Tag: Bush

What to do now?

Nick Egnatz, is a VietNam vet, who has written an essay and is someone with whom I have rallied with, from time to time, here and there.  I am showing the entire essay, because the “thought content” may become lost were I not to do so!  

I reserve my personal comments or thoughts (and, frankly, I’m still mesmerizing over the thoughts he portrays in his diary)!  

I must say, up-front, I do not disagree with the accuracy of the circumstances, as he portrays them to be!  Nor, do I think his solutions absurd, but . . . . . !  We all search for remedies — maybe, Nick’s right and maybe, he’s wrong!  What do you think?

The Progressive Dilemna

The Progressive DilemmaSubmitted by Nick Egnatz on Wed, 2010-09-29 19:49

A self described representative democracy in which the only two political parties are both funded and controlled by elite corporate interests is a contradiction in terms. Control of the population through government propaganda and a monopoly corporate media have made the domination of the American working class and poor by the wealthy corporate elite consensual. The enormity of the crime against true democratic values is so complete that substantive reform of the present system is an impossibility.

A dilemma is a situation in which one is forced to choose between equally distasteful options. That has always been our consignment as Americans when we venture to the polls (either vote for a wishy/washy Democrat or let the even worse Republican win). Every two years we are told that the fate of our democracy rests on our decision. Well it doesn’t because we don’t have a democracy, representative or otherwise. We have a plutocracy (rule by the wealthy). Our two political parties answer out of necessity to the corporate world. No one represents the people and the monopoly corporate media will not allow for a discussion of democratic alternatives.

The chickens have come home to roost from the last 30 years of economic neoliberal globalization policies championed by both political parties. Supply side economics of massive tax cuts for the wealthy and deregulation of the very modest checks on American capitalism necessitated by the Great Depression have made us the most unequal industrial democracy on earth. Imperial wars of aggression and massive bailouts of the very speculators who engineered the financial collapse leading to the Great Recession have allowed both corporate parties to take the stance that there is no money left for the people’s needs. This is poppycock. How can a consumer driven economy recover if the working class and poor have no jobs or money?

To cut spending on social programs with political cover, Obama came up with the brilliant idea of a Budget Deficit Commission made up of bipartisan hacks from both our two corporate parties, representatives from the corporate world of greed and a single union president. Green Party and socialists need not apply and in fact there are no even mildly progressive Democrats (an oxymoron if there ever was one) on the commission. The Commission is not a result of legislation from our Congress. It was formed by Executive Order. This is the way dictators govern, but that’s another issue. The Commission is charged to cut the Budget Deficit by cutting social programs only and leaving the military spending intact. If and when 14 of the Commission’s 18 members agree on policy it will go straight to Congress for a vote with no amendments allowed.

Co-chairman of the Commission Alan Simpson, former Republican Senator from Wyoming received some notoriety recently by referring to seniors on Social Security as “lesser people”, calling Social Security a “cow with 310 million tits” and asking the question of Vietnam veterans “what have they done for us lately?’ None of this bothered our President enough to ask for Simpson’s resignation. Their recommendation is due in December, after the election.

We are expected to accept the government propaganda that the unemployment rate is 9.6%, when that figure does not include those no longer receiving or who never received unemployment compensation, part time workers desiring full time work or workers disdainfully referred to as having given up looking for work. Including all these would bring the unemployment figure to 22%. But that still doesn’t count those working for less than a livable wage, this would easily bring the figure well beyond the 30% range. This assault on the working class has been the goal of the neoliberal globalization policy accepted as gospel by both corporate political parties since Ronald Reagan started selling it in the 70s and 80s when he set out to save the country from the scourge of a prosperous working class. The Great Communicator pushed his dogma of bad government/good corporations with the same smile he used to push Twenty Mule Team Borax soap to TV viewers years earlier.

More than three million families have already been foreclosed and torn from their homes. Another 11 million families are “underwater” (owing more that the home is worth). Research firm First American Core Logic reports that Nevada with 65% of home mortgages underwater, Arizona with 48%, Florida with 45%, Michigan with 37% and California with 35% lead the nation in this foreboding statistic.

The Republicans propose fiscal austerity for the poor and working class and continued tax cuts for the wealthy corporate class to find our way our of the Great Recession. Obama and the Democrats say that economic growth will do the trick. Both so called solutions are illogical. We are expected to believe that if the big bad bankers would just pretty please start loaning money to businesses, the economy will start humming and everything will be hunky dory?

I’m not an economist, but I have been a small businessman and I have been told on more than one occasion that I have half a brain. The road to recovery is both simple and difficult. For businesses to thrive, for the economy to hum, the business owners simply need customers with money in their pockets. The first step is to put our citizens back to work at a livable wage and the economy will flourish. It will be difficult, to the point of impossibility, for corporate politicians to consider the people at the bottom first, but that is what needs to be done.

Pissed off! (Surely, I’m not saying this out LOUD!

So, I receive this from Sen. Leahy today, as follows:

Dear …….

Figuratively speaking, what BP has done to the communities and ecology of the Gulf Coast is downright criminal.

Eleven workers lost their lives in the Deepwater Horizon rig explosion. Countless more have lost their livelihoods. The environmental devastation to marine life and coastal wetlands is unfathomable.

Yet under current law, if a jury finds BP criminally negligent, the company would not necessarily have to pay any restitution to the victims of the spill — not even to the families of rig-workers who perished or to the fishermen put out of work. Furthermore, criminal penalties are currently too lenient to adequately deter corporate wrongdoers from authorizing risky schemes that damage the environment.

That’s why this week I introduced the Environmental Crimes Enforcement Act (ECEA) to make restitution for violations of the Clean Water Act mandatory and increase criminal sentences for violators.

Urge your members of Congress to support the Environmental Crimes Enforcement Act (ECEA) to start treating preventable environmental catastrophes as serious criminal acts.

This legislation takes important steps towards deterring criminal conduct that leads to environmental and economic catastrophe.

Too often, big oil companies treat criminal fines and penalties as a mere cost of doing business. But passing ECEA would change all that, sentencing corporate wrongdoers to serious prison time and mandating restitution payments be made to the victims of corporate malfeasance.

So please, take a moment to support this important legislation by clicking here.

I fully support lifting the miniscule $75 million liability cap on corporations responsible for environmental disasters like the Deepwater Horizon spill, but I believe we must also go further to treat such acts as serious crimes against our communities, our economy, and our environment.

If you agree, please support the Environmental Crimes Enforcement Act (ECEA) today.

Thank you for taking action to hold corporate wrongdoers accountable and ensure something like this never happens again.

Sincerely,

Patrick Leahy

What Are We Really Doing in Afghanistan?

So, what are we doing in Afghanistan? Let’s ask some intelligent Afghanis.

(Cross-posted at DKOS)

It’s near-impossible to find anyone in Afghanistan who doesn’t believe the US are funding the Taliban: and it’s the highly educated Afghan professionals, those employed by ISAF, USAID, international media organisations – and even advising US diplomats – who seem the most convinced.

Where does this story come from? The Guardian, which actually takes an interest in digging a little deeper than most U.S. media outlets: Afghans believe US is funding Taliban by Daniella Peled.

Americans are often baffled, if they bother to travel and interact with the natives in a realistic way, at how differently people view the world. For people in the rest of the world conspiracies are normal. False flag events, double-crosses, double-dealing are well known in cultures with long oral traditions. Indeed, had we in America been much interested in history we would realize that there are plots all over the place about all kinds of major and minor issues. Yes, people are not honest. Shocking.

Is there merit to their argument?

 

“I don’t need sex!” (Update)

War and Secrecy — Secrets Here, Secrets There, Everywhere Secrets!!!! [Update!]



Blackwater

I am very glad to know that Seymour Hersh is shedding/exposing some light to the military dominance in all matters of war!   See Ministry of Truth’s Sy Hersh: “Battlefield Executions”. . . .

We’ve had “secret death squad executions” going on in Pakistan and Afghanistan for quite some time now, which were unbeknownst not only to our military, but, supposedly, even to Obama.  But, whether it’s secret or otherwise, we’ve just been killing people right down the line, Iraq, etc.  See Blackwater’s Secret War in Pakistan Revealed (Operated by the JSOC, US Joint Special Operations Command, which was Cheney’s original execution squad, if I’m not mistaken) and Death Squads in Afghanistan.  Just a couple of other examples of our secretive behavior.   Wonder if there’s any count on those activities?

Gulf: 5 times what they originally claimed

And, a third leak has been identified.  210,000 gallons per day.

I don’t think any of this is surprising.

Opening up parts of the U.S. Atlantic coast, Alaska and possibly offshore Florida to exploration is Obama’s latest effort to woo legislators needed to pass a climate bill before mid-term elections in November.

– Reuters

Accidents happen.  Except with wind and solar, etc.

Drill, Baby, Drill Pt II

http://www.nytimes.com/aponlin…

YEah, baby.

Another fine idea there president O’Bush.  

Not al Qaeda, Collapse of the bush Administration!!!

Looks like much more of the cheney/bush years are continuing to collapse, and All Done In Our Names. This may explain the widespread push, especially from republicans? in Congress, they’re figureheads around the Country and those connected to that administration but not in Government have so forcefully been pushing the fox nation types to rail against closing Gitmo and having No Trials of so called terrorist inside this Country and in our Courts. Courts of a supposedly Lawful Nation!

Truthout has updated an earlier report of what’s coming down.

Drill, Baby, Drill

The winner gets to implement the platform they ran on, right?

Or, the platform of the losing side.

He (Obama) said that his plan to allow drilling along the Atlantic coastline, the eastern Gulf of Mexico and the north coast of Alaska – ending a longstanding moratorium on exploration from the northern tip of Delaware to the central coast of Florida, covering 167 million acres of ocean

….the sheer breadth of the offshore drilling decision will take some of his supporters aback.

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/04…

My letter to NYC Council Members for new WTC7 investigation

Here is my letter for the NYC Coalition for Accountability Now’s “Building What?!” campaign, which is a phone and fax campaign to help the New York City Council become aware of the collapse of World Trade Center Building 7. Please visit NYCCAN.org and join this important effort.

Obama is Worse Than Bush: UPDATED

When General Dynamics put the money up to groom and run Obama, they knew that we’d be arguing about race. That our side would be divided.

And, as I said, another faction had Hillary put up for the same reasons.

———————————

When I voted for Obama, my hope didn’t seem entirely naive- I thought that at the very worst, he’d turn out to be a slight improvement, and at best a fairly decent improvement.

I was wrong.

And, then at first I came to the conclusion that he was the same as Bush–but now it’s clear to me at least that he’s in fact been much worse.

Here’s my list.

Better than Bush:

1. Israel. Arguably, slightly better on Israel/Palestine.

2. Supreme Court. I don’t like Sotomayer at all, but she’s better than a Bush nominee would have been.  

Same as Bush:

1. Iraq

2. Torture, renditions, Gitmo–all ongoing.

3. Personal freedoms, Patriot Act, TSA, and Homeland (in)Security Dept–the apparatus of a fascist state in the making.

4. Handouts to corporate America–Goldman Sachs and other robber barons.

5. Honduras. We can’t really know for sure what Bush would have done here, but Hillary’s been yelling ‘get over it’ to countries that were against the coup, so I’ll assume no difference here.

6. Iran.

7. ‘Clean’ coal.

8. Endangered species. This one surprises me–that he’s been this bad.

9. Outsourcing.

10. Environment: he’s been putting industry lobbyists in charge, just like Bush.

Worse than Bush:

1. Afghanistan–Bush was pulling out, Obama has expanded this with no end in sight.  

2. Health Care ‘Reform’- Bush could never have pulled off this travesty, which is an attack on personal freedom, and the first salvo of the attack on SS/medicare.  (see 3)

3. The attack on Social Security and Medicare – Bush wanted to do this, but never could have politically. Ten years from now there will be no SS, and no or greatly reduced medicare –and Obama will be the culprit.

4. Militarism of the schools. This seems to be a pet Obama project from his Chicago days.

5. Pakistan. One of Obama’s first actions was drone strikes (some killing civilians) inside of Pakistan’s borders.

6. Nuclear power resurgence.  Bush couldn’t have gone there.  

1000+ architects want new WTC investigation

Over 1,000 architects and engineers have signed the Architects and Engineers for 9/11 Truth‘s petition demanding a real investigation into the destruction of the three World Trade Center skyscrapers on 9/11.

That’s right, over 1,000 architects and engineers have gone on record saying the official story about the collapse of the Twin Towers and the WTC7 is not believable and think a new investigation is warranted. They think that the official theory is an extraordinarily unrealistic hypothesis and that the evidence does not support it. They have focused a significant amount of attention on WTC7 because it is the ONLY skyscraper in the history of the world to ever collapse just from fire.

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