Beshear Buys Off Fired Whistleblower

No surprise,  but as it is and has been for decades unwritten-but-practically-official state policy to obey Big Coal in the matter of mine inspections, it would have been nice, for once, to get the facts out in open court.

Tom Loftus at the Courier:

The Steve Beshear administration has settled for $270,000 a lawsuit brought by its former director of mine permits who claimed he was fired three years ago for blocking illegal permits sought by coal giant Alliance Resources.

The state Energy and Environment Cabinet released the five-page settlement with Ron Mills Wednesday morning.

It calls for the state to pay Mills $270,000 in exchange for dropping a lawsuit he brought in Franklin Circuit Court claiming he was fired for blowing the whistle on what he said was an illegal state policy.

The agreement states that the settlement is not an admission of “any liability, violation or wrongdoing” by the state.

And the agreement includes a confidentiality provision prohibiting the parties from discussing settlement negotiations.

Yeah, exactly. And $270,000 is far less than what Kentucky taxpayers have already paid to protect Beshear's ass with delaying tactics over the past three years.

Everybody knows what goes on between Big Coal and Frankfort. But it's never been put on the record, and it needs to be.  Until it is, we'll never be able to change it.

Songs to Fight the Plutocracy By: "So Long, It's Been Good to Know You"

Uploaded by algeva on Apr 10, 2007

Be Thankful You're Not One of These Workers

But don't think they're not languishing in a slave-labor hellhole very near you.

Charlie Pierce:

Lost in all the Gentle Fiscal Incline palaver, and the warm-up to the holidays, is the story that another oil rig blew up in the Gulf Of Mexico, killing some people who don't really count in the calculations of the Very Serious People who are handling the great issues of the day, and once again giving us another unpleasant look into the corporate culture that we, through our politics, have allowed to flourish.

Grand Isle Shipyard Inc., the company whose workers were aboard the West Delta Block 32 platform Friday morning when an explosion and fire killed one worker, left another missing and injured 11 more, is facing charges of abusive and exploitative working conditions akin to slavery in a federal lawsuit filed by former workers from the Philippines. The allegations surfaced as the federal Bureau of Safety and Environmental Enforcement, which regulates the oil and gas industry, began its investigation into Grand Isle Shipyard and Black Elk, the Houston-based owner of the oil platform that caught fire 18 miles southeast of Grand Isle.

The lawsuit itself is a cornucopia of horrors.


SNIP

I guarantee you that, somewhere in a boardroom, people are slapping themselves high-fives for how profitable this inhumanity was. Somewhere, business consultants are congratulating themselves for devising such a clever strategy, and they are giving seminars on how to apply these principles to other businesses. Some day soon, it will be taught in our finest business schools to the sleek children of people who never will know the people on whom it is practiced. We are inculcating in our lives an acceptance of serfdom. We are investing in our economy a foundation of outright sociopathy. This seems like it should be a matter of some concern.

I apologize for all the times I accused repugs of trying to create a lords-n-serfs economy in this country. They aren't trying to create one.  They're trying to protect and expand the one we've already got.

SNAP

Another bulls-eye from Divine Irony:

Songs to Fight the Plutocracy By: "A Man's A Man For a' That"

Uploaded by taragolden on Aug 9, 2007

Lionel McClellend of Moffat performs his own version of the famous Robert Burns ode to humanity.

A man is one who stops to help another without a second thought. A man is one who works for his family and friends without a care in his heart. A man is one gives to all and fights for what is right. A man looks upon many things in this life with a faith that burns deep in the soul. The trick in this life is learning what a man should be not what society has made them become. And with all this a man is an honest man who's word is always enough.

Is there for honest poverty
That hangs his head, an' a' that
The coward slave, we pass him by
We dare be poor for a' that
For a' that, an' a' that
The rank is but the guinea's stamp
The man's the gowd(gold) for a' that
What though on hamely(homely) fare we dine
Wear hoddin grey(course wollen cloth), an' a' that
Gie(give) fools their silks, and knaves their wine
A man's a man, for a' that
For a' that, an' a' that
Their tinsel show an' a' that
The honest man, though e'er sae poor
Is king o' men for a' that
Ye see yon birkie(fellow) ca'd a lord
Wha struts an' stares an' a' that
Tho' hundreds worship at his word
He's but a coof(fool) for a' that
For a' that, an' a' that
The man o' independent mind
He looks an' laughs at a' that
A prince can mak'(make) a belted knight
A marquise, duke, an' a' that
But an honest man's aboon( above) his might
Gude(good) faith, he maunna( must not) fa' that
For a' that an' a' that
Their dignities an' a' that
The pith o' sense an' pride o' worth
Are higher rank that a' that
Then let us pray that come it may
(as come it will for a' that)
That Sense and Worth, o'er a' the earth
Shall bear the gree( have priority) an' a' that
For a' that an' a' that
It's coming yet for a' that
That man to man, the world o'er
Shall brithers( brothers) be for a' that

One Crop

From the always sensible Divine Irony:

confrontingbabble-on:

I’ve worn excellent cloth made from bamboo and hemp…time to get the hemp growing industry moving!

Difference between Industrial Hemp and Cannabis

The difference is in its use. Hemp and Marijuana both come from the same plant - Cannabis Sativa L. The term ‘Hemp’ commonly refers to the industrial/commercial use of the cannabis stalk and seed for textiles, foods, papers, body care products, detergents, plastics and building materials. The term ‘marijuana’ refers to the medicinal, recreational or spiritual use involving the smoking of cannabis flowers. Industrial hemp contains only about 0.3% - 1.5% THC (Tetrahydrocannabinoids, the intoxicating ingredients that make you high) while marijuana contains about 5% - 10% or more THC. Hemp fibre is the longest, strongest and most durable of all natural fibres. Hemp cultivation requires no chemicals, pesticides or herbicides. Grown in rotation with other crops such as corn and legumes, hemp farming is completely sustainable. Hemp produces four times as much fibre per acre as pine trees. Hemp tree-free paper can be recycled up to seven times, compared with three times for pine-pulp based papers. Hemp is easy to grow, and actually conditions soil where it grows. The seed and seed-oil are high in protein, essential fatty and amino acids, and vitamins. Hemp would be an ideal source of biomass for fuel, and hemp Ethanol burns very cleanly.

Hemp and humanity have been linked for over 10,000 years. Hemp was our first agricultural crop, and remained the planet’s largest crop and most important industry until late last century. Most of the non-Western world never stopped growing hemp, and today hemp for commercial use is grown mostly by China, Hungary, England, Canada, Australia, France, Italy, Spain, Holland, Germany, Poland, Romania, Russia, Ukraine, India and throughout Asia.

http://hempethics.weebly.com/industrial-hemp-vs-cannabis.

Songs to Fight the Plutocracy By: "Free and Equal Blues"

Published on Mar 24, 2012 by ABevs1

Technical Difficulties

Apologies. Ancient laptop in the shop. Blogger mobile not helpful. Back soon I hope.

Songs to Fight the Plutocracy By: "Take the Power Back"

Uploaded by LilaWunderbohnen on Dec 14, 2009

Will the Roberts Court Uphold the Reign of Mythology in Kentucky State Government?

Nobody's more pissed about Kentucky state government abdicating its security responsibilities to an invisible sky wizard than I am, but the timing couldn't be worse.

This court? You have to petition this court?  You couldn't wait until Opus Dei member Antonin Scalia has to step down from terminal dispepsia?

Peter Smith at the Courier:

Citizens represented by the group American Atheists are asking the U.S. Supreme Court to hear their appeal of a lawsuit challenging a Kentucky law that credits Almighty God with homeland security.

The Kentucky Supreme Court refused to review the law earlier this year.


In a petition to the U.S. Supreme Court, attorney Edwin Kagin argues that the state General Assembly has been flouting a constitutional prohibition against the public sponsorship of religion. He cited decisions in 1980 and 2005 that curbed public displays of the Ten Commandments in Kentucky.



At issue is legislation passed after the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks. A 2002 “legislative finding” said the “safety and security of the commonwealth cannot be achieved apart from reliance upon Almighty God.”

Free Money to Make Elections Work Better: Jump on This Now, Allison

OK, red and swing states: you can stop bitching about how making voting more attractive and convenient than a colonoscopy would just cost too much money.  Here's a bill in Congress that will give you federal money for doing it.

Steven Benen at Maddowblog:

(Thursday) Sens. Mark Warner (D-Va.) and Chris Coons (D-Del.) unveiled a bill they're calling the "Fair, Accurate, Secure and Timely (FAST) Voting Act." Under their proposal, states that "aggressively" pursue election reforms would be rewarded with federal grants.

And what kind of reforms are proponents looking for? It's not a short list, but the Warner/Coons bill calls for flexible registration opportunities, including same-day registration; expanding early voting; "no-excuse" absentee voting; and "formal training of election officials, including state and county administrators and volunteers."

As best as I can tell, because the FAST Act is roughly modeled after the Race to the Top education initiative -- it's a competitive grant program, not a set of federal mandates.

In the House, Rep. George Miller (D-Calif.) unveiled a related proposal, the "Streamlining and Improving Methods at Polling Locations and Early (SIMPLE) Voting Act," which is even more ambitious. Most notably, it would require 15 days of early voting in all states for federal elections -- and because Congress has authority over regulating federal elections, the assumption is states would simply apply identical standards for all down-ballot races.

The introduction of these bills now appears intended to lay the groundwork for future efforts. This Congress will wrap up next month, and given its to-do list, and the fact that every new Congress starts over with a blank slate, we'll almost certainly have to wait until the new year before voting reforms are considered. That said, it's encouraging to see some worthwhile proposals on the table.

 Memo to Kentucky Secretary of state Allison Lundergan Grimes:  "Kentucky is all over the Race to the Top (of Stupidity) school grants; why not put the power of your office behind persuading our members of Congress to support the FAST Act so Kentucky can get money to establish early voting, expand voting hours and add more polling places, machines and workers.

If nothing else, the campaign will give you something to beat Mitch McConnell over the head with when you run against him in 2014."

The Victories of Movement Conservatism

Yes, it's hilarious to watch the repug politicians and analpundits projectile vomiting as their heads spin wildly right off their necks over their election losses.

 

But body counts don't tell the real story of who is winning in American politics any more than they told the real story of who was winning the Vietnam War.

 

Steve M. at No More Mister Niceblog:

What movement conservatism has accomplished is the imposition of severe limits on how far U.S. policy can move to the left on most issues, even when support for a leftward shift is overwhelming, and even when the liberal (or moderate) policies clearly work.

Think back: In Bill Clinton's first two years as president, he and a Democratic Congress raised taxes on the rich and passed an assault weapons ban. Movement conservatism threw a hissyfit, Democrats lost both houses of Congress, and it's been impossible to pass gun-control laws or raise tax rates ever since. President Obama promises now to raise taxes on the rich, but we still don't know if he can pull it off. That's a victory for movement conservatism (as is his openness to a "grand bargain" and to massive spending cuts).

Financial deregulation late in Clinton's term was evidence that he'd internalized the movement-conservative view of financial regulation. The failure of the Obama administration to jail any fat cat in the wake of the financial meltdown is further evidence of movement conservatism's success in defining how we approach corporate malfeasance.

Obama embraces a slightly modified version of the right-wing approach to the "war on terror -- that's a movement-conservative victory. Efforts to deal with climate change are all but abandoned (and are demonized) -- that's a movement-conservative victory. The union movement continues to lose ground, as do abortion rights at the state level -- those are movement-conservative victories. Campaign financing is more corrupt than ever -- that's a movement-conservative victory. It's getting harder and harder for students and poor people to vote because of voter ID laws, which the public supports -- that's a movement-conservative victory.

How do movement conservatives win these victories? By demonizing Democrats and liberals at every opportunity. Clinton is a murdering, raping, coke-snorting drug-trafficker. Obama is a race-war-leading Muslim Marxist. Nancy Pelosi is a witch; Ted Kennedy was a murderer; Al Gore is a serial liar; John Kerry won war medals via fraud. They all hate Jews and Christians and people who listen to country music; they all want to enslave America.

How much progress could we have made if movement conservatives hadn't spent the last generation standing athwart history, yelling "Oogabooga -- liberals must be destroyed"?

Change happens between elections.  What have you done to fight movement conservatism today?

After the Applause, They're Still There

The time of the year when food banks most need your help providing food to hungry families is not Thanksgiving or even Christmas.  It's January through October, when the poor aren't making the front page and people think the bag of canned goods they donated at Kroger in November is enough.

So, too, with wounded and disabled veterans after Veterans Day. Rachel Maddow has stayed on this beat for years and shows no sign of letting up.   From her Friday night show:

Songs to Fight the Plutocracy By: "La Marseilles"

Celebrating a Socialist Victory over plutocratic austerity in the place where the 99 percents of the 18th century released political prisoners, singing an anthem that gloats over the execution of aristocrats - what more could you ask?

Published on May 6, 2012 by rcook1148

Place de la Bastille, May 6, 2012. Crowd singing the French National Anthem as François Hollande prepares to take the stage.

Tasered for Trying to Put Out a Fire

Now you don't have to be a threat to get tasered.  You don't have to look like you might possibly someday appear to be a possible threat to get tasered.  You don't even have to hesitate to obey a cop's order.

All you have to do is be standing nearby when some cop feels too lazy to do some actual police work.

Digby

From the taser files:

The fire was all around Dan Jensen.

He could see it. He could smell it. He could hear it.

It was close enough to touch. It was burning down his neighbor's house. It was creeping toward Jensen's own fence 10 feet away, and he started spraying the fire with his hose.

Police ordered Jensen to get back, and he complied.

But after a few minutes passed without firefighters arriving, a frustrated Jensen stepped forward and leaned down to grab the skinny gray garden hose once again.

That's when he heard the order.

"Hit 'em! Take him down! Tase him!"

Within moments, Jensen was on the ground. He felt electric.

"It was all over me," Jensen said. "Crawling all over me."

The 42-year-old commercial fisherman is still struggling to comprehend exactly how things deteriorated so quickly Thursday. He said he doesn't understand why police shot him with a Taser that night as he tried to battle a house fire at 3420 Beechwood Ter. N.

Jensen's family, friends and neighbors have been quick to defend him and accuse police of crossing a line.

"It was wrong," he said. "There's no way around it. … I was fighting a fire. I wasn't fighting police. I thought they were here to help me. Instead, they hurt me."

Police said they can sympathize with the stress Jensen was under. But they said he put himself and officers in danger when he refused to back down from fighting the fire.

Pinellas Park Capt. Sanfield Forseth told the Tampa Bay Times authorities could have even charged Jensen with obstruction, but decided against it.

But wait, you say. This man was putting himself and the authorities in danger and the police had no choice.

Really? How about this: turn off the water. Cut the hose. Pull him back. Talk to him.

Tasers are dangerous and not just to the public --- they obviously present an even greater threat to the critical thinking capacity of police officers. Once they have them in their hands it appears they are compelled to shoot first and ask questions later. The idea that you have to shoot a citizen full of electricity in this situation is absurd. Moreover, it's a fundamental abuse of authority under color of law. Imagine if they'd walked up behind him and hit him over the head with a baton. Or shot him in the leg. Just because it doesn't leave a mark doesn't mean it doesn't hurt.

They had no need to hurt him. Tasers just make it so easy.

Kids Who Know Better

One of the things I love about the atheist/reality-based community is the way we never let even our allies get away with the slightest slip toward theist apologetics.

Divine Irony:

Kids Without God

I explored this site for a bit yesterday and there is some pretty good stuff on it.  BUT I HATE THE NAME!

When you use the word “without” it immediately conveys a lack of something.  And most of us don’t want to lack something.  Think “Kids Without Unicorns,” for example.  Obviously, unicorns don’t exist (sorry… maybe I should have used a Spoiler Alert there?), but don’t you still feel a little sad for those Kids Without Unicorns?   I don’t want, even for one second, to have these children who are questioning god’s existence to think that they might be missing out on something by embracing atheism.

What about…

KidsForReason

KidsForRationality

KidsFreeFromReligion

KidsThatLikeFairyTalesButDon’tBelieveTheyAreTrue

KidsThatAppreciateTheUniverseJustTheWayItIs

KidsThatWillChangeTheWorldForTheBetter

Let me be really clear here.  Kiddos…you lack NOTHING.  Religion is the bug guts and dirt and bird poop on your windshield - you clear all that off and your sight is clear.  You see the world exactly as it is.  And that’s beautiful.  Unicorns or not.  ~JJ

 I say KidsWhoKnowBetter pretty much covers it.

Here's a kid who did not know better, and a judge who knows even less.

No, There's No Debt Crisis, Either

Again, all this hysteria over the deficit and the debt is ginned up to force massive cuts in Social Security and Medicare as a huge step toward eliminating the Great Society and New Deal, thus throwing Americans fully on the mercy of the Wall Street sharks.  Just like we were in 1929.

Don't fall for it.

Digby

You know that deficit that's killing us? The one we're going to fix by "asking the rich to pay a little bit more" and cutting benefits for everyone else? What if the scam is even worse than we thought?

Dean Baker spills some very inconvenient beans:

[T]he big stick for the deficit hawks was their story of huge deficits in the longer term. They attributed these to the rising cost of “entitlements,” which are known to the rest of us as Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid.

While they like to push the notion that the aging of the population threatened to impose an unbearable burden on future generations, the reality is that most of the horror story of huge deficits was driven by projections of exploding private sector health care costs. Since Medicare and Medicaid mostly pay for private sector health care, an explosion in private sector health care costs would eventually make these programs unaffordable.

SNIP

In fact, in the last year nominal spending on health care services, the sector that comprises almost two-thirds of health care costs, rose by just 1.7 percent. This is far below the rate of nominal GDP growth over this period, which was more than 4.0 percent. While at least some of this slowing in health care costs is undoubtedly due to the downturn, it is hard to believe that it is not at least partially attributable to a slower underlying rate of health care cost growth.

CBO and other budget forecasters can ignore economic reality for a period of time (they ignored the housing bubble until after its collapse wrecked the economy), but if it continues, at some point they will have to incorporate the trend of slower health care cost growth into their projections. When this happens, the really scary long-term deficit numbers will disappear.

A projection that assumes that health care costs will only rise as a result of the aging of the population, and otherwise move in step with per capita income, will lop tens of trillions of dollars off the most commonly cited long-term deficit projections. It would cost some deficit hawks, like National Public Radio, more than $100 trillion of their long-term deficit story. This would be a real disaster for the deficit hawk industry.

This is why the Campaign to Fix the Debt and the rest of the deficit hawk industry will be operating at full speed at least until a budget deal is reached over the current impasse. If CBO adjusts its long-term health care cost projections downward then their whole rationale for gutting Social Security and Medicare will disappear. Now that is really a crisis.

I've been cynical about this whole exercise and don't believe we should do much of anything other than stimulate the economy for the time being. I know that this sense of panic over the the whole thing is a contrivance to force unpopular action. But I have to admit I didn't realize that we had evidence emerging that the deficit projections were already falling short and that there's good reason to suspect that they will be far short of what these fearmongers are selling.

But solving non-existent problems while avoiding real ones seems to be the new American way.

Has anyone even mentioned the fact that we still have 7.9% unemployment? Is that the new normal?

David Atkins:

The fact that everyone in the Village Media has bought into the deficit obsession as it were a real thing rather than simply the latest iteration of a decades-long tactic designed to further enrich the wealthy shows not just herd mentality and willful blindness. It shows a craven willingness to go along with direct economic sabotage and shameless lying in the guise of politics as usual.

It's moral tragedy on a grand scale.

The whole world is begging us to take their money at negative interest rates.  That's $10 trillion dollars basically for free.  Let's grab it and use it to create 10 million jobs to rebuild our infrastructure. Do it now.

As Charlie Piece never tires of repeating, because it cannot be said often enough:

Fuck the deficit. People got no money. People got no jobs.

Free Ride for Torturers

Well, except for the bottom-level grunts either obeying orders or given free rein to indulge their worst instincts - they got prison sentences. The ones who authorized torture, and defended torture, and shat upon the Constitution to justify torture - they walk free and proud.

 

Kevin Gosztola at Firedoglake:

A federal court dismissed a lawsuit against former Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld. The suit, brought by Donald Vance, a US Navy veteran and former defense contractor, and Nathan Ertel, also a former defense contractor, alleged he was responsible for torture they had experienced in an American-run prison in Iraq for nearly one hundred days. The dismissal effectively makes it even more impossible for US citizens to sue high-ranking officials, who are responsible for their torture.

I won't claim I know where this will lead, other than being sure that some shameful day, someone is going to point to this decision and say "There. That's where it started."

Songs to Fight the Plutocracy By: "Belt Line Girl"

Uploaded by 78rpmbum on Sep 21, 2010

"Extend Middle-Class Tax Cuts Right Now"

Actually, Mr. President, you and congressional Democrats are far more likely to get a good budget deal from repugs if you do nothing now, let the Bush tax cuts expire at the end of the year, then put forth a middle-class tax cut with job stimulus in January.



Full transcript here.

Boycott Walmart on Black Friday

You really should not be shopping Walmart ever - have you tried Dollar General, Family Dollar and Big Lots? - but if you still do, then here's the perfect chance to quit cold turkey.

And this time it's not a bunch of upper-class liberals asking you to boycott a store they've never stepped foot in themselves.  This time it's Walmart workers who are asking for your direct support.

 

Diane Sweet at Crooks and Liars:

It's time to take a stand and support the workers who are standing up to live better through an unfair labor practice strike.

Walmart workers decided to strike on Black Friday after they were targeted for retaliation for speaking out about substandard work conditions and treatment last month in the first ever walk out in the history of the company.

We ask you to help us feed the workers who will walk out on the company next week on the biggest shopping day of the year.

https://www.wepay.com/donations/walmart-strikers-food-fund

The workers are demanding the following from Walmart:
Improve Workers’ Lives
Pay a minimum of $25,000/year and guarantee quality, affordable health coverage for all Walmart associates and workers in the company’s US distribution chain.

Rebuild Communities
Sign on to a national community benefits agreement that ensures as Walmart expands into new markets, it strengthens communities, protects the environment and is responsible for the well-being of its employees in its retail stores and US supply and distribution chain.

Put Its Promises in Writing
Agree to a global labor agreement guaranteeing the fundamental human right of freedom of association for all of its associates and instruct their suppliers to do the same, and recognize and negotiate with OUR Walmart.

Elevate Global Living Standards
Establish a legally binding global responsible contractor policy requiring contractors and subcontractors to provide living wages, worker safety protections, and respect basic human and labor rights, including freedom of association and freedom from racial and gender discrimination.

How can I support in other ways?
You can join solidarity actions throughout the United States. Find out which solidarity actions are being organized and the store employees that are participating by going to the Corporate Action Network event page.

“The only thing workers have to bargain with is their skill or their labor. Denied the right to withhold it as a last resort, they become powerless. The strike is therefore not a breakdown of collective bargaining-it is the indispensable cornerstone of that process." -- Paul Clark

Click here and support the Walmart Black Friday strikers today!

See video at the link.

 

Taxes Are Not Your Money

From Under the Mountain Bunker:

“Oh please. Taxes are not *your* money. If people could give up the idea that it’s THEIR money being pried out of their hands, rather than just another bill, there’d be a lot less whining. You want lights, you pay the electric company. You want a place to live, you pay the bank or landlord. You want food, you pay the grocery store. You want to live in a civilized society, you pay taxes. Get. Over. It.”
— Comment of the Day: Paying For a More Civilized Society (via peekadora)

On that note, here's another idea for avoiding the non-existent fiscal cliff: Take all the money in the budget that is spent on shit I disapprove of ...

• subsidies to Big Oil, Big Coal, Big Gas, Big Ag, Big Pharma, Big Religion and every other motherfucking corporation.
•  tax exemptions for anything and everything religious.
•  tax credits for rugrats.
•  contracts to private companies. Give people government jobs.
•  military expenditures that do not directly and personally support individual grunts - in other words, all the fucking technoloy that is not salaries, family support, uniforms, equipment, etc.

... and spend it on stuff I approve of ...

• a massive Manhattan-Project program to replace all fossil fuels with renewable energy within five years.
• Medicare for All
• public schools that make Harvard look like the South Bronx.
• enough substance abuse and mental illness treatment beds to cure every sufferer in the country.
• enough affordable housing to end homelessness.
• 10 million government jobs rebuilding infrastructure: transportation, water treatment, parks, everything.
• massive increases in direct cash payments to eliminate poverty.
• Clone Eliot Spitzer so thousands of him are watching every Wall Street motherfucker 24-7.

Pick your own "shit'n'stuff." The point is that we all pay taxes for shit we hate and stuff we like. You can't get the stuff you like unless you pay for the shit you hate.

It's the price of civilization. Don't like it, the Galtian Paradise is waiting for you in Somalia.

Songs to Fight the Plutocracy By: "Dear Mr. President"

Uploaded by AllwApril on Feb 25, 2007

How to Cut Through the Fake Fiscal Cliff Bullshit

All the "tax-this-cut-that" or "cut-this-tax-that" proposals are just pure moonshine. The goal is what it's been for forty years: destroy Social Security and Medicare to dismantle the Great Society and New Deal and return the country to the lords-and-serfs economy that ensures permanent poverty for the 99 percent.

So here's my idea: leave rates where they are. But add five new brackets for top earners. 

Currently, all income over $389,000 is taxed at 35 percent. Start adding brackets at half a million.

Income from $500,000 to $1 million taxed at 40 percent.

Income from $1 million to $10 million taxed at  45 percent.

Income from $10 million to $100 million taxed at 50 percent.

Income from $100 million to $1 billion taxed at 55 percent.

Income over $1 billion taxed at  60 percent.

That will leave a person who earns $2 billion an after-tax income of more than $1 billion: $1,049,651,160, give or take a sawbuck. That's about 250 million dollars less than that person keeps under current rates.

I have no idea whether that will raise as much money as the "kill Social Security and fuck the middle class first" plans out there, but I do know it will do this:

Take a huge leap toward restoring tax fairness in this country, and ensure that the people who benefit the most from American Exceptionalism contribute something significant toward maintaining it.

And it'll still be far less than the motherfuckers paid under Eisenhower.

In case you were under the impression Mitch McConnell really wants to compromise.

Anti-Abortion = Pro-Death

No, there is no anti-abortion path that does not lead to this.

There is no anti-abortion policy that does incorporate the needless death of pregnant women.

There is no anti-abortion philosophy that does not stand on the foundation that women are subhuman vessels with neither sentience nor rights.

There is no anti-abortion woman who is not a sick, self-hating, inhuman piece of shit.

Scott Lemiuex at Lawyers, Guns and Money:

Just so we’re clear:

Last month, a woman was admitted to a hospital in Galway, Ireland. She was 17 weeks pregnant with a wanted child. She was experiencing severe back pain. She was found to be miscarrying the pregnancy.

Within days, she was dead.

Why? Because she ended up in a Catholic hospital, governed by an ethic that even a non-viable fetus doomed to die is more important than a living, breathing 31-year-old woman.

It really is that simple.

Again, the fact that the anti-choice movement tends to attract misogynists so grotesque that they can’t win in states losing Republican presidential candidates carry by double digits isn’t some random coincidence. And as for the idea that religious institutions that perform secular functions with taxpayer dollars should be exempt from generally applicable law, I’m going to continue to vote “no.” 

Update (djw): it seems worth noting that the US House of Representatives passed a resolution last year that would have moved US law much closer to the legal status quo in Ireland that permitted this ghastly, evil act:

H.R. 358 contains other provisions revealing complete disregard for women’s health and lives.

It permits states to enact sweeping refusal laws that would allow health plans to refuse to cover women’s preventive services, including birth control, without cost-sharing — undoing a new protection under health reform supported by 66 percent of Americans.  It also codifies and significantly expands an already expansive refusal clause (also known as the Weldon amendment) without any regard for patient rights or protections. Under current law (through the 2004 Weldon amendment), hospitals, health care facilities, and insurance plans can refuse to provide, pay for, provide coverage of, or refer for abortions.  The Weldon amendment has no protections for patients to ensure they have access to care and information in a timely manner. 

H.R. 358 codifies this unfair and discriminatory provision.  H.R. 358 further allows health care entities–hospitals, clinics–to refuse to “participate in” abortion care.  This could mean that a hospital employee with no medical training or role in a patient’s treatment decisions could refuse to process bills, handle medical records, or even set up an examination room for a patient seeking abortion care.

And finally, it overrides protections for pregnant women under the Emergency Medical Treatment and Active Labor Act.  EMTALA was enacted in 1986 to ensure public access to emergency services regardless of ability to pay, including women in active labor. Under EMTALA, hospitals must stabilize a pregnant patient who, for example, is facing an emergency obstetric condition or life-threatening pregnancy and either treat her–including an emergency abortion–or if the hospital or staff objects, to transfer her to another facility that will treat her.

H.R. 358 overturns decades of precedent guaranteeing people access to lifesaving emergency care, including abortion care and says its ok that a pregnant woman fighting for her life be left to die.

…[SL]: Also, Ohio Republicans would make the behavior of the doctors in Ireland not merely permissible but legally obligatory.

Jessica Valenti: explains how anti-abortion policy says plainly to women:  you are nothing.

But it is PZ Myers whose righteous rage will set your laptop on fire:

The end result: a septicemic infection swept through the gaping wound of Halappanavar’s cervix, killing her, after days of agony. The pope and his bishops, and the faithful Catholics in that hospital, killed her as surely as if they’d taken a scalpel to her throat — which would have been a more merciful death than the misery they put her through.

Monsters, every one of them.

Seriously, shut them down. There is no acceptable reason that any hospital in any country should be shackled by the antiquated beliefs of Catholicism. Catholics should no more be permitted to manage hospitals than Jehovah’s Witnesses are permitted to regulate blood transfusions. We are talking about simple, routine procedures that could save lives that are disallowed by a church. What are they doing in the surgery in the first place?

There is no number of aborted fetuses - not a million, not a billion, not a trillion - that comes remotely close to the tragedy of a single adult woman murdered by religious idiocy.

The only people who have the right to claim the label "pro-life" are those who support the unconditional right of women to obtain free, no-questions-asked, available-on-every-street-corner, anytime, anyplace Abortion. On. Demand.

It is a basic human right.

McConnell's Plan to "Fix Our Fiscal Problems:" Fuck the Middle Class

Because for Congressional repugs, it's their way or nothing, and their only way is the Austerity Road to Serfdom.

James Carroll at the Courier:

Kentucky Sen. Mitch McConnell on Wednesday was re-elected Senate minority leader by his Republican colleagues, declaring that his party is ready to work with President Barack Obama and the Democrats to help solve the fiscal problems facing the nation.

No, it's not. Brian Beutler at TPM:

Obama’s plan to let the high-income Bush tax cuts expire nets him a bit less than $1 trillion over 10 years. But he ultimately wants tax revenues to increase by about $1.6 trillion, by limiting tax expenditures on the same group of top earners. Trying to net the entire $1.6 trillion on the expenditure side of the tax code would almost certainly require raising taxes on middle income earners, according to the Tax Policy Center.

In January, TPC analyzed (PDF) the revenue and distributional effects of three plans to limit tax expenditures. Each would raise over $2 trillion over 10 years. But each would also require millions of middle class taxpayers to pay higher taxes — something Obama’s pledged not to do.

That strongly suggests Obama won’t be able to beg off his pledge to at least slightly increase marginal rates on high income earners. But keeping those rates low is perhaps the right’s highest priority. Republicans and conservative policy wonks believe expenditures lead people to allocate their money inefficiently, and that higher tax rates create a work disincentive that inhibits economic growth. They also know which side of their bread is buttered. And they’re sparing no effort to keep the current tax rates in place into next year.

Which is why the only way around this conundrum is to let all the Bush tax cuts expire, and reinstate middle-income tax cuts early next year. And why White House allies want the public to know that’s on Republicans.

 We've been here before. Repugs will reject any "deal" that does not dismantle the social safety net by turning Social Security over to Wall Street, Medicare over to private insurance and workers over to slave-labor "employers."

UPDATE: In case you were under the impression Mitch McConnell really wants to compromise.

Songs to Fight the Plutocracy By: "House of the Rising Sun

Leadbelly's original

Uploaded by sessionsinthedesert on Mar 8, 2008

there is a house in new orleans
they call the rising sun
it's been the ruin of a many a poor girl
and me, oh god are one

if i had listened like momma said
i would not be here today
but being so young and foolish too
that a gambler lead me astray

come tell my baby sisters
dont do what i have done
please shun that house in new orleans
they call the rising sun

i'm goin back to new orleans
my race is almost run
i'm goin back to new orleans
beneath the rising sun

Will Shelbyville Accept Fairness?

Probably not.  But this is just the first round. The only question is how long the homophobes and freakazoids and wingnuts will hold out. Because their days in power are numbered.

From the Courier:

With the support of the Fairness Coalition, Shelbyville residents plan to approach their city council Thursday evening to propose adoption of an anti-discrimination ordinance offering gay-rights protections.

The effort at 6:30 p.m. at Shelbyville City Hall will be the first in a series of anticipated similar grassroots proposals taking place in other cities across Kentucky in the next few weeks, the coalition said.



Chris Hartman, spokesman for the Fairness Coalition Steering Committee, said efforts to adopt gay-rights protections are continuing in Berea and Richmond and are expected to start soon in Bowling Green, Elizabethtown, Morehead and possibly several other cities.



So far, only Covington, Lexington, and Louisville have enacted local so-called fairness ordinances in Kentucky that prohibit discrimination in employment, housing, and public accommodations based on actual or perceived sexual orientation and gender identity/expression.


Statewide anti-discrimination fairness laws have been proposed in the Kentucky General Assembly for more than a decade without debate, prompting local communities to seek to expand protections. Fairness bills will be introduced once again in both the 2013 Kentucky House and Senate, the coalition said.


The Fairness Coalition consists of members and allies of the American Civil Liberties Union of Kentucky, the Fairness Campaign, the Kentucky Commission on Human Rights, Kentucky Fairness Alliance and Lexington Fairness, working together to advance equality for lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender Kentuckians.

 Shelbyville is the county seat of Shelby County, an agricultural county rapidly developing as a bedroom suburb of Louisville. It has a growing gay community as well as a large Hispanic community, but both the city council and fiscal court are majority republican and dominated by bigots.

The group presenting the proposed Fairness Ordinance to the city council tonight is the Shelby County chapter of Kentuckians for the Commonwealth, the primary social and economic justice organization in the state. 

As Other States Legalize Pot, KY Still Stuck on Legalizing Hemp

It will be just too perfectly ironic when Kentucky finally legalizes hemp - the one non-intoxicating crop that can replace the coal economy - just as the rest of the nation legalizes the real cash crop: marijuana.

Janet Patton at the Herald:

The new priority for Kentucky farmers has a lot of history: Agriculture Commissioner James Comer announced Wednesday that his top agenda item for the next legislative session is hemp.

Comer, a Republican, told the Interim Joint Agriculture Committee that he will push for a strongly worded resolution by the General Assembly urging Washington to revise drug policy to allow U.S. industrial hemp cultivation.

"We just want the freedom to be able to grow a crop that we know will grow well in Kentucky," Comer said. Congress should "get out of the way and let the private sector create jobs in rural communities manufacturing this product."

He said if Congress acts this year, the first hemp seeds could be planted in Kentucky in spring 2014.

"If the United States Congress and the federal government gives us the permission to do this," Comer said. "We just want to pass the legislation, set an example to Congress. We are serious about this. ... Get out of our way. Let us do this in Kentucky. It will help farmers, and it will create jobs."

Earlier Wednesday, Comer reactivated the Kentucky Industrial Hemp Commission, which had been dormant for a decade. He was named chairman of the new commission, which includes Sen. John Schickel, R-Union, and Rep. Tom McKee, D-Cynthiana, University of Kentucky Agriculture College Dean Scott Smith, hemp activists, farmers and entrepreneurs.

For more than a century, hemp was Kentucky's top agricultural product and a major profit center for the state.  Hemp is native to Kentucky, and to this day grows wild in fence rows and suburban backyards.

For decades, forward-thinking Kentucky politicians of both parties have been trying to get hemp authorized for commercial growing. Hemp is a renewable, easily-grown substitute for dozens of wood-based products like paper and petroleum-based products like rope, carpet, clothing and furnishings. It promises profits and jobs that could easily eclipse that of the doomed coal industry at its height.

Yet while Kentucky still struggles to get federal approval to grow non-intoxicating hemp, Colorado and Washington just legalized marijuana (which also grows like a weed in Kentucky) and are now poised to get a huge jump on Kentucky in the future pot industry.

Read more here: http://www.kentucky.com/2012/11/14/2407570/state-hemp-commission-revived.html#storylink=cpy

Kentucky: always 20 years behind.

If I Worked As Slave Labor, I'd Destroy IPads, Too

No, they weren't doing it "just for fun."  They were doing it because at the starvation wages and no benefits Walmart grudgingly pays them, they couldn't afford IPads if they worked a hundred years.

This was a labor action, and Walmart knows it. Which is why they are desperately pretending it's just a goof by bad employees.

Workers who are treated with respect don't do this. Companies that treat their workers like serfs have to mount security cameras to monitor their serfs.

WDRB in Louisville:

Wal-Mart Stores Inc. says it is "embarrassed" by video on YouTube and Facebook that shows employees at an eastern Kentucky Walmart throwing iPads to each other across a stockroom and slamming them down on the floor.

No, in Pikeville there are no other jobs.

Songs to Fight the Plutocracy By: "Hard, It Ain't Hard"

Uploaded y tasedlak on Aug 3, 2009

Criminal Treatment Requires Criminal Rights

Make no mistake: school "resource officers" in Kentucky are cops, and not the Officer Friendly kind. They treat students like street thugs, assume they are guilty until proven innocent, and haul them off to prison ("juvenile detention centers") for the tiniest infractions.

The very least schools can do is warn students of their civil rights.

Andrew Wolfson at the Courier:

Principals in Kentucky may soon have to worry about reading students their rights — in addition to ensuring they know how to read and write.

The Kentucky Supreme Court is considering a case from Nelson County that could require school officials to give the Miranda warning — you have the right to remain silent and anything you say can and will be used against you — when questioning a student with a school resource officer present.


Principals frequently work in concert with such officers — there are 254 sworn police working in Kentucky schools, according to the Kentucky Center for School Safety, and up to 60 percent of schools nationwide have one on campus.

Principals may have to worry? Maybe if they had to think twice about treating children like hardened criminals Kentucky's prisons wouldn't be overflowing with kids locked up for throwing spitballs.

The Real Petraeus Scandal: the CIA's Secret Killer Drones

We've turned local police forces - the ones we created "to serve and protect" into militarized brutes that view citizens as terrorists-until-proven-otherwise, so why not hand over to our supposed spy agency all the murderous dirty work we don't want citizens finding out about?  Our citizens, that is; foreign citizens get to see it up close and personally.

 

Kevin Drum:

Robert Wright, in an obvious effort to use Petraeusgate to draw attention to a boring subject that has nothing to do with sex, says the real scandal here isn't Petraeus leaving the CIA, it's the fact the he arrived there in the first place:

When, in the fall of 2011, David Petraeus moved from commanding the Afghanistan war effort to commanding the CIA, it was a disturbingly natural transition. I say "natural" because the CIA conducts drone strikes in the Afghanistan-Pakistan region and is involved in other military operations there, so Petraeus, in his new role, was continuing to fight the Afghanistan war. I say "disturbingly" because this overlap of Pentagon and CIA missions is the result of a creeping militarization of the CIA that may be undermining America's national security.

The militarization of the CIA raises various questions. For example, if the CIA is psychologically invested in a particular form of warfare—and derives part of its budget from that kind of warfare—can it be trusted to impartially assess the consequences, both positive and negative, direct and indirect?

And then there's the transparency question. [A piece in the Washington Post] noted concerns among some activists that "the CIA now functions as a military force beyond the accountability that the United States has historically demanded of its armed services. The CIA doesn't officially acknowledge the drone program, let alone provide public explanation about who shoots and who dies, and by what rules." Indeed, only a few months ago, in compliance with the War Powers Resolution, the Obama administration reported (vaguely) on targeted killings in Somalia and Yemen that had been conducted by the military, but not on those conducted by the CIA.

....The circumstances of Petraeus's departure from the CIA are a little alarming; you'd rather your chief spy not be reckless. But the circumstances of his arrival at the CIA a year ago were more troubling. Yet no alarm was sounded that was anywhere near as loud as the hubbub surrounding Petraeus now. That's scandalous.

As near as I can tell, drone warfare was largely handed over to the CIA precisely in order to avoid normal military accountability. That really is scandalous, but it attracted only fleeting notice. It's probably too much to hope that the Petraeus scandal will cause anyone to rethink this, but rethink it we should. Wright has more at the link.

I don't give a flying fuck what Petraeus fucks. I care a very great deal who he orders killed. Shame on our pathetic excuse for national media that I get far too much information about the former, and next to none about the latter.

Songs to Fight the Plutocracy By: "State of Arkansas"

Songs to Fight the Plutocracy By:  "State of Arkansas"

Uploaded by TheFolksinger on Oct 13, 2008

A song for Depression Times, I heard it first some 45 or so years ago, a version sung and talked by Lee Hays of The Weavers. And I have never forgotten it.

Kentucky Thinks Maybe Treating Children Like Armed PCP Freaks Not Such A Great Idea After All

This is way overdue. Spitball behavior that in my day was addressed with a sharp reprimand and after-school detention is today referred to militarized police euphemistically named "School Resource Officers."

Kids in Kentucky today are sent to juvenile detention - another euphemism: "juvenile detention facilities" are prisons in all but name - for talking back to teachers.

Anything short of perfectly obedient corporate drone behavior is punished with abuse no judge would tolerate if meted out to adults, because adults have constitutional rights. Children don't.

From the Courier:

While there is no Kentucky law governing how schools use restraint or seclusion, more efforts are being made to guide schools on properly using restraint and seclusion tactics with seemingly uncontrollable or difficult to manage children.



The state Department of Education, for example, is proposing administrative regulations creating guidelines for the use of restraint and seclusion in schools, as well as requirements for training teachers on de-escalating and other techniques, and practices for informing parents.



The regulations would allow physical restraint of students only when the child’s behavior poses imminent danger of serious physical harm.

“The only intervention the proposed (Kentucky) regulations prohibit are those types of restraints that have been proven to kill children,” said Lucy Heskins, attorney for the Kentucky Department of Protection and Advocacy. “The regulation does not prevent teachers from breaking up fights or intervening with students who are misbehaving or destroying school property.”

An enforceable definition of "imminent danger of serious physical harm" and a requirement for more than one adult witness are essential - leaving that open to interpretation by stressed-out teachers and principals is the same as having no definition or requirement at all..

"Artificial Crisis to Steal from the Middle Class"

Plan to DVR the House of Representatives on C-SPAN every day starting in January, because Alan Grayson is going to provide non-stop entertainment making repug - and Blue Dog - heads explode.

Songs to Fight the Plutocracy By: "Talking Union"

Uploaded by solidaritet2010 on Feb 25, 2011

The Anti-Healthcare Companies That Don't Need Your Business

So, who's so stupid and greedy  they'd fire employees rather than provide health insurance?

Papa John's, Applebee's, Olive Garden, Red Lobster and Longhorn Steakhouse.

Stay away. Service is going to be terrible, anyway.

Under the Mountain Bunker:

Consequences: free speech and the public’s right to boycott Pure Greed.

via: soupisnotameal

Huffington Post: Papa John’s CEO John Schnatter said he plans on passing the costs of health care reform to his business onto his workers. Schnatter said he will likely reduce workers’ hours, as a result of President Obama’s reelection, the Naples News reports. Schnatter made headlines over the summer when he told shareholders that the cost of a Papa John’s pizza will increase by between 11 and 14 cents due to Obamacare.

Gawker: Darden Restaurants Inc., the parent company of popular casual dining establishments such as Olive Garden, Red Lobster, and LongHorn Steakhouse, is no longer offering full-time work schedules to employees at “a select number” of restaurants in four markets across the country. Though details were scant, the company did say there were no immediate plans to expand the “test,” which is aimed at “help[ing] us address the cost implications health care reform will have on our business.” [...] Darden said in its statement that employees at restaurants where the pilot program was put in place will be limited to 28 hours a week. [...] Darden, which, ironically, bills itself as “the world’s largest full-service restaurant company,” made headlines last year when it started a “tip sharing” program requiring the waitstaff to share its tips with all other employees. According to the Associated Press, “That allows Darden to pay more workers a far lower ‘tip credit wage’ of $2.13, rather than the federal minimum wage of $7.25 an hour.”

Huffington Post: An Applebee’s New York area franchisee is the latest CEO to go public threatening drastic plans to avoid costs associated with the Affordable Care Act, otherwise known as Obamacare.”We’ve calculated it will [cost] some millions of dollars across our system. So what does that say — that says we won’t build more restaurants. We won’t hire more people,” Zane Tankel, chairman and CEO of Apple-Metro, told Fox Business Network on Thursday. Apple-Metro, which runs 40 Applebee’s restaurants, employs from 80 to 300 people at each of its locations. Obamacare mandates that businesses with more than 50 workers must offer an approved insurance plan or pay a penalty of $2,000 for each full-time worker over 30 workers. Most small businesses with 50 or more employees already do offer health insurance, notes John Arensmeyer, CEO and founder of Small Business Majority, a national small business advocacy organization. But restaurant chains typically are among the sliver of businesses not offering insurance to workers. Other food chains have commented publicly that they would take strong measures to avoid the effects of Obamacare, but so far none of them have taken that action.

oinonio: “These restaurants have pledged to cut employees or work hours to avoid providing healthcare under Pres. Obama’s Affordable Care Act.  Ironic for restaurants that draw clients in with images of wholesomeness, family, and care. But you can push back by taking your appetite elsewhere.” 

These plutocratic CEOs have the right to hire, fire, and cut hours of any and all of their staffs for political reasons — and they have every right to crow about it in the media, as they’re doing. WE, the dining public, have the right to take our appetites elsewhere.

I mean, really. Does anyone NEED to eat at any of these places?

 Make it fun: go to one of these establishments with as many people as you can gather, ask to speak to the manager, then tell her that you are taking your guests to another restaurant that isn't too greedy and stupid to provide healthcare and full-time hours to its employees.

"Nobody Actually Cares About the Deficit"

Chris Hayes give Melissa "Nothing is riskier than being poor" Harris-Perry a run for her passionate rant money with this jeremiad on why and how people who claim to be concerned about the deficit are lying motherfuckers - or something like that.

Just watch.

Visit NBCNews.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy

The Congressional Atheist Caucus

Steve Benen:

Congress only had one openly atheist member, Rep. Pete Stark (D-Calif.), who lost his re-election bid this week. However, Kyrsten Sinema (D-Ariz.), who describes herself as a "non-theist," appears likely to prevail in her congressional bid (thanks to reader R.P. for the tip).

Sinema is also an out-and-proud bisexual.

May the repug head-exploding never stop.

Change Happens Between Elections

The late, great Molly Ivins counseled against gloating over electoral victories.  But she died in January 2007, before repugs went all  Stop the Ni**er all the time.

So I have spent the last five days gloating up a storm and I hope you have, too.

Because now the real work starts.

You think Tuesday did not change enough?  Well of course it didn't.  It's an election.  Elections don't change anything. Elections merely confirm the changes that have taken place since the last election.

Erik Loomis at Lawyers, Guns and Money:

There is a clear path to change. Conservatives understand this. You take over the party structure. That’s what they did in the 1950s and 1960s when they were disgusted by the moderate Republicanism of Dwight Eisenhower, Earl Warren, and Nelson Rockefeller. They took over party structures and local offices and turned them into bastions of energized conservatism. Note that conservatives basically don’t run 3rd party campaigns. Libertarians might talk about doing this–but they almost all vote Republican in the end because they know that they are moving their agenda forward by doing so.

Any reading of history shows that change within the American political system does not come through third party campaigns. It comes through the hard work of organizing our communities to demand change. Eventually legal and political changes are necessary–but only after people are organized to demand them. Look at the major movements in the last century. The labor movement, African-American civil rights, the women’s movement, gay rights movement. Each of these movements spent decades (or a century) organizing for change. For each of them, there was a moment when it all came together and they could demand transformations of federal and state law, which for gay rights is happening right now.

SNIP

There’s a reason socialists and communists worked to reelect FDR in 1936 and 1940, even though they thought he was a sell-out to the capitalists. They knew he was the best hope they had to build the kind of society they wanted and that by running some kind of 3rd party, they would completely alienate the base of people they wanted to organize.

SNIP

To summarize:

1. Change happens outside the election cycles–elections are for institutionalizing the changes you have attempted to make in the past 4 years.

2. Every single U.S. president has blood on his hands. Voting in a presidential election is always a choice between two evils.

3. We need to think less about our own personal moral position in voting. It’s not about you. It’s about the community where you live. Even if you vote for Jill Stein, the blood of Pakistani babies killed in drone strikes is on your hands. You cannot wash off that blood without changing the system–something that 3rd parties have never done. You want clean hands–organize the American public around the issues you care about. It will take the rest of your life. That is the timeline of real change.

4. There actually are lessons from the past on these issues. There are lessons in how to organize. And there are lessons about what third parties do and do not do. When someone can tell me what value a third party has had to pushing the agenda to the left in the last 80 years, I’ll be real interested in hearing it.

5. We need a tougher and smarter left. The self-described left punditry and journalists in 2012 has been individualistic, holier than thou, disorganized, and narcissistic. The real story of the left this year is smart and tough–the Chicago Teachers Union. That’s how you demand and make change. Writing editorials obscuring the differences between Obama and Romney and encouraging well-meaning people to protest vote is worse than worthless–it’s mendacious and serves as a tool for conservatives to continue pushing this nation back to the Gilded Age.

Laura Flanders at The Nation

Let us learn from the Dreamers, the young immigrants who made themselves a force to be reckoned with this election. People lead; leaders follow. It could have been worse. People led us back from a brink last night, but it will require the irrepressible force of powerful, passionate social movements that believe in themselves as much as they believe any politician, if we are to force the ship of state off its conventional course, and if f we are to live up to the determination, bravery and smarts that voters showed this election.

Loomis again:

Importantly for progressives needing to learn some lessons about how change takes place in this country, many of these ballot measures show that grassroots organizing works. The gay rights movement and marijuana legalization are social movements creating unstoppable forces for change on the grassroots. They are organizing on the ground and then demanding and successfully creating social change. This is how you do it.

One more day to gloat.  Then get out there and organize.

Songs to Fight the Plutocracy By: "Get Thee Behind Me, Satan"

Uploaded by BenDuvallIrwin on Mar 13, 2011

Use That Mandate Or Lose It

If repugs had taken the White House and the Senate, you know damn well they'd use that mandate to destroy the last vestiges of the Great Society, the New Deal and the Enlightenment. 

Hello, Galtian Paradise; good-bye Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, Obamacare, disaster assistance, public education, national parks, toll-free highways, clean water, safe food, consumer protection and the minimum wage, just for starters.

So if for nothing other than pure self-defense, President Obama and congressional Democrats should use the mandate voters gave them on Tuesday to expand, strengthen and entrench the liberal policies that hold this nation together.

Digby:

If I had my way, he'd take Robert Reich's advice: 

When the applause among Democrats and recriminations among Republicans begin to quiet down -- probably within the next few days -- the president will have to make some big decisions. The biggest is on the economy.

His victory and the pending "fiscal cliff" give him an opportunity to recast the economic debate. Our central challenge, he should say, is not to reduce the budget deficit. It's to create more good jobs, grow the economy, and widen the circle of prosperity.

The deficit is a problem only in proportion to the overall size of the economy. If the economy grows faster than its current 2 percent annualized rate, the deficit shrinks in proportion. Tax receipts grow, and the deficit becomes more manageable.

But if economic growth slows -- as it will, if taxes are raised on the middle class and if government spending is reduced when unemployment is still high -- the deficit becomes larger in proportion. That's the austerity trap Europe finds itself in. We don't want to go there...

The way to ensure continued growth is to continue the president's payroll tax cut and extend the Bush tax cuts for income under $250,000, and continue government spending.

The way to increase growth is to permanently exempt the first $20,000 of income from the payroll tax and make up for lost revenues by raising the ceiling on income subject to it (that ceiling is now $110,100). And increase government spending -- especially on critical public investments like education, job training, and infrastructure.

President Obama can define his mandate however he chooses. And he knows by now that he will never win over the right no matter what he does. So he should probably be aware of this:

A long string of lawmakers who supported the Bowles-Simpson plan — which would slash Social Security and Medicare benefits while lowering corporate taxes — went down in flames last night.

In fact, almost every candidate who was personally endorsed by the authors of the plan was defeated.

Remember: The "fiscal cliff" is a con job. Social Security has nothing to do with the deficit. What the economy needs is more spending, not less.

Krugman:

David Dayen makes a very good point, which I missed: during the Hofstra debate, in which questions were posed by members of the public rather than the Beltway elite, there wasn’t a single question about the deficit. Not one. The public really doesn’t care.

And you know what? Neither do financial markets, which continue to lend to the U.S. government at incredibly low rates.

Meanwhile, the results from austerity are in — and it’s now clear that the adverse economic impacts of austerity in a depressed economy are much worse than the elite imagined (although Keynesian economists knew better), and are in fact so severe that austerity is largely self-defeating, having little impact on the budget deficit even in the short run because reduced revenue takes away much of the initial savings. Once you take long-run effects into account, austerity is almost surely self-defeating.

Yet deficit fever, with demands for spending cuts right away, has dominated policy discussion for almost three years, with all the Very Serious People believing that by pounding on this issue they were demonstrating their Very Seriousness.

 Fuck the deficit. People got no money. People got no jobs.

Why Repugs Hate Public Education

From Divine Irony:

Another Liberal VictoryTuesday

Wanna give your local economy a boost?  Put money directly in the hands of the workers who will spend it immediately?  Raise your minimum wage.

 

Firedoglake:

Three cities in the US voted yesterday to raise the minimum wage: Albuquerque, NM (“raise the minimum wage to $8.50, tie it to inflation, and increase the minimum wage for tipped workers”); San Jose, CA (increase minimum wage to $10.00); and Long Beach, CA (100+-room hotels must either pay $13/hour with paid sick leave for full-time workers or enter into collective bargaining).

And no, raising the minimum wage neither hurts business nor cuts jobs - just the opposite, because that increase in pay goes directly and immediately back into the local economy.  Unlike tax cuts to billionaires, who send their windfall overseas.

"Fiscal Cliff" Biggest Lie Since "Romney's Winning"

No wonder Mitch McConnell peddles them both.

James Carroll at the Courier:

Ahead of a meeting with President Barack Obama next week, Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., signaled Friday that he is not willing to compromise to permit a tax increase on the wealthiest Americans.

Obama said Friday that a legislative package to avert automatic deep federal budget cuts and an increase in taxes on all Americans should include higher taxes on upper incomes.


“If we’re serious about reducing the deficit, we have to combine spending cuts with revenue — and that means asking the wealthiest Americans to pay a little more in taxes,” the president said in remarks at the White House.


Although Obama outlined a plan to avoid the so-called “fiscal cliff,” McConnell responded to the president by insisting the White House was not offering details.

Yes, shame on President Obama for peddling the fiscal cliff lie, too.

The best possible thing that could happen before January 1 is ... nothing. On Jan. 1, the Bush tax cuts expire, the Obama administration delays changes in payroll withholding to avoid a sudden tax increase on workers, and repugs have to negotiate a new tax cut for the middle class.

As Charlie Pierce can't repeat often enough: 

Fk The Deficit. People Got No Jobs. People Got No Money.

The way out of this recession is to tax billionaires out of existence, borrow trillions while interest rates are negative, and create 10 million new jobs rebuilding and building new infrastructure.

Repugs and the myth of the fiscal cliff are the obstacle.

Songs to Fight the Plutocracy By: "Plow Under"

Uploaded by poordorianjones on Aug 11, 2009

"Extend the middle-class tax cuts to grow the economy"

You forgot to mention, Mr. President, that the "fiscal cliff" is a fake, that Social Security has nothing to do with the deficit, that the austerity hysterics are running a con game on the world, and the only purpose of a Grand Bargain is to strip the middle class of its last dime.



Full transcript here.