What is the matter with these people? Are Republicans out to make EVIL their personal brand?
House Republicans are pushing back against a series of public health measures, including school lunch standards and tobacco regulation, teeing up a confrontation with Senate Democrats and the White House over the reach of government in daily life.
The Republicans have used an agriculture appropriations bill to send several messages: They don’t want the government to require school meals that are more nutritional but also more expensive, they don’t want the government to prod food companies to restrain marketing to children, and they don’t want the Food and Drug Administration to regulate any substance based on anything but “hard science.”
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On Tuesday, the GOP majority on the House Appropriations Committee approved a 2012 spending plan that directs the Agriculture Department to ditch the first new nutritional standards in 15 years proposed for school breakfasts and lunches. The lawmakers say meals containing more fruits and vegetables, whole grains and low-fat dairy will cost an additional $7 billion over five years — money they say the country can ill afford in difficult economic times.
Really? And yet these scumbags have no problem keeping a war going on in Iraq which is costing hundreds of million per day. The two wars have cost over $1.2 trillion to date. Say what you will about the necessity for the Afghanistan war, but the war in Iraq was undeniably a war of choice – one which has cost over $780 billion. What the U.S. spends in Iraq in less than 2 weeks would cover the “$7 billion over five years” to ensure nutritional breakfasts for American children. Yet Republicans say no in the name of fiscal responsibility. These guys are giving slime a bad name.
Here’s the bottom line: if a measure proposed by Dems does not in some way line the pockets of Republican donors, then GOP members are opposed to it no matter how beneficial it might be for Americans. Can it be any clearer? They are more than willing to kill Medicare, hold back funds for tornado victims and the unemployed, cut school funding, refuse to increase taxes for the top 2% of wage earners which would reduce the national debt but they are adamant about keeping subsidies for big oil while refusing to spend $7 billion over 5 years for a measure which benefits America’s schoolchildren and helps ensure a healthier nation.
If you’re a supporter of the Republican Party than there is something seriously wrong with you. How can you defend these people? Supporting a party which clearly does not give a damn for average Americans makes you an idiot and/or a heartless bastard. There is no other way to put it.
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Because scumbag Republicans have fallen so far down inside the septic tank of their own narrow minded ideology that they can’t remember a time when they could see the sun shine. They don’t want any regulations or really any government because they don’t know how to govern a modern, complex country like we have today. The world has passed them by and they are irrelevant to progress. So the only thing that makes sense to them is to simplify everything so that they can feel comfortable in their little black and white world.
You can remove the and/or between idiot and heartless bastard. It’s just an and.
GOP: If we quit collecting corporate taxes, quit regulating anything, in other words not do our jobs, everything will magically fix itself. They may have a point now that I think about it.
Who keeps them in power and fills their campaign coffers? The ones who do are the ones they work for. And why should they put out job bills? The working class aren’t the ones keeping them in power. Banks on the other hand get the bailouts.
Mario,
The other night my husband and I were doing our weekly visit to the “bridge” in downtown Seattle where the homeless go to sleep. We go down there and hand out sandwiches until they are gone and blankets we have collected from our neighbors, friends and family. Each week we run out of sandwiches and blankets sooner than the last week. Each week we see more and more families sleeping under these bridges. There are not enough shelters or programs to help the growing homeless population. The homeless are no longer just drug addicts, alcoholics or the mentally ill. It is whole families, children and college graduates. My point with this introduction is after spending time with some of these families my husband and I have come to realize that one school meal a day may be the only nutrition that child receives on a given day. With an increasing number of the population being underemployed and the rising cost of food, parents are feeding their children high fat low nutrition meals because that is all they can afford. We need healthy bodies and minds in our children, they are the future of this country. If we continue to feed them junk, then that is all we can expect out of the future.
Well I guess i’m a heartless bastard for wanting a great and better America for my children and grandchildren, and I also suppose I’m an ignorant fool when for wanting my country to defend itself against totalitarian Islam. The GOP is always painted the picture as the party of as you put “heartless bastards”, but tell me what’s more heartless to you. The Democrats continue to be avid supporters of abortion, or as it should be called baby killing. You call the GOP idiots because they don’t “tax the rich, and give to the poor average American” who in reality makes more money then 96 percent of the world’s population. I don’t understand how Democrats can’t understand this. The top 2 percent of the wage earners in America are the ones that provide the jobs for middle class America. You guys always complain about how jobs are being shipped over seas. Well, there’s a simple explanation for that. If you tax the “evil” rich to death, what else would a good business man/woman do then take his/her company and its resources to a country that’s less severe in taxes and where he/she can make more money. You also said something about the GOP holding back funds for the unemployed, I for one am all in favor of making those who earn unemployment benefits work for their wages. The government is giving more money to people to sit on their couches all day and eat Big Macs, then to go out and find a job. Unemployment benefits were meant to be for the purpose to help people get back on their feet, not for them to be lazy all day. I also love the fact that you’re freaking out about 7 billion dollars for a supposed “nutritional” breakfast for kids. What happened to the days when I was a kid and I ate breakfast with my family. A family that was close knit, who said our table prayers and ate good food made by my mother. Today, parents just dump their kids off at school for breakfast more worried about themselves then their own children. There never was breakfast at school, and there shouldn’t be the need of one today. This brings me to another point about the “great” Democratic Party, or better known as the party of me, myself, and I. You don’t care about the economic well being of future generations. You just assume, “Hey, let’s just spend money, we don’t have on useless things!” Instead of cutting taxes for businesses to stimulate the economy like has always worked in America, let’s spend trillions of dollars that we don’t have to help them get restarted, and hey we are so nice that we’ll even provide you with health care because you know if you spend lots of money with the government we’ll always do a good job! Even though this health care law gives even more power to the federal government to control our lives. The GOP is the party of what America stands for, and will continue to stand for, and that’s freedom and capitalism. The Democrats are drilling America into a hole we won’t climb out of. Members of the GOP aren’t heartless bastards, its just our idea of help is a little different than yours. We don’t just hand out money left and right for worthless causes and thus cause the value of our currency to continue to drop, we support energy independence and also to drill for our own oil, we have the technology to do environmentally friendly so why can’t we? We cut taxes for the middle class of America, we cut taxes on the businesses of this country to provide jobs for all Americans, we support the rights of even the unborn Americans who should still receive the rights they are owed, we believe in an American educational system that teaches that homosexuality is not normal and should not be taught in schools as a “good, alternative lifestyle”, and that sex shouldn’t happen until after marriages, that way the children that our born have a father and mother and not just one or the other or neither in their lives, we believe in the American Dream, giving any American a chance to follow their dreams and become successful, we believe that America should be a player on the world stage and help when natural disasters occur here in our own land and abroad, we also believe that we should dispel terrorism once and for all. I wish Democrats would stop the name calling and look at the facts. The GOP is and always will be the party of opportunity and hope, and if that makes us “heartless bastards and idiots” then I guess you are correct.
It’s all about forced pregnancy and the fetus.
To Jonny- Wow. I mean WOW! Talk about making the point of this post.
Yes, you are a heartless bastard and/or idiot. You just go on believing in Republicans and you’ll get your pony and rainbow (a monochromatic rainbow-the colored one is too gay) and the world will magically morph back into the Shangra La of your distorted childhood memories.
Politics is the new religion, and Teabaggers are the Branch Davidians of the Republican branch.
I need to comment on Jonny’s comment as well. For one thing, people collecting unemployment have to send in a report to the state unemployment about their job searches every week. You can’t just sit on your ass if you want to collect because you’ll lose it faster that you can say shit.
Second, you are suggesting we should be grateful for our lower wages while the wealthiest have increased their earnings 300% since the 1970′s. The working class wages have remained stagnant. And why is that OK? Don’t think for a minute that there aren’t people suffering in this country like they do in other countries.
Go spend some time with those homeless that Erin mentioned and tell them how lucky they are not to be living in Bangladesh.
Johnny, I got news for you. Corporate America isn’t hiring, they aren’t providing the jobs needed by Americans… Why is that Johnny??
Also, you indicate that the poorest amongst us makes more than 96% of the world’s population. But what you fail to take into account is that this isn’t a third world country. Our economic structure is different. so, Johnny that dog don’t hunt
I too,ate breakfast at home, meals prepared by my mother, and had a close tight knit family. Of course, my dad was a personnel manager and mom stayed home and did things like laundry and cooking. Today,with the stagnation of wages and the proliferation of “fees”", “surcharges” and the like which have been promulgated to prevent new “taxes”, most families need 2 wage earners to survive. My family put up Christmas lights, a huge tree, etc….. My family is lucky to have a day to go shopping (Dollar Tree to fill stockings) and time to cook a turkey,let alone bake cookies. Two people working full time plus, add in a half dozen school events (which did not exist to this extent back when I was a kid) and time itself is more precious than gold. Just time constraints makes meal shakes and pop-tarts a “breakfast”, and the dollar menu a dinner option for dinner…Is it my preferred choice? Heck no. Changing jobs helped… but for those trapped in shift work in retail or fast food, you can’t always cook. If you are “management” in one of those jobs, you often have a 50 hour or more
floor” to the hours worked.
The policy choices since Reagan have all worked towards making it harder and harder to make it on one salary. If you have the kind of salary that supports a stay at home parent, you likely don’t have time to enjoy the benefits of sitting down to breakfast or dinner with all of them. As it is, seeing what is offered for school breakfast is pretty sad- lots of sugar and starch. I have every year had to cut back on some luxury or another for at least the last 10. I make more now, though without benefits- but am hitting the wall financially which in the past was generally reserved for the times when I’ve had my spouse unemployed. If you are lucky enough to have been in a secure job with benefits all these years Jonny, and your wife can stay home and cook and clean for you, I can see you, if you are lacking in empathy, holding your belief that school breakfast is not necessary. But that breakfast being there for the kids whose parents have to get to work and don’t have the time to fix a full meal for them, or just saving the $1-$3 it would cost to cook breakfast to go towards some bananas or apples for snacks in the afternoon, or defray dinner costs, is a huge help for anyone on the edge. End of the month for someone on food stamps means short of food at home, just as I scrape change for the loaf of bread or gallon of milk a couple days before payday. Knowing at least my youngest (who qualifies for breakfast due to being disabled) can get a carton of milk at school makes me breathe easier, even though 75% of the time I’ve fixed him something already.
The rich don’t create jobs, spending creates jobs. If no one is spending, a rich man doesn’t create jobs for which there is no demand, he sits on his money and gets richer. Cutting school breakfast would cut jobs, and some spending, making the economy sink even lower, Get out of your fantasy world. Or find a half dozen friends and play a game where you are all “job creators” and figure out what you do in an economy. Your goal is to make money- nothing wrong with that. Your scenario is to provide goods for a population, If you take money (either earned or unearned) out of the population, your gains will fall. Putting the money back in (through raising salaries or benefits, or through donations/government spending) will increase demand. Increased demand increases profits. Unless you have that dream job- Wall Street. These folks are in your income category, and probably have a lower tax rate, since capital gains are not taxed as high. They have the pinnacle of job category- they can make money without producing a damn thing. So the economy in your game has folks classed with “job creators” who create nothing. Every dollar they suck out of the economy is a dollar that is not increasing demand. If you spend $100 taking your wife to dinner, and I spend $100 a McDonalds taking my kids 5 times, which one of us has created more demand and supported more jobs? If 3 people buy $15000 cheap cars, and one person buys a $45000 SUV, which $45000 supported more workers? If it takes 100 man-hours (for example) to build a low end economy car, I will bet it doesn’t take any more labor to make that SUV. So the folks in the market for cheap cars will create more jobs than the people in the market for high end cars. So the whole premise that putting more money in the pockets of the rich through tax breaks is good for the economy is false. It is only good for folks who don’t earn their money, who create nothing- the bankers and investors whose goal is to die with the most toys. For 30 years or more, these are the people who our public policy has favored. So 80% or more of the population is NOT being represented in our government, The major culprits all belong to the party which could have written your post for you Jonny. Yet the whole goal of representative government is to serve all the people. If we had been served like this, we’d still live in a world where mom(or dad) could stay home and deal with cooking and cleaning, the kids are supervised by parents, and we all had a white picket fence. The conservatives all claim to want this, yet fight every public policy that accomplishes this.
Sigh. They really have become cartoon villains, haven’t they?
It’s been well proven that going hungry or being malnourished will impact a childs ability to learn.
The GOP simply does not want a populace that is well educated with the ability to critically think, problem solve, that is capable of self realization.
What the GOP wants is a populace of non-critically thinking drones who defer to and submit to authority and are willing to self impose their own slavery.
The GOP does not see people as Human Beings deserving of dignity but as a resource worthy only of exploition.
It was illegal to educate a slave during the period when slavery existed in the US for fear that an educated slave was more likely to rebel against their condition.
The GOP and Corporations they represent want a dumbed down and expoitable America that is incapable of resistance.
Modern slavery is an equal opportunity exploiter which does not descriminate by color of skin but discrinates based on economic condition.
The GOP Corporate motto ” If you are stupid enough to be born poor then you deserve to be exploited.”
It should be incumbent upon the poor to fight for Economic Rights legislation as it was for minorities who fought for Civil Rights legislation.
Then might we truley be the land of the free and the home of the brave.
@Erin: Thank you for what you do. It’s really sad what some people go through and what “some” people think of them. For some in the GOP who think that if they just end social programs, people will find jobs, is kind of like throwing someone into the deep end of the pool and they’ll learn how to swim. I wonder if they would do that to their own kids.
Wow Jonny, who tinkled in your corn flakes? You evidently hate women, children & anyone who isn’t a wealthy old white evangelical Christian. Corporations are not creating jobs in the U.S. and they haven’t been doing so for nearly 12 years now, even with their lowered tax rates; most don’t pay any U.S. taxes and receive government welfare (subsidies) while reaping record profits. Rich people do NOT create jobs; middle class people create jobs and you and your ilk are trying to kill us all off by raising the tax rates on the middle & lower income families, by destroying Medicare for those who like me have been paying this tax for the insurance program we call Medicare for decades and replace it with a Groupon so Granny & Gramps end up paying far more out of pocket for their health coverage and can be kicked off the private insurance that Groupon (voucher) will afford for using their benefits.
Abortion is a legal medical procedure (see Roe v. Wade 1973) and also is not paid for by federal tax dollars (see Hyde Amendment 1976). Planned Parenthood provides many services to both men & women, give physical examinations, test & treat STD’s, give women access to mammograms, give birth control advice as well as condoms, spermicidal foam and birth control pills – they are often the only place in rural areas that provide these services and they do so on a sliding scale, if you can pay for your pills you pay, if you can’t afford them, they are free. They are also involved with family planning, i.e, if you are ready to start a family, they will speak with you, give you information on proper nutrition and give you pre-natal vitamins as well as examinations throughout the pregnancy. Pro-choice simply means that every one should be able to decide for themselves the decision to carry a pregnancy to term, to keep or give away the child or to terminate a pregnancy that is endangering the life & health of the woman (some times very young girls who were brutally raped or were impregnated by a family member). It’s not a “pro-abortion” stance, it’s about choice. You lot are anti-choice and demand that anyone who becomes pregnant MUST carry the pregnancy to termination, regardless if it will kill the woman to do so. I have personally never had an abortion but it’s not my place to make that medical decision for someone else.
The unemployed wouldn’t BE the unemployed if U.S. businesses stopped shipping American jobs overseas and exactly how would you expect someone to work for their unemployment if there are no positions available that they can do? A 62 year old man with arthritis cannot be expected to stand all day and stock shelves nor can a 62 year old woman with arthritis. U.S. companies also have a severe age bias against anyone over age 50 who are mostly the ones having their jobs outsourced.
You lot have murdered the American Dream. Most of our deficit was caused by U.S. corporations not paying taxes in the U.S. and the wars in Iraq & Afghanistan which coincidentally was caused by your team, based on lies that they knew were lies.
You also have the sheer nerve to blame women, who are staying at home while their husbands are off fighting in these wars trying to make ends meet and keep the family together & children fed, while also working a part time job or the reverse where the wife is off fighting in these wars of choice and the husband is staying home.
No one is suggesting that the “evil rich” get taxed to death but if we went back to the pre-Bush tax rates (from 35% to 39%) and the “evil rich” also PAID taxes instead of loopholing their way out and that U.S. corporations actually PAID taxes in the U.S., Oil subsidies ended (a company making a $23,000,000,000.00 profit doesn’t need a subsidy). Stop allowing hedge fund managers who make BILLIONS a year gambling against the stock market to never pay taxes (which is what occurs today). The tax code needs to be revised, starving poor people won’t bring our country into the prosperity we had in the Clinton years. Stealing the Social Security & Medicare from our seniors to pay down the debt while leaving our seniors without health care or money to live on will not fix our economy.
I have NEVER gotten a job from a rich person, the jobs I have obtained over the years I have gotten because I was qualified and applied for them; these jobs were from middle income Americans, not the rich.
Now while you were living on Leave it to Beaver street growing up, many Americans were not. Both of my parents worked, my father was an electrician who could not work in the winter months as there was no construction going on during the winter, so my mother would work to help keep food on the table. I cooked, canned, gardened, took care of my younger brothers & sisters, did my school work, helped them with their homework, did the mending and sewing, did the washing & the ironing and yet somehow still managed to keep an A average in school, where we were taught not just reading, writing and mathematics, we were taught science, took physical education daily, had both art & music courses, had literature, history & civics courses and oh yeah, my parents didn’t have to pay any book fees to the school. We got school lunches, for 25 cents a week, gas was 16 cents a gallon, a pack of smokes was 20 cents and my parents got each of us a pair of socks, an orange & a peppermint stick for Christmas, for our birthday, we got clothes and perhaps a board game.
You are probably one of the most hard hearted person’s I’ve had the displeasure to “meet” online, I bet you call yourself a Christian too……… Jesus would be extremely disappointed in your greedy actions, words & deeds.
“The rich don’t create jobs, spending creates jobs. If no one is spending, a rich man doesn’t create jobs for which there is no demand, he sits on his money and gets richer.”
Robin – I know that idea is commonly promoted by those on the left, and has been since the 1920′s. It simply isn’t true.
Demand is created by entrepreneurs who develop their visions into viable products or services. Henry Ford understood that. So did Edison when he invented the phonograph and the light bulb. Jobs didn’t wait for people to get a government handout before he sprang the idea of the iPod on us. He produced it and then found a way to make us demand it.
Demand follows supply, not the other way around. Knowing that may not help buy a carton of milk at the end of month, but it will help you decern between voting for a politician who promises that more government spending will improve the economy, and one who says that more visionary entrepreneurs will improve the economy.
Robin and rancid fruitcake – you are my heroes!
Jonny, you said, “You guys always complain about how jobs are being shipped over seas. Well, there’s a simple explanation for that. If you tax the “evil” rich to death, what else would a good business man/woman do then take his/her company and its resources to a country that’s less severe in taxes and where he/she can make more money.”
Yes, there is a simple explanation for jobs being shipped overseas – it has NOTHING to do with taxes, however, and everything to do with cheap labor. Just plain old cheap labor. Our effective tax rate in this country is considerably lower than the statutory rate — Citizens for Tax Justice just released a preview of their upcoming report covering a study between 2008-10. http://www.ctj.org/taxjusticedigest/archive/2011/06/ctj_report_preview_identifies.php
“The preview details the pretax U.S. profits, federal taxes paid and effective tax rates of (in alphabetical order): American Electric Power, Boeing, Dupont, Exxon Mobil, FedEx, General Electric, Honeywell International, IBM, United Technologies, Verizon Communications, Wells Fargo and Yahoo. CTJ’s full corporate report is scheduled for release this summer.
From 2008 through 2010, these 12 companies reported $171 billion in pretax U.S. profits. But as a group, their federal income taxes were negative: –$2.5 billion.”
Furthermore, they are allowed to off-shore their money/profits overseas without paying taxes — until they want to “repatriate” that money — to bring it home. Right now they have so much money sitting in off shore accounts they want to bring home, they’re lobbying to get a tax “holiday” and only pay a 5% tax. They got that deal once before, so now they’re looking for it again. http://money.cnn.com/2011/02/16/news/companies/repatriation_lobby.fortune/index.htm
So it sure as hell isn’t because of our tax rate that they might be running off to an overseas country. They’d just like you to think that.
Microsoft owns literally hundreds of millions of dollars worth of property and buildings here in Washington. The have an campus that takes up several square miles of real estate. Does any one in their right might think they’re going to bail out of WA and lose (particularly now with the drop in real estate) that investment so they can move overseas? Not unless some country is willing to build them all that real estate over there there. Fat chance in this economy. And they certainly didn’t do it before everything tanked. So why would they do it now?
You also claim: “Instead of cutting taxes for businesses to stimulate the economy like has always worked in America” — The Democrats DID cut taxes for businesses as part of the stimulus package — about 35% of the package was TAX CUTS…much of it for businesses. And were still having weak growth (of course, laying off all those evil government workers in the states isn’t helping).
Business will NOT invest in growing their companies or hiring more workers until they have DEMAND. And right now the only demand is coming from overseas – mainly China, because China has been pouring billions of dollars into building their infrastructure. They don’t need American customers when they have plenty of them over there. They can sit on their cash and give themselves fat bonuses and screw America and Americans. If we want to work, we can work for less or work longer (unreported) hours — which is why our productivity is up and wages aren’t.
You claim, “The Democrats continue to be avid supporters of abortion, or as it should be called baby killing.” Sorry, wrong again. Democrats believe the same thing all those people last year who were screaming at their representatives believe – that the government has no business in making medical decisions that need to be made between a patient and their doctor. Roe v Wade was not decided on “choice” – it was decided on privacy…a CONSTITUTIONAL RIGHT – a woman’s right to privacy. That’s what Democrats and, apparently, a lot of people on the right support – keep the government out of my health care decisions!
You said, “What happened to the days when I was a kid and I ate breakfast with my family.” I’ll tell you what happened – Reagan happened and all that “voo-doo” economics Geo H W Bush warned us about – except the actor was so handsome and came across so honest and promised us the moon, the stars, the heavens, and a shinning city on a hill and foolish Americans believed his con job. So while we were promised “trickle down” economics for the last 30 years the money has been redistributed to the wealthy and the rest of us had to send mom to work to make ends meet — especially after the marketing teams did their jobs and convinced us we, too, could have the “American Dream” — fancy cars, a nice house, and 10 credit cards in every wallet — you remember, don’t you? All those cards finding their way into your mail box all set up and ready to go? Didn’t even have to make a phone call to activate them. And why not, they got the deal of a lifetime from those “activist” courts who gave them a green light to supersede every usury law in the land by domiciling their businesses in states with no usury laws. It’s no accident ND and DE are the credit card capitols of the country. Once that deal made it through the courts, they could charge whatever rate they wanted to (you know that fine print that was on the bottom the letterhead that was in .1 font that required a magnifying glass to read?). And once they reeled us in — whooo baby! They had us. And those that couldn’t pay? – no big deal – those who were paying were making up for the slackers.
And then they did it again in the mortgage industry after the repeal of Glass-Stegall (both a GOP & Dem affair) — except this time there was too much money involved and they didn’t want the risk on their books, so they sliced and diced it and sent it around the world and then bought insurance on it – just in case. They ALWAYS hedge their bets. And, oh, those unregulated derivatives – you can thank Wendy Gramm for that — her husband got GS repealed and she, as the head of CFTC, ruled her department would not regulate the derivatives. Then she went to work for Enron who was peddling them up until they crashed and burned — taking the life savings of many with them.
You seem to forget that one of the biggest growth periods in this country was when Ike got Congress to fund the Interstate Highway System. It cost billions, but it completely revamped the transportation system of this country creating a superhighway of businesses that were never there before. The wages from that project created demand for goods and housing in every state where a highway went through it. And they were fine UNION jobs, too, that were outsourced to PRIVATE businesses the government paid to do the work.
But the GOP is now loathe to invest in a revamp/upgrade of our transportation system, our electric grid or anything else that would create jobs. The House has not proposed a single jobs bill since the GOP regained control and every Democratic House jobs bill that was sent over to the Senate was filibustered by some GOP Senator.
Do you NOT understand that until we get the cost of health care insurance off the backs of our businesses, they will either stop providing coverage for their employees or their employees will be 100% responsible for paying for it? Which is why we really need a single payer system in this country like Medicare for everyone. And, trust me, you DON’T want to argue this topic with me. I work for a private insurance company in the fraud unit and I know damned well what’s going on the the medical industry and why about 30% of the cost of insurance is higher than it should be. Medicare has the Stark Amendment, private carriers do not. Go look it up. If Stark was implemented for private carriers, I’d bet money, the cost of health care would decrease by billions overnight.
You said, “The GOP is the party of what America stands for, and will continue to stand for, and that’s freedom and capitalism” Really? Just what freedoms have the Democrats taken from you? And don’t go all Patriot Act on me — Bush started that and sadly, there aren’t enough Dems with the backbone to end it.
And “capitalism” — I’d venture the Democrats are more capitalists than the GOP — the GOP’s version of capitalism is that they support all these businesses with our tax dollars while providing no regulation to protect you and me from their avarice. The GOP version of capitalism is socialistic in nature with the corporations getting all the benefits and the public paying for it. They allow business to externalize their losses by making us pay for it. When they’re not forced to clean up their messes (either financially or environmentally) and we get stuck paying for it, they’ve turned it into a socialized system. The Dems want true capitalism where companies pay their own way — not with our tax dollars — which is why regulation is important.
If you want an example – go look up Paulson’s three page bill to Congress wanting $800 billion dollars without a SINGLE committee set up for oversight or a SINGLE regulation. We bailed out the banks, and they’re still screwing us. Now I’ll agree there are plenty of Democrats who have bought into the GOP BS, like Nelson and Laundrie, and others, but until we get business out of the business of funding our elections, then we’re going to get what THEY are paying for.
The value of our currency is dropping because of all the speculation going on in the price of oil is going up. Another GOP (Nixon) idea of tying our dollars to the oil market. If speculation were not involved, you wouldn’t see it reversing itself one week over the next. When our government workers killed Bin Laden, the price of oil went down and the dollar went up. Two weeks later, oil went up and the dollar went down. That’s pure speculation.
And speaking of oil, you said “we support energy independence and also to drill for our own oil” — Our OWN oil you say? Okay, let me try to explain this. First off the US gives permits to oil companies to drill the oil. These companies are not American – they are GLOBAL entities — and unless they are nationalized like the vast majority of oil companies around the world are, they will never, ever be “American” companies. Next when these companies pull that oil out of the ground, where do you think they go to sell that oil? Sure we get most of it, because we’re close. But it’s still sold on the open market and we DO export oil.
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/24881660/ns/business-answer_desk/t/why-us-exporting-gasoline-diesel/
Here’s a table of the current exports: http://www.eia.gov/dnav/pet/pet_move_expc_a_EP00_EEX_mbblpd_m.htm
If you think by imposing your values on others, you are going to change them, I’m afraid you’re in for a rude awakening.
In all of recorded history there has been homosexuality, sex before marriage and abortion. And there simply will always be. Doesn’t matter how you feel about it, it simply is. And if you believe a family consisting of a father and a mother cannot be dysfunctional, I’d suggest you take a long hard look at the Casey family in Florida. I’d venture there are few families in this country that aren’t dysfunctional in some way. Husbands cheating on wives, and vice versa. But, maybe some don’t consider that to be a dysfunctional relationship.
Jonny, you can believe in the American Dream, but, sadly, I fear you’ve been sold a bill of goods. Sure, there will be a few people who will make it big – like Bill Gates, but that is the exception. The vast majority of Americans will never be rich beyond their wildest dreams. They’ll live pay check to pay check, raise their family as best they can and try to put away enough for college for their kids and retirement and pray they don’t get sick so what they’ve manged to save is lost to paying for a serious illness. That’s their American Dream. And the more we allow our local boards of education to dumb down the curriculum of our students, the fewer there will be who can achieve your American Dream. Without a decent education, and one that is AFFORDABLE, more and more will be left on the lower rung of the economic ladder. When I hear Ron Paul wanting to dismantle the education system in this country and turn it into a for profit or home schooling program I just cringe. How many parents are there that have the educational background to TEACH their kids. How many have the science and math background to teach algebra or geometry or trig?
So how’s that world stage working out for us? We subsidize Germany, Japan, South Korea and literally dozens of other countries around the world by providing them military protection WE pay for. So they can spend their money growing their own economies by investing in their own country. What suckers we are!! But all that equipment the military uses makes thousands of companies very, very rich. The $2 billion per day we are spending in Afghanistan adds up to $730 billion a year…just shy of the bank bailout. Just by ending the war we could reduce the deficit. Add $238 billion dollars PER YEAR that the tax cuts are costing us – now were talking about almost one trillion dollars a year. So in 14 years our deficit would almost be gone and in 15 we could be running a surplus again. Clean up the mess in our health care system and we’d be on the road even faster.
You’d better call Cantor and have a brief discussion with him about helping “when natural disasters occur here in our own land and abroad” ’cause apparently that’s not a real big concern of his – taking care of Americans who need help because of a disaster. Go check and see how the people of Joplin, MO are feeling about that right now.
As for helping other countries – we’re really good about throwing out a number we’re going to send – but when it comes down to it, we don’t always put our money where our mouth is. Google Senator Tom Colburn (a doctor, no less) who had a secret hold on the money for Haiti – money they sorely needed. I guess his hypocritical oath rather than his Hippocratic oath was more important to him.
Needless to say, however, the GOP had NO PROBLEM in increasing funds for crop and flood insurance, in the past. But then, neither have the Democrats. Appears that’s one of the few things they can agree on.
As for terrorism – rather than dropping bombs on innocent people it should have been done as an intelligence operation and it still should be. But we had to go in all big and bad, acting like Bush’s old time sheriff and look at the mess we’re in.
And you know what really got me about it all — the day Bush came out and said he wasn’t worried about Bin Laden anymore. That was 6 months after 9/11. A couple of others on his hit parade:
The searching for WMD video he did for the correspondent’s dinner — make a big joke out of it.
And the kicker was when he laughed about his base — “the haves and the haves more.”
“The GOP is and always will be the party of opportunity and hope” – no, Jonny, they are the part of fear and hate. the only ones they will provide hope and opportunity for are Bush’s base — “the haves and haves more” crowd. They care nothing about the rest of us – except to fool those they pander to into giving them their vote every two years. Then they go about picking what’s still in your pocket and sending it up to their donors.
Sadly, there are Democrats that help them. But there will never be a third party in this country – so until we root out those that are helping themselves at our expense, we will continue to get screwed by the elite on both sides of the aisle that have never walked and never will walk in our shoes. They and their children will attend private schools getting a good education (or at least a school that will happily give them a C+ to get the out of the door) while some of our kids go to schools with hungry tummies that don’t have the proper resources to teach them or are being taught in crumbling schools. If our children are our investment in our future and their education is paramount to that future, then why the hell are we throwing them under the bus?
Look, Jonny, I’m sorry your world is not what you want it to be – that those days you long for have receded into the past. But that’s what happens.
Why not embrace the future and the changes that are coming and, better yet, make changes that are good for all of us? Americans love a new gadget…sometimes it just takes them a bit to adjust. Look at our history when we turned to manufacturing, or went from horse and buggy to automobiles, or from trains to planes.
But if we don’t soon change the way we’re doing business, the rich are going to be living in gated communities with private military protection and we’re going to be outside the gates wondering how we’re going to feed and educate our children.
Americans believe in a level playing field – so that we can at least TRY to achieve the American Dream — right now, the playing field is no longer level. It is tilted to far toward those who feel they are entitled – something our founders would have abhorred.
Just think about it Jonny and do some research on these issues outside of Fox News and the right wing websites that are pushing the corporate mantra (and being well funded to do so). That’s all I ask. You may not like non-partisan government research reports created by government employees, but keep in mind — those employees are both Democrats and Republicans — they’re there just trying to do the best job they can for all of us.
Wrong again, Tommy.
http://money.cnn.com/2011/02/16/news/companies/repatriation_lobby.fortune/index.htm
“Business will NOT invest in growing their companies or hiring more workers until they have DEMAND.”
There goes that lie again Diana. It’s such a small little viewpoint, but it has such widespread consequences since it affects people’s decision making. If that viewpoint were true, no new products or services would ever be developed or marketed.
Diana – I was talking about individual tax revenues, not corporate tax revenues. In my view, corporate tax rates should be 0%. It would encourage more companies to move their HQ’s to the US, thus increasing the number of available jobs, thus increasing the overall tax revenue. Granted, it should be phased in over a 10 years period, but that would give companies time to plan their moves.
Of course you do, Tommy – you’re a corporate socialist.
You believe in supply side economics (formerly known as “voo doo economics”) — while I believe in supply and demand.
I believe companies that receive the benefits of public infrastructure should help pay for it, whereas you think they should get a free ride while the rest of us pay for their screw ups.
Diana – “Supply and demand” refers to pricing of already existing commodities, and yes I believe in that also.
Corporate taxes are expensed to a company’s bottomline, and thus passed on to the consumers. It’s a hidden tax on consumption. The only reason I can see for a corporate tax, is the amount of control the government can impose on a corporation, or an entire sector of the economy, by providing tax breaks as rewards for preferred actions. My position would be to elliminate corporate taxes and the tax breaks, but since both dems and repubs benefit from the donations of lobbyists vying to change tax policies, and since large corporations benefit from a complex tax system that untimately stiffles competition, I have little faith that either side will act to remove corporate taxes. The vested interests are too entrenched.
By George, you’ve got it, Tommy. “The only reason I can see for a corporate tax, is the amount of control the government can impose on a corporation, or an entire sector of the economy, by providing tax breaks as rewards for preferred actions.”
What I don’t get, is how you think that it’s ok to do that.
f you’re a supporter of the Republican Party than there is something seriously wrong with you.
Mario, if you are going to say that something is seriously wrong with someone, you should at least use correct spelling. The impact is diminished by using “than”, when the word is “then”.
Right you are, Artsurfer. My typo pretty much destroys the statement I made. Thanks. I never really understood the difference between ‘than’ and ‘then’ until now.
See, you can learn something constructive from a Republican.
@Artsurfer, To some Republicans that “would” seem constructive. Not surprising, since some of them take history and geography lessons from an incompetent who loves America and her State so much she quit half-way through her term. Who will keep an eye on Russia now?, Maybe she can see Russia from her bus.
Jonny – Your post is all crap and piss.
I have stopped trying to reason with GOPPers because overtime i have become convinced that the average GOPPer is an absolute close minded idiot. You post proves the point.
I simply do not have the patience to argue your post point by point but i’d say this -
People who support abortions are not heartless bastards. Heartless bastards are people who’d force a woman who had been raped to keep her keep the foetus resulting out of that rape. Also, we don;t support abortions. We only support the right of a woman to decide for herself if she wants to abort or not. You have problem with the governement telling your kids what to eat in school but you don’t have a problem with the same governemtn telling a woman what to do with something that is growing inside her own belly ? That is exactly the kind of illogical nonsense that one can expect from you goppers.
Dianna McGinness – I really appreciate your typing that really big really good post but just so you know the average attention span of an average gopper does not extend past a few lines. You should try to break your post down into small gopper sized chunks.
Mrindia:
Since his was so long I was hoping he’d make it through it. Evidently not — or I can hope he really is THINKING about what I wrote.
Tommy -
You know my opinions, as well as I know yours. No point in continuing our conversation – it’s clearly a waste of time for both of us.
All of this is such bull. I know what it’s like to be poor, dependent, disabled, sick, and suffering pain because there was no money, or programs to help my family. I’m deaf in one ear, and have only half my hearing in the other. Ear infections started when I was a toddler, and rarely did I see a Doctor. Middle ear infections damaged my ears for life. I will never forget how much they hurt. How much I suffered. My Mother cried with me, as she lay beside me trying to help me sleep through just one night. You don’t know my Parent’s situation or the times we lived in to judge my family back then. I had such poor nutrition as a child, that most of my health issues today stem from my childhood. I was set back a year in second grade because my hearing was so bad, and I remember that I always went to school hungry. Other children made my childhood miserable because they made fun of me daily. A few bullied me. I was different and had health problems, and crippled by a fall. Because my growth was effected I had one hip growing slower then the other. One hip was injured in school from a fall. I was on crutches the rest of my childhood. The damage to my hip back then was permanent.
What I hear, and see today makes me sick! More children, more families suffering, and all people that are still making it out there can do is judge.. There are too many hateful, ungrateful, ignorant asses out there to understand that they don’t have a RIGHT to be so damn nasty to other people just because they don’t act, or do or live life the way they THINK they should. Where do any of you that are talking so high and mighty get off? I think some of you must be very miserable people to hate your fellow human beings that much.
I saw a lot of ugliness in people in my youth, and that has not changed. We are just more populated now, so we see the higher numbers because there are too many that want a say in how others down on life, health, jobs, broken people in a thousand different ways should not have allowed themselves to become so destitute. Well you know what, YOU NEED TO WAKE THE HELL UP! No one but US AS A WHOLE are going to make change for better happen until people stop their damn lousy judgements. I’m not surprised at all at some of the people here that talk like they have all the answers, all the knowledge in the world as to how all the poor, suffering souls in this country need to get off their lazy asses and get a job. SHUT UP! You come here, you whine about all the bad people that are actually out there, that were once just like YOU, doing everything they can to make it to the next day, and keep their hope alive for better times. Just love people. WHY is that so hard?
By the way, a day late after my last post but I just want to say to you, Diana, you make me want to get up and dance!
I love everything you wrote in here on the subject that started it. GOD BLESS YOU, WOMAN!
Peace
Thank you, Janet. You do a darned good job, too!