On Saturday, February 26, at noon local time, we are organizing rallies in front of every statehouse and in every major city to stand in solidarity with the people of Wisconsin.

‘Nuff said.

Ya Think? Continued.

I’m glad Unstable Isotope posted the police chief’s take on Wisconsin Governor’s Scott Walker planting Egyptian thugs into the protests surrounding the Madison capital building.

And the fact that it was ignored by all media for 24 hours and now is only being given some coverage by MSNBC, thanks in part to the vision of reality given by the man who made me typing this possible; Bill Gates.

What got lost in all the outrage, was the simple question: Is this really democracy when you have to plant thugs into a peaceful protest because your side is wrong?

Here’s how Democracy was explained to me. Each side argues its position. The audience listens to the debate and forms an opinion. The audience then votes, and with good probability, the result should be the one making the most sense.

It is extremely unfortunate, that Republicans have taken Democracy to a point, where IT IS NECESSARY TO HIDE THE FACTS from the America people.

It is America’s Reichstag moment.

The facts are, a lot of Americans are against this bill. They are not special interests; they are firefighters, policemen, plumbers, carpenters, actors, and anyone and everyone who works for a living.

Trying to kill, maim, create havoc, so that in responding back to getting hit in the head, those heroes seem like madmen too, is not what our founding fathers had in mind… In fact, it was against such people that our founding fathers set up our Constitution to protect our nation from.

Ladies and Gentlemen: These Republicans are very sick individuals. This is not how our country is supposed to act.

This is the behavior of a party that knows it is a minority. These are cultist personalities, who know a fluke has put them into a seat of power, and they will Jonestown the world in their brief time, to make their point. That point being they are stupid, ignorant, self-centered, disruptive, arrogant, ugly, prostate-crazed, balding, incontinent, and very rich men.

I wish I could be kinder, but this is America, not Egypt. We elect Democrats and Republicans, not strongmen for 30 years…..

This is what happens when you give people who can’t control themselves, too much money.

This is one more reason, why they need to be restrained….

Continuing the tax breaks, giving them even more money, is the wrong approach… You want changes, raise their top marginal rate not up to 97% like it was during WWII, but just even to 40% like it was during Clinton’s term… That is how you will take back America and restore the rights to America’s middle class. That is how you create those millions of jobs that opened up from 1946 all the way up to 1974.

It’s simple math. It’s preserved in our historical record. America does really well when its top marginal tax rate goes above the 40% marker.

Really well..

The Argument for Removing Collective Bargaining From Teachers

So why and how are Republicans trying to do away with collective bargaining within our educational system?

The “why” I’ll leave alone for now and let others answer. The “how”, is far more interesting….

I will now try to put myself in their shoes and argue like a Republican.

“An honest examination of the facts proves that collective bargaining between the school systems and unions has created a climate of antagonism between those who should be working together to advance a positive agenda for our children and preparing them for a bright future.”

“The process itself is adversarial and confrontational and does not lend itself to cooperation. Due to the mandatory negotiating privilege given to the unions by their State, a school system will often agree to unreasonable demands in a contract simply to prevent an expensive lawsuit. Ultimately, this impacts the taxpayers—the very people whom the teachers, the school board, and the Legislature work for and from whom they expect positive results in the classroom”

“In the poisonous atmosphere that has been created through collective bargaining, do we really have to ask why this nation is ranked so low in education results?”

“I do not want teachers to suffer. I want to reward excellent teachers for doing a great job and producing students who are prepared for the challenges of the 21st century. I believe effective teachers are the greatest resource we have in providing a quality education to our students. Good teachers deserve to be rewarded for their excellence. Unfortunately, collective bargaining preserves the status quo and prevents merit pay for highly effective teachers and teacher bonuses and incentives for those who will rescue a failing school.”

“There are schools that do not collective bargain. These school systems use “collaborative bargaining” where the teacher association representatives sit down with the school board to negotiate. Teachers in those school systems have the ability to directly negotiate their contracts while continuing their ability to remain in an association and attend board meetings.

It should be pointed out that, on average in these systems, teacher pay is increased more rapidly and students achieve at a higher rate.”

“Collaborative bargaining” empowers our teachers and allows the State to bring willing partners to the table to advance the interests of its children. Under collective bargaining, the non-union teachers in are prohibited from taking their concerns directly to the school board. With these current conditions, these non-union teachers must adhere to contract negotiations, whether they like the terms or not. If they want their “voice” heard, their only option is to pay the union so they can go through the union representatives.”

“The truth is that the bill to remove collective bargaining, is a pro-teacher bill that rewards achievement in the classroom and helps promote the best and the brightest in the educational field. By eliminating the collectivist authority of the unions that are trying to dominate the conversation, this bill serves the best interests of students.”

“For years in this great nation, unions have stymied education reforms. If you don’t believe me, just do the research. I recommend you read “Collective Bargaining in Education,” a study by the Harvard Education Press. This is an examination of the history of collective bargaining and how unions motivate their members. For decades, the union has promoted the idea that the “working conditions of our teachers are the learning conditions of our students” while blocking vital reforms and favoring existing arrangements that protect jobs and restrict accountability for student performance and achievement.”

The study “A Better Bargain: Overhauling Teacher Collective Bargaining for the 21st Century” by Frederick M. Hess, American Enterprise Institute, and Martin R. West, the Brookings Institute reveals:
“Collective bargaining contracts are especially problematic on three fronts:

• They restrict efforts to use compensation as a tool to recruit, reward, and retain the most essential and effective leaders.

• They impede attempts to assign or remove teachers on the basis of fit or performance.

• They over-regulate school life with work rules that stifle creative problem solving without demonstrably improving teachers’ ability to serve students.

“Union leaders typically greet this diagnosis with a reflexive refrain: “What is good for teachers is good for students.” While superficially appealing, that sentiment is simply untrue. In fact, the results of the collective bargaining process are too often incompatible with providing a high-quality education for all students.”

“According to Tennessee’s Comptroller’s most recent weighted salary reports, teachers in systems that are not involved in collective bargaining on average make more in salary and benefits than those in systems involved in collective bargaining. Student achievement is higher in non-negotiating systems according to data from Tennessee Department of Education `Report Card’. Statewide average student test scores of non-collective bargaining local school districts top negotiating school districts, according to an analysis done by Lt. Gov. Ron Ramsey’s office using the data of the Tennessee Department of Education Report Card.”

“Collective bargaining is about what is best for the union and its ability to retain power, not the children. That is the union’s mission and you can hear it for yourself by going to <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WyGiuoKr-ew" here. Collective bargaining prohibits performance pay for teachers. All teachers are treated the same—the excellent ones are paid the same as the poor performers. In a nation where we try to motivate students to achieve more and aspire to be more, what kind of message does this send?”

“It is fundamentally unfair. Collective bargaining makes it almost impossible to dismiss teachers for poor performance or misconduct, which means less pay and lower benefits for high performing teachers”.

“The good teachers know exactly who is getting the job done and who is not, yet the union blocks the solution and ultimately our children suffer. The union is focused solely on protecting its self-interests, not educating students and this one-size fits all approach denigrates good teachers and good students alike.”

“The sweeping reforms contained in Race to the Top (RTTT) would have never passed if they would have had to occur on the local level through negotiations. Ask yourself, “Why did we have to get the union to sign off on RTTT? Why were they blocking the reforms in the first place?” More alarmingly (and perhaps unsurprisingly) reports are already coming in from school systems that the local unions are throwing up roadblocks to these reforms the State agreed to in order to participate in RTTT.

I hope that all conservative teachers do their research to fully understand what the NEA is all about and that by being a part of that organization and investing your hard earned money, you are promoting their mission. This is a mission that I know the people of Sussex County do not agree with at all.

Here is the NEA’s 2010 legislative program (which is in direct opposition to what conservatives and Republicans believe).

* Mandatory full-day kindergarten attendance for all children, with federal money if the state can’t afford it.
* Substantial increases in federal education funding.
* Repeal of the right-to-work provision of federal labor law.
* A tax-supported, single-payer health care plan for all residents of the U.S., its territories and Puerto Rico.
* Federal funding for the education of illegal aliens.
* Federal programs to teach schoolchildren about different sexual orientations.
* Legislation to prohibit religious organizations that accept federal funding from basing hiring decisions on religion, sexual orientation, gender identity and expression, or HIV/AIDS status.
* Affirmative action to redress historical patterns of discrimination.
* Legislation to study possible reparations to African-Americans to address residual effects of slavery.
* Statehood for the District of Columbia.
* Opposition to tuition tax credits, vouchers and parental option or “choice” in education programs.
* Opposition to denying student aid to illegal alien college students.
* Opposition to using draft registration as an eligibility criterion for financial aid.
* Opposition to the testing of teachers as a criterion for job retention, promotion, tenure or salary increases.
* Opposition to legislation that denies illegal aliens’ access to public schools.
* Opposition to designating English as the official language of the United States.
* Opposition to the use of voter ID cards for voting in local, state and national elections.
* Opposition to privatization of Social Security.
* Opposition to any constitutional amendment limiting taxes or the federal budget.

“Finally I want all to keep in mind. Not only do our representatives represent this state’s teachers but they also represent the students, the parents and the taxpayers who grudging give over their hard earned cash, to publicly fund each and every school system…. They have rights too, and one of those rights… is to demand quality education for their children.”

“And the easiest and quickest way to do that, ….. is to reward good teachers and punish bad ones. Collective bargaining currently makes that impossible…”

And there you have it. That is the best case I could come up for busting up the unions and making them powerless to impact anything.
I’ll be back to rebut myself sometime later……..

Collective Bargaining

It is in the news. Not only is it causing news waves in Wisconsin, but in Tennessee, the only other state to run against Delaware in the Race to the top, a bill is before the state legislature to limit collective bargaining there as well, at least for teachers.

Now most people have a stand, one way or another. depending on which scale they find themselves economically. If you’re a power broker, collective bargaining is an albatross tied around your neck. If you’re powerless, then collective bargaining gives you some hope that you won’t be chewed up or ground down.

When arguing about collective bargaining, a person is either for it all the way, or against it all the way… Each side feels they have to defend their title against all assaults, for if they don’t, the walls may be breached, and they lose everything.

This brings out emotional argument; and emotional argument is not based on logic.

Logic. That’s where I come in.

To approach this logically, we reverse the argument and start with this question: what is best for the children?

What IS best for the children?

if you look logically, there is no straight answer. If you have a bad school administrator, and good teachers, then collective bargaining IS a good thing….. It’s a tool in the hands of the righteous.

But, if the school administrator is a bright cookie, and the teachers are simply collecting pay checks, with no desire to teach, then collective bargaining is a bad thing. It is a tool in the hand of monsters….

Not all teachers are good, nor are all administrators.

How does collective bargaining help kids?

To be honest it’s a stretch. The whole purpose of having a union, is to benefit those members in the union. Does the NEA concern itself with the kids welfare, or it’s own union’s welfare? To be honest, the union wins out.

Collective bargaining could keep a good teacher still teaching who, for example, decided that evolution was too important to withhold from her charges that year. Without it, in the wrong state, she’d be dropped without a trace.

Likewise, collective bargaining enables a teacher to stay on after teaching a history lesson about the Messiah and how that event impacted all of history that came later. In the wrong neighborhood, such teaching would get her dropped, (how dare you teach religion in schools!) if collective bargaining were not backing her, she’d be dropped without a trace.

What we need to know before we jump off the boon dock, is who is learning better, children in states with collective bargaining? or those in states without…..

There are five states that outlawed collective bargaining for their teachers… How do they rank?

South Carolina…… 50th. (the bottom)
North Carolina…… 49th.
Georgia ………….. 48th.
Texas……………… 47th.
Virginia …………….44th.

Incidentally, Wisconsin, a collective bargaining state, is 2nd.

if you look at collective bargaining from the kids point of view, not having collective bargaining, is very, very bad for kids.

3/4/11: Do It

It the government is not stopgap-funded by this date, it shuts down.

This year really doesn’t have a current budget…. yet. The Tea Partiers want to slash $100 billion out of this year alone. Republicans gave them the go ahead to try.

That is most of the discretionary budget.

There as been an academic argument for 30 years over whether big or little government is better.

This argument is divided, not so much along partisan lines, but along rural versus urban lines.

It makes a lot of sense really. In urban areas, there isn’t enough government. Too much crime, congestion, toxic waste,… all confront those citizens daily. How you going to combat them? Cut police? Cut highway funds? Cut environmental specialists?

No.

Now jump to mid America. Take Kansas City for example. Nearest City, St. Louis… a six hour drive across nothing. Go west, you see nothing for 10 hours till you hit Denver. Go north, 14 hours and you hit the Twin Cities. Go South, 800 miles…. first city… Dallas. And Kansas City? It has a franchise football team and franchise baseball team, but it is smaller then Wilmington Delaware’s greater metropolitan area….

And in between, …. lots, and I mean lots, of empty space….. very few people. North Dakota averages 10 people per square mile. When government intrudes into these people’s lives, they look at all the empty space around them, and say: “Out of all this space, you are actually bothering me? So what if my tractor leaks a drop or two of oil! My nearest neighbor is 20 miles away, and his next nearest is 30 miles beyond that! Now get off my land!”

But 2 million drops a day into a city’s drinking water, “ain’t” a good thing.

So,…. in this example, we see the divide separating the cheerleaders of both big and small government.

It truly is not the Democrat Party versus the Republicans: it’s an urban/rural standoff. What works for one, does not work for the other.

And it’s about time that all the pregame bullshit talk…. “my philosophy is better than your philosophy”, the crap we’ve heard since 1994, gets put to the test.

It’s time to flip the coin: Heads will pick receiving or kicking; tails will pick which side of field. Clock starts with the first kick of the ball..

So let’s see what happens when the government shuts down. It will be the republicans fault if it does. They will need 67 Senate votes to persist in their charade.

Lets see how those rural states, from whence these tea partiers hail, can survive without their urban subsidy. Yes, the solid blue states, the Democratic ones, those very ones that believe in big government, are also the very one subsidizing the red rural states with their Federal money. Republicans get defensive and cry like Boehner, upon hearing the very words: “redistribution of wealth”. But as you can see from here, wealth is redistributed from rich states to poor states all the time, and has been since their creation.

Urban subsidizes rural; not the other way around. Mississippi gets $2.02 dollars back for every dollar they send in to the Federal treasury. Delaware (the state that bucked the Tea Party trend because their citizens read blogs, not mainstream media), for every dollar it sends in, gets a paltry $.77 cents back….

So shut it down I say. Don’t blink. Maybe the Republicans have been right all these years…. Let’s shut down government, don’t drag it out, don’t water down the effort, don’t cause an economic malaise that stretches forever, …. Don’t compromise! Make the Republicans close the money spigot to their states, and let’s see, once and for all, whether or not, we need big government.

Let’s these states that continually vote Republican over and over again without any iota of what they’re doing, find out, once and for all, that they’ve been wrong all these years…

Once beaten in front of the world( someone buy Boehner some tissues), we can get on with fixing this country the right way, progressively, bringing prosperity back to the middle class where it belongs….

If Republicans won’t compromise, …. let them shut her down.

Oops; kavipsian Economics Gets In Obama’s Way

The key plank of kavipsian economics is to raise the top marginal tax rate. Ironically this does not raise taxes; it forces companies, businesses, wealthy people, and multinational corporations, to invest their money into real capital, in order not to pay those higher taxes.

When the top marginal tax rate was raised during WWII, we had a booming economy. While the top marginal tax rates were astronomical during the 50′s, and 60′s, we had a booming economy. When the top marginal tax rates were raised by Bill Clinton, we had a booming economy stretching across the entire nineties (which coupled with solid Democratic leadership), gave our government a budget surplus, raised the income levels for every quintile of the American public, and created a booming economy.

As soon as those rates are dropped (ironically to stimulate the economy), the economy stagnates, falters, sputters, and fails….

Recently Obama proposed that the US corporate tax rate, now standing at 30 percent, be deploded by 2/3rds, to around 20%…

Unfortunately this has put the inner sanctum of Dupont on edge. You see, in their wisdom they have invested their profits into working capital, and actually pay an average corporate tax rate of around 20%, … because of it…

If the corporate tax rate plummets, their competitors will now have the same rate, with much more liquidity, thereby putting our local business at a disadvantage in the race to woo stockholders, because of their lower recorded profits.

Against common perception, raising the marginal tax rate (or in this case keeping it high), does not really generate that much income for governments. People find a way to invest and dodge their way around them.

But, those investments and dodges, are a huge gain for this nation.

Still don’t get it? Try this example.

Earnings: $100 million.
Corporate tax rate: 30 %
Gross tax assessment: $30 million

Currently under Democratic leadership, there is a deduction of costs of building a wind farm supplying a major metropolitan area. Assume one can deduct 30% off the amount invested. Investing the amount of taxes to be paid, $30 million, yields an additional write off of another $10 million dollars, dropping the total due at tax time, … to $20 million dollars or 20% of the companies earnings.

Sadly the federal government lost $10 million dollars of revenue. But, … a $30 million dollar investment was made in…… say Delaware. Some of that went to local wages, which circulates throughout the economy creating additional tax revenue to local, state, and federal governments. Other of that money is used to pay for the raw material, or parts, and the labor that assembles them, as well as the transportation that brings them offshore and sunk into the sand off Rehoboth Beach.

Over the past four years, FPL has paid just $88 million in taxes on earnings of nearly $7 billion. FPL spokeswoman Jackie Anderson says the company is merely taking advantage of incentives to develop renewable resources.

If every company has to build something to lower their tax rate, our nation booms back to financial stability real fast….

Raising the tax rate ( or keeping the tax rate high) benefits everyone in the economy, provided they can write off their taxes by investing in real capital projects.

What happens when you lower tax rates, giving corporations and the wealthy large amounts of cash? What do corporations do with cash?

They simply hoard them.

Even the Wall Street Journal says so.

“The Federal Reserve reported Thursday that nonfinancial companies had socked away $1.84 trillion in cash and other liquid assets as of the end of March, up 26% from a year earlier and the largest-ever increase in records going back to 1952. Cash made up about 7% of all company assets, including factories and financial investments, the highest level since 1963″.

At $50,000 a job, $1.84 trillion yields 36,800,000 new jobs. Currently 13.9 million are unemployed…..

Duh, the reason they are unemployed is because tax rates aren’t high enough…….

It doesn’t take a genus to figure it out. Anyone who knows American history, who knows when boom times occurred and when busts were felt, can figure it out themselves from looking at this.…

Egypt vrs Iran

For those of us privy to being on the inside of the collapse of the Shah, these times are eerily familiar.

“The palpable sense of relief. The euphoria among the government’s opponents. The carnival-like atmosphere. The explosion of national pride. And the blind faith that the new regime would be more just, more equitable and more democratic than the old. Iran’s masses were no less hungry for democracy than the Egyptians who crowded into Cairo’s central Tahrir Square to demand an end to Mubarak’s rule. Where the Iranians put their trust in Muslim clerics to bring about a just and equitable society, the Egyptians turned to the secular-minded army to give the Mubarak regime a final push.”

The hated autocrat was gone. A new era was ushered in with cheers, tears and the cacophony of car horns.

And so it was in Tehran – 32 years before to the day.

“On Feb. 11, 1979, the commander of the Iranian air force announced on national radio that the armed forces were withdrawing from the fight to save the American-backed regime of Shah Mohammed Reza Pahlavi, who had already fled the country three weeks before in the face of burgeoning street protests against his autocratic rule. With the military gone, the Iranian monarchy collapsed and with it any chance that the shah would return from what had been spun as a vacation – ironically to Anwar Sadat’s Egypt. As the troops returned to barracks, Tehran erupted into wild celebrations – punctuated by the deafening din of thousands of horns. “

Whereas Iranians turned to their muslim clerics, today’s Egyptians are internet savvy. Messages and directives back then, were smuggled over months into Iran on cassette tapes. Today technology could reach thousands within one hour…. But for the sake of remembering, despite the differences, all of us should be wary… For a vacuum has been created. What goes in, will depend for the most part one nothing less than “idealism.” of the Egyptian people. They have the numbers, but do they have the will.

All it takes is one person withing the military of Egypt, to say…. “why not me?” Egypt then goes down the road of ruin similar to the Myanmar Empire (old Burma)…

Turkey faced a similar situation. One idealist, Attaturk prevailed and today Turks are for the most part, a very happy people.

What is best for the US?

Obviously if we learned anything from Iran, it is not to make Egyptians our enemy. That is the single most important objective that the United States must take away from Iran. That anti United States rhetoric from the Ayatollah Khomeini, has dominated our foreign relations from that moment on. All our problems with the Middle East, stem from that denunciation by that one man. How can any Arab do business with the “Great Satin” and go back home to peace? He gets taunted relentlessly by his peers, and therefore because of that, the United States has an uphill battle communicating even the simple basics of diplomacy to those who could be our friends and partners. We have a difficult time persuading them to accomplish things that work best, even in their own self interests, simply because we, … are the ones proposing it…

We, as the father of democracy, need to support those who our daughters pick. Even if it goes against our grain. If a majority of Egyptians pick the Muslim Brotherhood, so be it; we need to treat it as a wise father treats his daughter’s choice of a mate….

“Uh, … are you sure? Well, that’s a surprise. But you know, I raised you to be independent, and if this is who you want, and if this one makes you happy, and if this one you really, truly believe is the right one for you…. and I want you to be honest with yourself right now, well, as long as you are happy, I think it’s a great choice, and I will support you all….”

That solid support hinges on the words…. as long as you are happy. Were it to become known, that their spouse, (new head of government) was to start siphoning out of their bank account, we again side, as should the father of democracy, with the people, and help them explore the options of divorcing and rediscovering who they are….

That was our failure in Iran. Had we supported the Islamic revolution, it would have had to live upon it’s own devices, which were paltry. Instead it lasted fiercely defiant against the Great Satin; in fact, that was the only thing it had going for it. Able to fire up anger over our nations support of the shah, it didn’t need to take care of its people to stay in power…

We cannot give the next ruler of Egypt that option. Instead, we must embrace their choice, and accept that what makes our nation happy, like crappy private healthcare, like working long hours with little to show for it, like having false news broadcast over our corporate media, like working hard hours to pay back the bank collectors, utility company collectors, hospital and medical collectors, as well as paying up front for insurance policies that don’t cover anything,….. may not be their idea of a perfect society…..

We have to wise up and understand that as the father of democracy, our getting pushy and saying: ” I forbid you to marry that man” may actually be the very thing that makes that man appear attractive .. “

Therefore we have to do the manly thing, swallow our pride, forget our ego, realize our grace, and accept what the Egyptians want, should be what we want too. Only then,… will no interruption occur within our relationship….

Ouch!

Republicans announced the tax cuts they will seek....

Goal: Slash 61% billion for the remainder of this year.

Funding for labor, health and human services programs would be nearly 11% below last year’s levels;

Transportation, housing and urban-development funding would drop 23%.

Commerce, justice and science programs would be reduced by 18% from last year’s level.

The nutrition program for women, infants and children would be cut by $7.47 billion.

Head Start would be reduced by nearly $1.1 billion.

Abolishing more than 100 programs, including the Americorps national service program, aid to family planning programs for the poor and the Corporation for Public Broadcasting.

Cuts of $88 million for the Food Safety and Inspection Service, which inspects meat and poultry (becoming vegetarian; now highly recommended).

Loss of $241 million for the Food and Drug Administration.

Cut $5 billion from high-speed rail programs.

Remove $600 million from other infrastructure spending.

The COPS program, which funds police departments, would be reduced by $501 million.

Energy efficiency programs would fall by $786 million.

Looks like a very bad economic year next year; the same way 1937 destroyed all the gains made since 1933…..

Just think. None of this would be necessary if last November, only one member of the Republican minority had just agreed to rollback the Tax Break for the top 1%….

Republican Repeal Hits a Wall, Bones May Have Broken!

Yesterday the House Ways and Means Committee heard testimony from the head of Medicare and Medicaid, Dr. Berwick.

It began with a series of questioning from a paper he had written in 1996…

1996? Wtf? In it, Dr Berwick described the benefits of the NHS Health Service in Britain. In Gestapo interrogative fashion, Chairman Camp sharply asked if he still believed those thoughts today… “Do you believe the single payer plan is the best plan for health care?” “Did you not say the British Health Service was the ideal form of medical care?” “Did you not wax enthusiasm over this “socialized” medical program?”

To these answers, Dr. Berwick, head of Medicare and Medicaid consistently answered: “each country has their own unique solution to healthcare; our best solution is in the Affordable Health Care Act”.

Fortunately one of the questions asked by Chairman Camp, was incomprehensible… The chamber, spectators, and witness all thought Mr. Camp had suffered a stroke.. Despite the Chairman’s repeated entreaties to answer his question, Dr. Berwick couldn’t. It hadn’t been framed logically. He couldn’t understand it. No one could. Chairman Camp was reading off some incomplete notes, which apparently made sense to him, but, without that aid in front of anyone else, his question was, if politely put, incomprehensible. A page quickly showed up and handed the chairman a sheaf of papers, and Chairman Camp continued: ” your words, you wrote this” and then he mentioned the title, “and it was written by you in 1996….”

1996? You have got to be kidding.. Gee, how long is that? Fifteen years? What even was the beltway’s thought processes at that time. From a medical point of view, we had just come off from the Clinton’s health care debate over reform, one that was squelched by insurance advertising. Dole was campaigning against Clinton, who beat the Republicans rather handily. Back then, I was hauling around the neighborhood children like a soccer mom; now, they’re driving me. This whole idea of tainting people with something said way back in time, with no context involved, is the most stupid of all idiotic attempts to appear smart. It is ridiculous and embarrassing to defame the halls of Congress with it’s tripe. There needs to be a statute of limitations on evidence brought up in Congressional hearings of at least five years, especially if it is being used to damage the credibility of a witness. If anything is over that time frame, the peers of that person need to call him out publicly on his public demonstration of his own stupidity, for even thinking that something said fifteen years ago, even makes an iota of a difference…

So we learned early off, that the Republican debates are not going to be about substance. The rest of the Republican questioning turned out to be nothing more than the repetition of rumors, supposedly told to them by their constituents, all of which were put to rest by the diplomatic Dr. Berwick. So lets define the illogical frame of argument being used by Republicans to overturn all hope for affordable healthcare…. The Republicans send dire predictions out to their constituents about the implications of the Affordable Healthcare Act. Those predictions were hand written by lobbyists for large medical corporations. The citizens then comment on these writings, telling their Congressman if it’s true, then they are afraid of this new Health Care Act, (at functions where only other Republicans are invited), and Republicans bring that back as a mandate to repeal Healthcare…

Another observation: Congress is broken.

Being naive, perhaps I assumed that Congressmen would at least listen to both sides, thereby when voting time came, they could make a balanced decision. What I witnessed was to the contrary. Instead, I saw all the Republican Congressmen walk in, sit down, get called on to speak, ask questions for 4 minutes, then when time had expired, collect their stuff and shuffle down the hall to another meeting…

The House and Ways Committee was practically empty through most of this very important hearing. So how do they vote? Do they read the bills? No! There minds are made up before hand. Nothing said or done within these halls, matters one iota.

Unless of course, America is watching. Then, we need to understand what a menace removing the healthcare act is, and express to each of our representatives, that they too need to understand this, or be unemployed the next term.

Here are the facts.

If the Affordable Health Care Act is repealed this year, seniors who received a $250 dollar check in 2010 to cover prescription costs… will have to pay it back!

If the Affordable Health Care Act is repealed this year, seniors who would have received a check this year, won’t, and will pay over $500 more for their prescription costs than if Republicans had left the bill alone.

If the Affordable Health Care Act is repealed this year, college students up to 26, who use medical coverage since the bills passage, may have to reimburse that amount back!

If the Affordable Health Care Act is repealed this year, anyone who got a screening without paying a deductible, could be billed for all amounts charged them had the act never been passed.

If the Affordable Health Care Act is repealed this year, anyone who had a pre-existing medical condition and got treatment under the new law in 2010, may be required to reimburse their provider, if that provider could justify they would not have received coverage under the new law.

If the Affordable Health Care Act is repealed this year, the national deficit will take a $575 billion increase by 2019, because the cuts that were to go into effect, will not.

If the Affordable Health Care Act is repealed this year, everyone’s insurance premiums are estimated to jump 20%, supposedly to cover the private insurers losses this past year.

If the Affordable Health Care Act is repealed this year, considerable numbers of people will not be diagnosed early enough for diabetes, colon cancer, ovarian cancer, breast cancer, skin cancer, or any of the other diseases, where early detection can lead to cheap procedures that prevent far more expensive ones down the road, and whatever happens in 2019… won’t matter to them anyway.

If the Affordable Health Care Act is repealed this year, over half our children in public schools, will not see a doctor, they could have easily afforded it were the law to stay intact.

Guess what else I learned?

Despite Republicans saying the Affordable Health Care Act is the worst law ever created…. people are voting for it with their feet.

People signing up for the Medicare Options are up by 6%. Their numbers were predicted to go down by the actuaries.

Costs are down by 5%. They were predicted to go up by the actuaries.

Apparently, at least based on the feet of Americans, the Affordable Health Care Act is working. In trying hard to find some merit in the Republican antagonism for this great piece of legislation. ( Remember Republicans were against Truman’s Healthcare, were against Johnson’s Medicare, Newt Gingrich boasted Medicare would wither on the vine, were against Clinton’s medical reform, for the record, Republicans have always been trying to kill it) the only explanation I could get from any of them, was philosophical: it was government run.

Puts them in this position: “I don’t care if it saves you money, I don’t care if it decreases the deficit, I don’t care if it provide better health care, I don’t care if it drops costs, i don’t care if it saves more lives, ….. it has the government behind it and for that reason alone, it must be repealed…….”

Yep, that about sums up their argument…. (Of course none of them are willing to give up their own Federal Employee Health Insurance, which carries a subsidy paid for by the Federal Government, which is larger than that paid for any Medicare recipient….. )

So what was to be a tour de force, … as to why affordable health care should be abolished, turned into just the opposite. The more we learned, the more it makes sense….

Here’s hoping they have a lot more hearings on the Affordable Health Care Act.

Is Progressive-ism, Now Just Another Dead-ism”?

Just a year after its founding, PDA ( Progressive Democrats of America) claimed thousands of members and chapters in thirty-six states. In fact, PDA (Progressive Democrats of America) was just one tree in a forest of new progressive Democrat-type formations that sprung up after the 2004 debacle. Democracy for America became prominent in this period, especially with the accession of Howard Dean to chair of the Democratic National Committee (DNC) in 2005. The Congressional Progressive Caucus (CPC) reorganized itself, hiring a full-time staffer for the first time and producing a programmatic document, the “Progressive Promise.” The activities of the progressive Democrats were (and still are) heavily promoted in the left-liberal press, such as the Nation. These were heady times for Progressives. They had Dick Cheney to focus against, they had Dean for leadership.

Then came success:

“The elections of 2006 and 2008 gave the Democratic Party dominion over the most important sectors of the federal government: an enormous House majority, a Senate super-majority, and the all-important White House. What’s more, after 2008 the Democrats had a clear mandate for major reforms: Obama’s presidency was pre-emptively declared “transformational,” and the president was even awarded the Nobel Peace Price, in the same way you might give a child a too-big jacket, hoping he’ll grow into it. … “

“In 2005, there were a little over 50 members of the CPC (Congressional Progressive Caucus). After the 2006 election, it was 63. This past summer (211th Congress), there were 83 members; it is actually the largest single caucus in the Democratic Party. The Blue Dogs, by way of contrast, have 54 members. Of the 20 standing committees of the House in the 111th Congress, 10 were chaired by members of the CPC(Congressional Progressive Caucus). It’s a similar story with the Congressional Out of Iraq Caucus: in 2005 there were 41 members; today there are 73. The back-to-back electoral success also vindicated Howard Dean’s “50-state strategy” as DNC chief; Obama’s primary and then general election triumph was cheered by progressive Dems, who vastly favored Obama over Hillary Clinton”

However, the gains of the Democrats after November 2006 failed to translate into actual reforms–which was supposed to be, you know, the point.

In 2007, 140 House Democrats voted against the war supplemental. In 2008–remember, Bush was still in office–151 House Democrats voted against. The situation was completely changed after Obama became president. In June 2009, only 32 House Democrats voted against the war funding!

The 2010 war supplemental was passed with only 25 House Democrats voting no–about a third of the size of the alleged Out of Iraq Caucus! Thus in the second year of the Obama administration, the House Democratic vote against war funding has declined by a factor of six.

In a kind of half-assed substitute for the collapse of the vote against war funding, the progressive Dems voted for Afghanistan “exit strategy” legislation devised by Rep. Jim McGovern. Instead of forcing the administration’s hand by turning off the money spigot, as they would a Republican president, the McGovern bill makes a rather retarded request for Obama Mission Control to come up with an “exit strategy”.

Finally, as a kind of tragicomic coda, we should note that Gen. David Petraeus, the literal author of the Iraq surge strategy that the Democrats mostly opposed in 2007, was confirmed by the Senate 99-0 to lead the war on Afghanistan–after the McChrystal affair exposed that the Afghanistan “surge” was in total crisis….

How can we explain this seeming inconsistency?

In the first period, the main task of the progressive Democrats was to direct all progressives toward the Democratic Party so that the Democrats could take power.

In the second (current) period, on the other hand, the main task of the progressive Democrats is to keep the Democratic Party in power; they are now the left wing of the party in charge of American imperialist capitalism.

Because the progressive Democrats’ whole theory of social change revolves around “working through the system”, they need to stay “in the system”; but for them to stay “in the system”, the Democratic Party has to “stay in power”; but for the Democrats to “stay in power”, they have to “stay within the bounds” set by the capitalist elite that really runs the country.

And hence the Tea Party steps in… America is frustrated with this elite. The Democrats, once the harbingers of change, have now been seen to have acquiesced; they capitulated to the corporations, leaving millions of frustrated Americans to turn to the Tea Party as their next best hope… Now, they are again starting the process of slowly understanding that the Tea Party, founded on principals of libertarianism, has now got sucked in as well….

The people are really removed from their government. The goal now seems to be which party of corporate elitism can best fool the people into casting their votes. It has become a sham game, which the fourth estate, the media, seems complacently to be a part.

A line needs to be drawn in the sand. Who is our government really working for: the top 1%? or the other 99% ?

Democrats, Republicans, Tea Partiers, Progressives, Greens, Reformers, Libertarians, and all other labels…. don’t mean anything anymore… And that is the frustration with which America is seething. Who does mean something? The top 1%?…Are they’re the only ones who mean anything to those in charge of our government….?

This frustration could be easily abated…. by simply removing the Bush Tax cuts if only for only the top 1%….

Based on the numbers of our population, 99-1, that should sail through Congress as easily as Petreaus’s nomination….