Obama Lied

An Interview with Alan Grayson, a rare member of Congress, he’s honest —

John Fugelsang: You posted . . . that the President’s offer, essentially to cut Social Security benefits for seniors, does break a promise to America’s seniors. Some Republicans, of course, seem to like that.  So, will Democrats support it, or will they support cuts to other social programs?

Congressman Alan Grayson: Well,the President specifically said in September 2008 that he would not change the formula for calculating the cost-of-living adjustment. That [would] take $1,000 a year out of the pockets of 90-year-olds. As for whether the Democrats will support it, I don’t know, but I know they shouldn’t.We’ve lined up 35 Democrats here in the House already who say, in the “Grayson-Takano Letter,” that they will vote against any cuts in Social Security, or Medicare, or Medicaid benefits.

John: So let me ask you, is it worth keeping the sequester cuts and foregoing any new revenues, in return for keeping Social Security as it is?

Alan: That’s not a choice that we should ever have to make.Social Security is not responsible for the deficit. The Social Security Fund has $1.9 trillion in it. It’s the largest sovereign wealth fund in the entire world. The Social Security Fund has been operating at a surplus now ever since the fund was founded, ever since the program was founded.We are 25 years away from anything resembling a problem of any kind with the Social Security system. In the next quarter of a century, under current law, the beneficiaries can get all that they’re entitled to. I don’t understand why we’re fretting over what might or might not happen in the year 2037, when we have 25 million Americans who are looking for full-time jobs [right now].

John: Well as you know, here on Viewpoint, we don’t like to call these programs ‘entitlements’–we call them ‘earned benefits’. But is there no compromise to be had for the President, unless he offers something like that up?

Alan: That’s just not the way you negotiate. The President has offered something up, in return for nothing. There’s no sign that the Republicans have any interest in making any sort of deal with the President, and even if they did, we’re not talking about things that are commensurate with each other. You can’t equate cutting Social Security benefits, cutting Medicare benefits — breaking the promise that we Americans have made to ourselves, the covenant that we make to ourselves– you can’t equate that with having millionaires and billionaires and multinational corporations finally pay their fair share of taxes.

John: With over 80% of the Bush tax cuts made permanent, I would add. So, let me ask you then, sir, for President Obama, is this an elaborate piece of political theater? Is he taking a page out of Dick Morris’ playbook for Bill Clinton by triangulating against House Democrats on this issue? So he can put himself in the middle of the political spectrum, where they say most voters live?

Alan: He may think so, but he’s making a terrible mistake.This is not a ‘Sister Souljah’ moment for the President. In fact, the President, I believe, is soon going to find through public polling that this is a terrible mistake.90% of Democrats and 80% of the Republicans are against this specific proposal. If you’re talking more generally about cuts in benefits, you find that 80% of the Democrats and 65% of the Republicans are against this kind of proposal. This doesn’t make any sense, either from a policy point of view, or a moral point of view, or even a political point of view. In fact,the President is putting at risk all the progress that we’ve made in identifying the Republican Party as the party in favor of cuts for Medicare and Social Security benefits, and the Democratic Party as the party that will protect the public from the Republicans.
Distributed by the Solidarity Information Service, May 14, 2013

The Last Time a Pope Spoke Like This He Had an “Accident” *

Pope Francis told the new ambassadors to the Holy See from Kyrgyzstan, Antigua and Barbuda, Luxembourg and Botswana to use money to serve and asked them to help reform the world economy along “ethical lines.”

“Money has to serve, not rule!” he said during a May 16 meeting with the new ambassadors of four countries who do not have a physical location for their embassy to the Holy See in Rome.

Pope Francis used the occasion to underscore that “wanting power and possession has become limitless” and “the selfish sprawling of corruption and tax evasion have gone global.”

“The Pope urges a return to the unselfish solidarity and ethics in favor of man in financial and economic reality,” he said during the 11:00 a.m.meeting in the Vatican’s Clementine Hall.

No official explanation was given of why Pope Francis chose to speak about economics with diplomats from such diverse parts of the world, but the four countries have all experienced the effects of the global financial crisis.

The Pope also stressed to the ambassadors that there is a need for financial reform “along ethical lines that would in its turn produce an economic reform to benefit everyone.”

That lesson is one that the people of Antigua and Barbuda know very well, since in 2009 Allen Sanford was accused of running an $8 billion Ponzi scheme from the country.

Pope Francis said he “loves everyone, rich and poor alike, but the Pope has the duty, in Christ’s name, to remind the rich to help the poor, to respect them, to promote them.”

“This would require a courageous change of attitude on the part of political leaders,” he stated.

“I urge them to face this challenge with determination and farsightedness, taking account, naturally, of their particular situations,” he added.

The pontiff spoke about the dangers of the current economic crisis, noting it is “a new, invisible tyranny, sometimes virtual.”

“The joy of living is decreasing, indecency and violence are on the rise, and poverty is becoming more evident,” said Pope Francis.

“You must fight to live and often to live in a non-decent way,” he observed.

According to him, one of the causes of the situation lies in the relationship that people now have with money and “its dominion over us and our societies.”

“We have created new idols, the ancient worship the golden calf has found a new and ruthless image in fetishism of money and the dictatorship of the economy without purpose nor a truly human face,” said the Pope.

“It reduces man to one of its demands, consumption and even worse, the human being is today considered himself as a commodity that you can use and then throw away,” he remarked.

The Holy Father also warned that solidarity is often considered counterproductive and contrary to financial and economic logic.

“Financiers, economists and politicians consider God as manageable, even dangerous because it calls man to his full realization and independence from any kind of slavery,” said Pope Francis.

“While the income of a minority is growing exponentially, that of the majority weakens,” he said, pointing to the growing disparity between the rich and poor.

He believes this imbalance stems from “ideologies that promote the absolute autonomy of markets and financial speculation.”

— EWTN News May 16, 2013

* Pope John Paul I had expressed similar ideas before he had a heart attack during the night but a brief time into his Papacy

Oh, WTF!

From NEWSWEEK (May 6, 2013) —

Over the past four years, bee colonies have undergone a disturbing transformation. As helpless beekeepers looked on, the machinelike efficiency of these communal insects devolved into inexplicable disorganization. Worker bees would fly away, never to return; adolescent bees wandered aimlessly in the hive; and the daily jobs in the colony were left undone until honey production stopped and eggs died of neglect. Colony collapse disorder, as it is known, has claimed roughly 30% of bee colonies every winter since 2007.

If bees go extinct, their loss will trigger an extinction domino effect, because crops from apples to broccoli rely on these insects for pollination. At the same time, over a third of the world’s amphibian species are threatened with extinction, and Harvard evolutionary biologist and conservationist E.O. Wilson estimates that 27,000 species of all kinds go extinct per year.

Are we in the first act of a mass extinction that will end in the death of millions of plant and animal species across the planet, including us? Proponents of the “sixth extinction” theory believe the answer is yes…

The climate change that occurred during the Great Dying – most likely involving megavolcanoes that erupted for centuries in Siberia – was similar to the one our planet is undergoing right now. Regardless of whether humans are responsible, the sixth mass extinction on Earth is going to happen. We have ample evidence that Earth is headed for disaster, from elevated rates of extinction among birds and amphibians to superstorms and the recent Midwestern drought, corroborating the idea that we might be living through the early days of a new mass extinction.

The Right Tea-bags the IRS

The Rabid Right have grabbed their pitchforks and are besieging the IRS Federales screaming for blood. Apparently, several Tea bagging fake charities had been enjoying the tax-exemption due folks doing good works and then using this ill-got gain for politicking. When the IRS asked them pretty-please to stop such nefarious activities, the Neanderthals went ape.

How can anyone expect those that bear Right to abide by the Law? In homage to the Commodore of yore, “Law, Law, who needs the Law, ain’t we got the Power”?

Not that long ago Karl Rove had shepherded guv’mint goons in attacks on any “liberal” church daring to mutter words deferential to the Prince of Peace. The goons then were given carte blanche to hassle churches and ministries which did not duly genuflect towards the State-approved gods of war. When anti-war ministers cried peace, the IRS threatened their tax status. No Republicrat Congress-critter stood in their defense.

Although no church campaigned against the then-son-of-god, little George, “liberal” churches were taught a lesson. Today, right-wing churches actually campaign from the pulpit. Last year, over a 1000 fundie-funded congregations stated publicly that they would campaign for the Republican messiah du jour in church session and the IRS did diddle squat.

Not far from where I sit today, a megachurch enjoying tax-exemption, sitting on tax-free land enjoying a publicly funded road, publicly-funded water and sewers and so forth, had a preacher man declaim from its pulpit that its congregants had the religious duty to vote for Michelle Bachmann, a satanic she-devil if there ever was one, and stirred no repercussions from either the IRS or State Revenue Commissioner.

The better way to handle such problems is to dispense with tax exemptions altogether. Why should a shearer of sheep be obligated to pay taxes while a scammer of sheep be not so burdened. Let god’s own hang left or right without restraint, but let’s not subsidized them with the taxpayer’s dollar.

“This is a government of the people, by the people and for the people no longer. It is a government by the corporations, of the corporations, and for the corporations.”

This was written by the conservative Republican President of the United States Rutherford B Hayes after he left office in 1880. It is even more true today than when written.

Let’s Make the Scroungers Pay Up!

A gang of Banksters and Corporateers, the very ones who have been sucking the Government teat for years, have organized a lobby and called themselves “Fix the Debt”. They say that the ONLY way to fiscal responsibility is to throw Granny off of Medicare, and to cut Grampie’s Social Security, deny hungry kids food, and put the homeless back on the streets. They are wining and dining the Congressional critters to persuade them to CUT – CUT – CUT.

They, and the Congressional critters, want us to forget that we are not in debt due to Social Security, Medicare, Food Stamps or the spare change we give to the poor and homeless. We’ve borrowed money from the Chinese to fight TWO wars on the never-never and to hand out bailout funds and tax bennies to the insufferably rich. We’re broke because they’re rich: one causes the other.

Tax cuts for the 1% have cost the U.S. ONE TRILLION DOLLARS!

Meanwhile, the very Corporations which have benefited from Government no-bid cost-plus contracts and bailouts have also fixed the tax system so that they don’t pay taxes. Corporations which have the dough to pay out record-level dividends and which pay their executives sky-high salaries and perks, have avoided paying their fair share to protect and defend this country. Corporations have AVOIDED $ 2.3 TRILLION in taxes.

If the SuperRich and their Corporate fronts would pay what they should owe, the Government could collect OVER THREE TRILLION in revenues.

A new organization called “Flip the Debt” has started to advocate that the rich and their corporate toadies pay up. Take a look at the website at http://www.flipthedebt.org/

Grand Bargain or Grand Sell-out

BERNIE SANDERS, U.S. Senator (VT)

The media appear fixated about when and if a so-called “grand bargain” on our economy will be reached. Wrong question! The question we should be asking is: What should be in a “grand bargain” that works for the average American?

At a time when the middle class is disappearing, 46 million Americans are living in poverty and the gap between the very rich and everyone else is growing wider, we need a “grand bargain” that protects struggling working families, not billionaires.

With corporate profits at record-breaking levels while the effective corporate tax is at its lowest level since 1972, and 1 out of 4 profitable corporations pays nothing in federal income taxes, we need a grand bargain that ends corporate loopholes and demands that corporate America starts helping us with deficit reduction. We must not balance the budget on the backs of the elderly, the children, the sick and the poor. We must not cut Social Security, disabled veterans’ benefits, Medicare, Medicaid, education and other programs that provide opportunity and dignity to millions of struggling American families.

Before we pass a grand bargain, we have got to take a hard and sober look at what’s happening economically in our country today. In doing so, we must acknowledge that the United States has the most unequal distribution of wealth and income of any major country on earth and that inequality is worse today than at any time since the late 1920s. Today, the wealthiest 400 individuals in this country own more wealth than the bottom half of America — 150 million Americans. The top 1 percent owns 38 percent of all financial wealth, while the bottom 60 percent owns just 2.3 percent. Incredibly, the Federal Reserve reported last year that median net worth for middle-class families dropped by nearly 40 percent from 2007-2010. That’s the equivalent of wiping out 18 years of savings for the average middle-class family.

The distribution of income is even worse. If you can believe it, the last study on the subject showed that all of the new income gained from 2009-2011 went to the top 1 percent. ALL of the new income!

In America today, the average middle-class family has seen its income go down by nearly $5,000 since 1999, adjusting for inflation. Real unemployment is not 7.7 percent, it is 14.3 percent, counting those workers who have given up looking for work or who are working part time when they want to be working full time. While youth unemployment is exceptionally high, millions of young people are struggling with student loans they can’t afford to pay back. While we talk about the need to strengthen the middle class, we have to understand that more than half of the new jobs that have been created since 2010 are low-wage jobs paying people between $7.80 and $13.80 an hour.

That’s the economic reality facing a large majority of our people, and that’s what has to be taken into consideration when we discuss deficit reduction and a “grand bargain.”

As a member of the Senate Budget Committee, here are my priorities:

We need a budget that puts millions of Americans back to work in decent-paying jobs by rebuilding our crumbling infrastructure and transforming our energy sector away from fossil fuels and into renewable energy and energy efficiency.

We need a budget that keeps the promises we have made to our seniors, veterans and the most vulnerable by protecting Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid benefits.

We need a budget that makes sure that the wealthiest Americans and most profitable corporations pay their fair share of taxes. We must end corporate loopholes that allow Wall Street banks, large corporations and the wealthy to avoid more than $100 billion a year in federal taxes by stashing their profits in the Cayman Islands and other tax havens.

A federal budget is not just a set of numbers. It is a value statement of what we, as a nation, stand for. We must fight for a grand bargain that stands for justice, opportunity and the needs of our middle class. We must reject any approach that continues the economic assault on working families.