and various paintings and engravings of her French-bombing antics were circulating the world as early as 1813 ... well before the first "Captain Molly" paintings (which later evolved into the legend of Molly Pitcher) started emerging.
Surely, this is just a coincidence.
#3. The Americans Won the War With Frontier Savvy and Guerrilla Tactics
The Myth
Colonists were guerrilla fighters extraordinaire. They made a huge difference in the war outcome with constant raids, skirmishes, and ambushes, essentially going Home Alone on the British forces left and right.
It makes such an awful lot of sense: In the blue corner, we have a bunch of determined colonists who were on their home turf, lightly armed, and relatively inconspicuously clothed. In the red corner: tightly organized regiments of scarlet-clad soldiers with stiff upper lips, marching in lockstep through the forest like live Duck Hunt targets. Of course the Colonial forces took the opportunity to employ the kind of guerrilla tactics that wouldn't be seen until, well, two centuries later.
The Reality
As enticing as the image of clever American guerrillas winning the war by hiding behind trees and shooting British troops who are standing in formation in open fields is, it couldn't be further from the truth. While guerrilla tactics did play a plucky part in the proceedings, they were always a condiment rather than the meat. Ordinary pitched battles decided the outcome of the war.
Which was smart, because the Patriots never actually had the advantage when it came to guerrilla-ing. British troops had at least as much guerrilla chops as the Colonies, as pretty much all significant Native American tribes had sided with the Redcoats -- even the guy who literally wrote the book on being an Army Ranger fought for the British.
There was also the matter of suitable firepower. The predominant muskets of the day had a maximum range of about 100 yards, and to actually hit what you wanted, you had to be way closer. These weapons required organized, concentrated fire to direct a "wall" of lead at the enemy, in the vague hope that something might actually hit someone. Also, the muskets took about 20 seconds to reload, and the opponent tended to have at least some cavalry around. So any Colonial commando attempting an ambush was under significant risk of finding out firsthand how much less than 20 seconds it takes for a saber-swinging dragoon to cover 100 yards on horseback. In fact, forget about the horses -- while you're struggling with your musket, the British soldiers could just nonchalantly stroll up to you and send you to an agonizing, perforated demise. See, despite the color of their coats, they weren't just some idiot henchmen waiting to be shot. They were trained soldiers with bayonets fixed at the end of their muskets -- sharp bayonets that they could use very well.
With this information in mind, feel free to watch this clip of The Patriot and count all the times Mel Gibson would've been murder-stabbed to death.
#2. Except for a Few Loyalists, Most Americans Fought for Liberty
The Myth
Textbooks generally acknowledge the presence of some Loyalists in the Colonies. After all, no matter what your goal is, there's always someone who thinks it's idiotic. Even so, the sentiment for independent America must've been pretty overwhelming. Even allowing for the occasional Benedict Arnold, colonists crazy enough to continue supporting the king despite all the taxes and shit were surely just a ridiculous minority. Right?
The Reality
Wrong! In fact, the numbers of Colonial and Loyalist supporters were almost even.
The Revolutionary War was every bit as much of a civil war as, well the Civil War. If anything, there was a better chance for brother to be pitted against brother, because unlike the actual Civil War, your side in the conflict didn't depend on what part of the country you lived in. With the Loyalist and Patriot factions, a single street was fully equipped to have a civil war all its own.
In fact, there were not two but three sides: about a third of Americans fought for independence, another third opted for the king's side, and the remaining third didn't give a rat's ass as long as they survived with all appendages intact. Although recent research has revised the figures slightly in favor of the Patriots, that still leaves them in the minority. Yes, Patriots were a minority in America.
Incidentally, these power dynamics also tear down the traditional "Americans were the good guys, save for a few rotten apples" view of the Patriot/Loyalist relationship. Once you realize that back then literally anyone could be the enemy, the Revolutionary War is revealed as the all-out blood feud it actually was. "Good guys" were scarce, and Patriots dealt out at least as much dickitry as they received: Apart from the usual wartime horrors, after the war, at least 60,000 men, women, and children were forcibly cast out of the newly minted nation as refugees.
Meanwhile, Britain was busy trying to help its exiled supporters and, oh yeah, freeing the thousands of African-(ex-)Americans who had supported the losing side.
#1. The Colonists Defeated the Mightiest Army of the Time
The Myth
The American Revolution is an 18th century David and Goliath tale. The Americans defeated the mightiest army of its time -- a force that was vastly superior in every way, except for their love of freedom.
The Reality
When war broke out, the Colonies boasted a population of 2.5 million. Even with just a third of them actively supporting the revolution, and just, say, a quarter of them able-bodied men, the British still had a hell of a crowd to contend with ... especially when you consider the fact that just 40,000 British soldiers were expected to subdue them. That's 40,000 soldiers facing 2.5 million people, spread out over thousands of miles, each of them a potential enemy until proven otherwise.
Colonists never, ever faced the fearsome British army of the late empire. For the most part, the field armies tasked with suppressing the rebellion were softened units that hadn't seen combat in a decade. As for asking for backup, no matter how belated: There was none to send. In 1776, the total manpower of British military might reached 96,000. That was their entire worldwide strength. With these men, the British were fighting the Patriots, while holding Caribbean possessions, while manning their stations at Gibraltar and Minorca, and Ireland, and Gold Coast territories ... and defending England itself.
So, yeah. It was not David versus Goliath as much as it was lots of Davids plus France versus a handicapped and distracted Goliath. Maybe that's why almost as soon as the war began, the British were trying to get out of it. Lord North, the chief minister, feverishly begged the king to let him resign, as he felt he wasn't up to the task of subduing a rebellion. So, the Brits were not only grossly outnumbered, but had freaking Chicken Little running the show.
And that was just the beginning. When France entered the war, they didn't mess around: They swooped in with over 300,000 soldiers, and they equipped the Continental Army with new weapons with a range and accuracy that were vastly superior to British infantry weapons.
And then America won! Just like that time when David and 300,000 of his well-trained buddies strangled Goliath in his sleep! Just like heroes do!
USA? USA? USA?
Trying to downplay the term "Patriots" is a sour grapes reaction and partly born from world wide anti American sentiment. They build you up only to try and rip you down. I know we have our problems but there is still no place I would rather live.
Which one of us is thin skinned? I can take whatever you say about me,I'm here.You people are the ones who have to respond every time.You can't hack being told the truth about yourselves.
You're all alike.
And you still fall short.
Rand paul has since walked back his comments on supporting a path to citizenship.
They're lying to make political points.
Same old same old.
And the gullible still beleive them
We love Women, just not the selfish barbaric murdering act of abortion for convenience
Working people are great! I am a working person will be till the day I die
Love Spanish people they have family values go to church and work very hard they just need to pay taxes, Everyone needs to pay taxes not just the rich!
Your envy of the rich will in the end will be your ...more undoing .
We love Women, just not the selfish barbaric murdering act of abortion for convenience
Working people are great! I am a working person will be till the day I die
Love Spanish people they have family values go to church and work very hard they just need to pay taxes, Everyone needs to pay taxes not just the rich!
Your envy of the rich will in the end will be your ...more undoing .
By dnice (555), Hampton Bays on Mar 21, 13 12:41 PM
"
REPRODUCTIVE RIGHTS: DECLARE WAR ON WOMEN
In Republican politics, limited government ends at a woman's vagina. Early this year, the GOP-controlled legislature of Arkansas passed a bill outlawing abortion after just 12 weeks' gestation, a law "designed to dial the clock back 40 years," said Nancy Northup, president of the Center for Reproductive Rights. The measure was vetoed by Democratic Gov. Mike Beebe, who decried it as "blatantly" unconstitutional ...more – under Supreme Court precedent a woman has the right to terminate a pregnancy before at least 22 weeks. But in March, the state legislature voted to override the veto, enacting the most restrictive abortion law in the nation – and setting up a certain court challenge that may tempt the Roberts court to reconsider Roe v. Wade.
Republican legislatures across the country are also pushing bills that would force a woman to be penetrated by a dildonic-ultrasound wand before she can legally terminate her pregnancy. A similar bill in Virginia last year became synonymous with the Republican party's "War on Women" – a PR fiasco that contributed to the loss of at least two Senate seats. But state Republicans are unabashed in supporting ultrasound mandates: "This bill is a priority," said Scott Fitzgerald, Republican state senate leader in Wisconsin. "It is long overdue."
In Indiana, lawmakers have sought to punish women seeking access to the abortion pill RU-486 by forcing them to undergo not one but two ultrasound penetrations. Public outcry forced the legislature to reduce the ultrasound mandate to one. "This bill is about politics, not women's health or safety," said Betty Cockrum, president of Planned Parenthood of Indiana. "Statehouse politicians need to get out of our doctors' offices."
To many men trying to get out of child support and to many grandmothers and sisters who do not want to help with a child. Problem is for the mothers who cant just go back to the way it was before they were talked into the "procedure" by people like you
And maybe, Ann Coulter.
If you only new that damage you could be causing some young thing reading your childish no responsibility rants, you really should be ashamed of yourself.
God forgive you.
Please do not call me names because you fear the truth.
Take personal responsiblity for your perceived mistake and stop trying to make decisions for others.
From your posts you come across as a very bitter person who seems to feel cheated in life somehow and now you spend hours trying to force people into your view points.
Why are you filled with so much hate?
A mirror of you and the others, who obviously can't stand any opinions contrary to your own.
I can make them jump through hoops,like they did above.
Like I said before-
"Self-deluded groin thinkers poised like lemmings on the sea cliff"
Jump,boys,jump this high.
In Egypt over the past year, men who many Egyptians think are supporters of Mohammed Morsi’s Islamist government
Looks like obummers Arab Spring is right on track
Even if you do wish you could carry the war on women that far here.
By 27dan (456), Southampton on Mar 21, 13 11:46 AM
Hey dan, Google this:
the truth about the distribution of wealth in america collective evolution
Watch the video. It has lots of pictures...
Remember, Hubris is a deadly sin. Not just for an individual, but for the society such acts are reprobate to.
Erin is spot on in her comments, not all women are in favor of killing their unborn childred in utero for the sake of convenience. How many girl babies have been killed by the abortionists? That's a war on women, brought to us by the godless left.
just saying.
It isn't murder, it's a medical procedure and civil right that is constitutionally protected according to the SCOTUS.