Follow the money

As of August 2011, more than 80 percent of the money in Super PACs backing Republican candidates had come from only 35 people writing six- and seven-figure checks.

Have you ever noticed ?

Politicians who promise LESS government only deliver BAD government.

What the Republican Party now stands for:

(1) applauds the death penalty,
(2) demands that a hypothetical uninsured American be left to die rather than be treated
(3) booed an active-duty soldier because he was gay.

So no one is going to start a business

because tax rates are too high! That's the Republican talking -point. Well think since the start of the income tax, better yet - since the end of the Second World War, have you ever hear one job creator/ business man claim they wouldn't start their business because tax rates are too high. Imagine Sam Walton, Colonel Sanders, H & P, Bill Gates, Zuckerman et al. saying their are not going to start the next hot business idea because taxes are above 25%. Unlikely. I would argue that the drive to lower tax rates is a sign that capitalism is failing.

The average American maintains

the idealogy of the group they wish to belong to, not the one they are part of. This results in much discord during their lives.

There will be single-payer before

the 2020 election, unless the Republicans win the White House.

Saw this survey the other day -

2 out of 10 Americans expect to have a million dollars in ten years. No wonder Americans support the rich!

Is the republican party the party

of NO RESPONSIBILITY?

When did we stop building

homes so beautiful that people would preserve them forever ? If you love architecture you will know exactly what I mean.

LET ME ASK YOU A QUESTION -

USING YOUR APPROACH, HOW LONG DO YOU THINK YOU WOULD SURVIVE UNDER ENEMY FIRE? ARE YOU CERTAIN?

THERE'S NO DEMAND FROM CONSUMERS !

The republican congressman who can't

make it on $400k is a total liar. His numbers don't add up. 500 employees at minimum wage would cost over $8,000,000 alone. Enough said.

Without LOVE in the dream

it will never come true - Robert Hunter/Jerome John Garcia

The Republican weapon of

MASS CYNICISM.

AMERICANS NEED TO ASK

THEMSELVES WHAT KIND OF POLITICIAN DO THEY WANT? I DON'T KNOW YOU BUT 90% OF THE POLITICIANS I SEE ARE HORRIBLE. THEY DEFINITELY DON'T HAVE MY INTERESTS AT HEART.

TWO QUICK THOUGHTS

1) What does it cost to live in Republican America ? I want to start a cost analysis and can use your help.

2) why do Republicans want to privatize public education? On the surface I thinks its to improve education and to break the teachers union, however I believe its so they can charge in excess of the tax subsidy a parent would receive therefore they can offer student loans to attend K-12 grades, thus keeping the middle class in debt forever.

The greatest long con ever

was played on the baby boomer.

From 1935 until 1983, Social Security had always been a "pay as you go" system. Current workers paid into the fund; retirees, widows and orphan received that money in their payments. Greenspan 's plan went like this: Double the amount retained from wages that the Boomers paid into the system. These overpayments would create a huge surplus. When the Boomers aged to the point of collecting Social Security, the surplus (savings) would be eaten into. After the Boomers died, the surplus would have been depleted. At that point (around 2035) the system would revert back to "pay as you go."

The NCSSR's report was enacted, and the 1983 Amendments to the SSA were the result. When Reagan signed the law, he made this statement:

This bill demonstrates for all time our Nation’s ironclad commitment to Social Security. It assures the elderly that America will always keep the promises made in troubled times a half a century ago. It assures those who are still working that they, too, have a pact with the future. From this day forward, they have our pledge that they will get their fair share of benefits when they retire . . . . Our elderly need no longer fear that the checks they depend on will be stopped or reduced. These amendments protect them. Americans of middle age need no longer worry whether their career-long investment
will pay off. These amendments guarantee it. And younger people can feel confident that Social Security will still be around when they need it to cushion their retirement.[emphasis mine]

Since 1983, the extra money that has been collected from every paycheck of every low-wage earner is invested in special series, non-marketable U.S. Treasury securities - the Social Security Trust Fund (SSTF). This is why Americans who state that they have been "investing" in the Social Security System are absolutely correct. They have been both paying for current retirees and saving for payments to future retirees (themselves, theoretically.)

The SSTF right now is actually $2.5 Trillion of government debt - three times what the Chinese and the Federal Reserve now own.. We know that the money in SSTF was supposed to remain "off budget." (Remember Al Gore's "lockbox"?)
Congress has been borrowing these funds to balance the budget. When you hear the Republicans screaming about the huge long-term debt this country has, remember that the great bulk of it is a debt that we owe ourselves. It is the money that the American workers has been paying into this system for the past thirty years, and then loaning to Congress so that things like unfunded wars and tax cuts for the wealthiest are affordable.

Now the day is coming when the American people as a whole have to actually pay back the Americans who have been putting money into the SSTF for 30 years. In order to do this, we would have to cut our Defense Budget AND end the tax cuts to the wealthiest. But the GOP doesn't want to do this! It would cut into their own private income streams. Their solution is to simply end the Social Security program instead. They plan to keep all the FICA money we've been paying in - for themselves.

So Rick Perry and the GOP are talking about Social Security as a "Ponzi scheme," as bankrupt. This is only the wind-up of a theft that they have been planning for at least 20 years, ever since they began to make the argument that "Social Security won't be there for younger workers." Bush's proposal to privatize Social Security was predicated on that fallacious supposition (another "Social Security solvency scare" begun in 2001). But now, the GOP and the Plutocrats are under tremendous pressure to get the money out of the SSTF before it is depleted by Baby Boomer payouts. They want to end Social Security and its payouts- just as the very generation the tail end of the Boomers, which has been paying

Taxing the job creators

actually spurs investments.

ILLINOIS SPEND $520,000 PER YEAR

TO RAISE PHEASANTS FOR HUNTING.

AMERICANS SEEM TO HAVE LOST

ALL SENSE OF LOGIC. AN ACCEPTANCE OF THE CURRENT OR STATUS QUO AS CORRECT - IE., REGARDING TAXES AND FEDERAL REVENUES - WE CAN'T RAISE TAXES (ON THE WEALTHY) AND THE CURRENT TAX CODE WITH ALL ITS CARVE-OUTS IS SOME HOW OK, LIKE IT CAN'T BE CHANGED, ITS BEEN THIS WAY FOREVER AND THERE'S NO NEED TO CHANGE IT (THAT WOULD BE UNCONSTITUTIONAL).

America has several major problems

if one considers 'deficit' spending has stimulative then the USA has been stimulating the economy for 30 years - with zero results.

Military spending isn't producing anything except a handful of jobs at a cost of millions per job.

America started its deindustrialization in the 70's as old industrial plants and technology became out-dated and the huge industrial companies modernized overseas, seeking low-cost environments while lobbying government to expand free trade 'partners" and tax incentivize imports.

The future economy receives no government help because it is crowded out be tax assistance to the old industry / energy - at a cost of approximately $50 billion a year.
As a America shifted from manufacturing to a service/ transfer economy far less jobs are needed at significantly less cost, while a open border policy flooded America with millions of cheap labor workers.

Now the transfer/financial economy is leaving America killing the last of the middle class jobs while continuing the military adventurism to support American flag companies and the energy appetite of a addicted society - are you prepared to pay $20 a gallon to drive 5 miles to get a $10 gallon of milk in you're 8 mph SUV?

The American economy is crumbing and the rich are demanding massive tax cuts (in the pretext of resurrecting it) before they flee (note the massive profits kept off shore). They have got millions(Tax Party et al.) bought into scheme thinking there are enough seats on the TITANIC. Well its due to sail soon. Are you sure you will be included?

I didn't think Obama was an FDR but I thought he saw this dynamic and would move to reposition the American economy - however he has proven to be owned and controlled by the elites. I guess he would never have been elected otherwise. Call me paranoid but no one has been elected Prez who didn't have the approval of the MIC since WWII.
Our country may need to collapse before we can rebuild it.

Where's the progressive we thought we elected ?

Obama was elected because of his passionate, forward-thinking message, not because he was a reasonable compromise maker-he needs/needed, to push forward the progressive agenda without looking back at angry wackjobs in the rear view mirror.

How did we go

from a projected 10-year surplus of $5.6 trillion in 2001 to the present 10-year deficit of $6.2 trillion. After all it was Republican in origin."

If Perry is elected Prez

Medicare will be discontinued & Social Security will be cut 25% from current levels. It wouldn't be right away but by the end of his first term.

The Republican Game Plan

This is by Mike Lofgren, who retired in June after 28 years as a Congressional staffer, including 16 years as a professional staff member on the Republican side of both the House and Senate Budget Committees.

What he has to say is damning for Republicans, but he doesn't spare Democrats, either.

Please read this in its entirely There's way too much important stuff to quote all the important sections.

-snip-

"The reader may think that I am attributing Svengali-like powers to GOP operatives able to manipulate a zombie base to do their bidding. It is more complicated than that. Historical circumstances produced the raw material: the deindustrialization and financialization of America since about 1970 has spawned an increasingly downscale white middle class - without job security (or even without jobs), with pensions and health benefits evaporating and with their principal asset deflating in the collapse of the housing bubble. Their fears are not imaginary; their standard of living is shrinking.

What do the Democrats offer these people? Essentially nothing. Democratic Leadership Council-style "centrist" Democrats were among the biggest promoters of disastrous trade deals in the 1990s that outsourced jobs abroad: NAFTA, World Trade Organization, permanent most-favored-nation status for China. At the same time, the identity politics/lifestyle wing of the Democratic Party was seen as a too illegal immigrant-friendly by downscaled and outsourced whites.<3>

While Democrats temporized, or even dismissed the fears of the white working class as racist or nativist, Republicans went to work. To be sure, the business wing of the Republican Party consists of the most energetic outsourcers, wage cutters and hirers of sub-minimum wage immigrant labor to be found anywhere on the globe. But the faux-populist wing of the party, knowing the mental compartmentalization that occurs in most low-information voters, played on the fears of that same white working class to focus their anger on scapegoats that do no damage to corporations' bottom lines: instead of raising the minimum wage, let's build a wall on the Southern border (then hire a defense contractor to incompetently manage it). Instead of predatory bankers, it's evil Muslims. Or evil gays. Or evil abortionists.

How do they manage to do this? Because Democrats ceded the field. Above all, they do not understand language. Their initiatives are posed in impenetrable policy-speak: the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act. The what? - can anyone even remember it? No wonder the pejorative "Obamacare" won out. Contrast that with the Republicans' Patriot Act. You're a patriot, aren't you? Does anyone at the GED level have a clue what a Stimulus Bill is supposed to be? Why didn't the White House call it the Jobs Bill and keep pounding on that theme?"

-snip-

Lofgren also says that the Republican Party of 2011 believes in only three tenets, with the rest of their platform just window dressing. These are their core beliefs:

1. They care solely and exclusively about their rich contributors.
2. They "worship at the altar of Mars" in their enthusiasm for invading other countries.
3. They pander to religious fundamentalists, resulting in the normalizing of what would once have been considered reactionary or quaint beliefs, and also resulting in the spread of anti-intellectualism and hostility to science.

Why did Republicans stop acknowledging

the economic importance of demand ? I recall Econ 101 - it was the message presented on day one - that simple graph of supply/demand. Remember the Bush shopping solution to terrorism ? I guess demand just isn't that important any more. More supply for the job creators, hey that's it!

So republicans have completely abandon their old reverence for the small/medium independent business person while pretending its all about them.

Does the right wing exist only to

reduce human life to cold hard cash? Dehumanizing our fellow citizens makes genocide possible. When we talk about health care the problem is not enough money its about those charged with its disbursement.