2013

As with every year there are lost opportunities and lost grievences…  Some things that have bothered us, disappear.  Somethings that have bothered us, don’t….

This year was no different, and yet, it was very different…. If one asks oneself what was the greatest factor involving the entire year, then pulls back layer after layer until he gets the full perspective,  I think he comes to a surprising conclusion….

This year, 2013 was the tipping point.  We realized we are a third world nation when it comes to the proportion of wealth across our population….   Like global warming, this disparity was first proposed long ago.  Like global warming it was argued by the power brokers that such a proposal was only a crackpot’s theory;  it gradually gained momentum….

2013, brought that home…. In 2013, we had the party of the Teas, vote against giving New Jersey relief for Hurricane Sandy, and vote themselves relief when a little hail landed in their district…. In 2013, we had government shut itself down to stop Obamacare, then open itself without creating any change at all.   In 2013, we had unemployment benefits cut, then reinstated, and now cut again… We had food stamps cut.  We had a sequester go into effect to save $85 billion dollars….

We had the news media lead fake scandals… when the biggest scandal should be, how is Fox and CNN and CBS still able to call themselves news organizations?  We had the IRS scandal… despite that they dealt evenhandedly with groups of both political persuasions.  We had the Benghazi hearings… Much ado over absolutely nothing… For when it came down to why those four died, all fingers point to that very Congressional committee led by Republican Darrell Issa, which cut well over $100 million in funds that were specifically designated to secure advanced unsecured places of that type.

But when we had a real scandal, which was illuminated by Snowden, all the media shied away.  Calling him a traitor for releasing the documents…  As more came out, Americans began to really fully grasp the totalitarian phase our nation’s government was just on the threshold of achieving….

In 2013 we had civil right voting laws thrown out by the Supreme Court, and instantly all those dark ugly human traits those laws previously regulated, took over and sprang out into the open…

We had a rational push for gun control, that bumped into the irrational group against it.  We did not win the first battle… WE did make considerable ground and showed the NRA was led by psychotic bloodthirsty killers, both nationally and locally….

And the unions… are all bought out… from the top down.   Only those on the very bottom in our service industries, the Wal*marts, McDonalds, and retail outlets, who have nothing to lose, are bravely carrying the fight forward… They are on the right track…

Our sole problem in America is that out of every dollar that trades hands in our economy…. 50 cents of it gets sucked out by the top 1%….  The rest of America is economically playing with a half deck…50 cents on the dollar.  No wonder job growth is slower than it should be?

If you invested, you love this year….  The year’s DJIA started at 13,000 and is now at 16,500….  25% yield….   For every $100,000 you had in stocks… you just made $25,000….

We now realize this was at the expense of the QE 3.  The Federal Government is lending the large brokerage houses all the money they wanted at zero interest, and instead of creating jobs, it went right into the stock market, chasing prices and making them higher….  When that free money begins costing the brokerage houses… those investments are going to deflate.

Most of America no longer has money in the market.  The market is primarily owned by those at the top.

And education?  We had corporate America exposed for trying their hand at teaching little children and failing miserably.   Just as Corporate enterprises have now destroyed Facebook,  television news, and are now destroying Twitter, the same forces demolished education.   An attack on the public school system aimed to demolish it and install a privately owned system, is well underway….   It was all just theoretical until 2013.

The prime problem  behind all of these?

It took a new Pope to make it mainstream… To tie all these individual threads into one rope.  As he spoke, people turned to look at each other and said, ” Wow, why didn’t we see it before?”

When one homeless person dies on the streets it  is not news.  But the DOW drops two points, it is THE news….

What 2013 did, was bring to light that we were not a nation beset by little battles…  Loss of labor unions, stymieing of minimum wage, fierce lobbying against Obamacare, a court controlled by corporate interests, lobbyists writing all our nation’s bills,  What 2013 did was bring to light that all our “think tank” research, was pure propaganda, not research.   What 2013 did, was show us just how much power and wealth lie in the hands of very few people…. roughly 100,000…… with most of that being held by a core of 1000 individuals…. Meaning 314,899,999 of the rest of us are out in the cold…

2013 showed us that the happiest people in the world, are those where wealth is more equally shared…  to be happy, one has to tax heavily…  A sharper sense of wealth is gleaned from looking at happy societies…  Where there is enough wealth to be shared, it is…  It makes little sense to pursue the opposite  tack.  To let those with money have it at no cost, and charge the masses heavily for their use of it…

2013, is the turning of the tide… Now when someone says low taxes are job creators they are viciously humiliated and never dare mention such again. Now when someone says trickle down economics work, we now know they are secretly praising how well it works for those at the top.

2013….  We know.

2014…. No Tea Party.  No Republicans.  No Third Way.   Only by mandating that the wealthy who got rich over nothing, pay their fair share and everyone else’s fair share too, can we again create an economy and a nation that thrives from the bottom up…

2014 is the battle year.  This is where those few at the top will throw billions into protecting the trillions they’ve made from our assets…  But… they only have 1% of the population… The question is whether they can mobilize their toadies to vote and suppress the rest as they have successfully done in the past… when in truth, we were still half asleep….

The rallying cry for the 99% needs to be this:  the 1% needs to do more for our nation!.  We should not be ashamed to mention marginal income (including capital gains) tax rates over 50%, 60%, 70%… at least for the short term, until our economic war is over!  That is not too much! Most livable nations have such.  and the USA itself had such during our grandparent’s time, back when it was easy to go out and find a job….  we had more demand for jobs than we had people….

Income equality is the lens with which all items need to be viewed….  What that means is that with every question, every line item, every debate, this question gets asked…. “What does this proposal do to reverse income equality?”  If it does nothing, it is not good…

What does controlling guns do for income equality?  What do charter schools do for income equality?  What does cutting taxes on Delaware’s 1% do for income equality?  What does making the Port of Wilmington non-union do for economic equality?  What does creating NO-prevailing wage zones in Delaware, do for economic equality?  What does opening Beaver Valley to development do for income equality?  What does raising minimum wage do for economic equality?  What does Common Core do for income equality?  What does opening Family Court to the public do for income equality?  What does building a power plant that runs 24/7 on the brown fields of Newark, do for income equality?  What does building a new Wawa in Newark, do for income equality?

I acknowledge some of those are stretches but that is what having a prime filter does.  One looks at everything through that perspective….  It is one thing to bash the governor for a luckluster economy in his state…. Republicans do that too often, and offer neither specifics, or alternatives.   It is another to bash the governor for ignoring 99% of Delawareans’ needs, or  990,000 people, to the benefit of 10,000, or 1%…..  That is legitimate….

Hurting the 1% to the benefit of the 99% will cause 99 times more economic activity in this state.  99% of our citizens will buy more….  If those 1% continue to make more money off our localized spending, then at least they are earning their income honestly for a change….

Perhaps what is missing, is a retort, the kind that becomes a mantra……. When the Chamber of Commerce steps up to a microphone and says, …. “we pay most of the taxes in this state, we should not pay more…”.

The proper response hitherto missing, should be…. ” Then pay your employees more money, so they can help you share that burden…”

2013:  the arrow was released… 2014 is when it impacts its target,….

(This came out last spring. Most of you have seen this.  If by chance you haven’t, be prepared to have your mind blown. If you’ve become jaded since the last showing, prepare to have your mind blown again.)

The War On Women

Photo courtesy of Big Girl In A Straight World

There is no war on women… War is what’s going on in Syria. War on women, is what the Taliban did to that poor Pakistani girl.

But that said, this whole binder thing, has opened my eyes like no other. I can remember when we women had things much worse. For example, if we refused sex, we’d get fired and had no recourse to sue. “Shouldn’t have asked for it was all the police would say.” So from that perspective I’d have to say I was intrigued, but a little distant from all the angst todays Republicans were bringing to bear….

Delaware Liberal had a conversation about Morning Joe after the debate, when the female brought up the binder issue, and Joe Scarborough and his male friend, jumped all over her… Don’t bring up that slip of the tongue, it has no relevance to this election.” In a sense, they dismissed her as stupid, right there on national television.

If they’d thought about it beforehand, I’m sure they’d phrase it differently. Obviously there were major items that the male mind was still struggling to grasp from the night before. Like who was the tougher guy? Who won? Who had the best offense, best defense? They couldn’t be bothered by a joke about binders when the candidate probably didn’t even know how funny what came out of his mouth was…..

But what Mitt said, burns with a hot flame in the consciousness of every woman that hears it. Because we’ve heard it all before. It’s not the words being spoken; it is the hidden disdain lurking underneath what is being said….

Here is how Mitt came across… “Wait, there are women voters too. Do we have any women on our staff? We need some women as window dressing. Bring me some binders of women. I want to pick a couple out…. so I can say I have one working hard under me… ha ha…nudge, nudge. (and while you’re out there, pick up a couple of knee pads, will you?)… We’ve heard it all before. Sometimes to our faces, thinking they are funny and we are just like them so we will approve, but usually we hear about it second hand, and act like it comes with the job…

It does come with the job.

Not saying we don’t have fun with it too. We’re human. But most men we work with have more harassment nooses around their neck than a drunk queen on Bourbon Street has beads… They are so lucky we haven’t hit the button for that trap door….

Here is what you men don’t get. Mitt Romney ran the Olympics, worked at Bain Capital, campaigned for Governor and won all before this incident. Are we to assume no women were involved in “trustworthy” positions during the previously 20 years, so now, he had to study binders full of women, to find one to hire?

That is the anger behind this women in binders. It has nothing to do with binders, or resumes, or diminutive women living out in plastic cover cardboard with three silver rings inside….

It is that Mitt Romney, at that point in time, did not feel women were equal to men. They were flawed, they had periods, they had children, they couldn’t stay late but had to be home by 5! Sheesh. How can a government run, when it’s workers have to be home by 5? Oh well, she’s just window dressing, we’ll humor her and let her dally home each day. I’ll count on my men for the real work I’ll need…

Then, you compare this glaring example of someone who pays lip service to women, who understands he needs “window dressing” when it comes to women, and you realize that even if you made the company twice as much profit as did any man, this Mitt Romney guy, would pocket it, dismiss your contribution, and reward someone else for the work you did…..

It happens to every woman. Mitt Romney is THAT guy.

So when you compare it with his answer to the Lilly Ledbetter Act, and he said he would not support it, and several weeks ago, when asked if he’d rescind the act when he got into office, the answer, .. after looks back and forth between staffers, was literally… “Uhhh, we’ll get back to you on that one.”…. when all those are taken into account, Mitt Romney is THAT Guy… Oh, I’m glad to have some women in the office, it seems like home, can you get me some coffee, I’d like two sugars, and one cream please, and then you can dust those shelves over there. They get dusty when I’m out campaigning… ”

And that is why the binders are so important. They show us he is THAT guy. The one we trade departments to get out from underneath, the one we look for new employment, because opportunity has stopped at HIS desk, the one that in the middle of the night, upsets our whole family routine, because he infuriates with his smug condescending nature….

Women work twice as hard as men. Men can’t keep a house running for shit. I know a lot of men. As soon as they get home, they are done. Window dressing here or there. But food needs fixed, kids need bathed, floors need mopped, the bills need paid…. “Honey, the Eagles are playing tonight… you got this… ok?”

So, is there a war on women? If you mean like Syria… of course not. But America when it saw the psychological tools that were used to keep blacks down in the South, was appalled. American (except for Southern Radicals) collectively said, “you can’t treat people like that.”

Would you have called that a war on blacks? You could have and explained you were speaking metaphorically. And that’s what we women are doing now. Speaking metaphorically. There IS a war on women. It is meant to keep us in our place.

“You tell, anyone, … you are fired, got that lady?”

Republicans Just Cost Me $1000 A Year!

They cost you too…

The drop in payroll tax from 6.2% to 4.2% results in a savings of about $1000 a year to every wage earner.

(If truth were widely known, that tax cut is actually a bad idea. It hemorrhages a dying social security fund, requiring the eventual death of the program or an expensive emergency last ditch surgery in the future.)

But it is hard not to give a $1000 present to every voter. Even if it only comes out as $19 dollars and change each week… But, still again, if your electric bill is $198 and you only have $189 in your account, that additional amount is, well, a lifesaver…..

But, Republicans in the House, even after Republicans in the Senate voted passage, overwhelmingly voted….. not to vote on the measure…

They didn’t vote against it… THEY VOTED NOT TO VOTE ON IT……
(speculation is that they lacked the votes to keep it from passing)..

So, how does that relate to you?

House Republicans (read Tea Party) just voted NOT TO VOTE on whether or not you will be losing an extra $20 a month out of your next paycheck.

Imagine what this is doing to payroll clerks around the country?
Imagine what this is doing to family budgets around the country?
Imagine what this is doing to businesses who rely on consumer spending around the country?
Imagine what this is doing to businesses heavily involved in the financial sector, around this country?

So what would normally happen?

Normally a group that can’t find agreement, acknowledges the sad fact, and long before the deadline, announces that they failed to reach agreement and that things would continue as they were on a temporary basis, to unfortunately allow for more time to solve differences.

But NOOOOOOOOOOOO, …. WE ARE STUCK WITH A TEA PARTY THAT FUCKS THINGS UP.

Instead, we have a vote not-to-vote, then get all sorts of very lame excuses from those who are delaying, none of which apply to the real problem that Social Security is doomed unless drastic action gets taken (higher rates, not lower), and we get nothing….

The tax cut will expire…

It is like sequestering a jury in a room, where everyone after much fact-covering argument has agreed to a judgment, except for one person who’s been bought off. And nothing, nothing, logic, emotional appeal, bullying, snuggling up to, befriending, produces any change. And you go years, every working day, to the same court house, the same jury room, they same chair at the same table, hear the same arguments, hoping against all odds, that today, he will see the light and switch. You go the next day.

That is today’s Congress. Held hostage by Tea Party Republicans who live in a dream world untouched by the reality of living under $185,000 a year. Like that bought-out juror, every day, they hold up progress with the unjustified belief that, if they wait long enough, the other 11 jurors will give up and sway over to the sole juror’s way….

Two things can happen… 1) return to the public and announce a hung jury, and do a complete retrial.. or 2) sneak up to that one juror, put a gun to his head, say nothing, pull the trigger, clean up the mess, dispose of the body, then go out to the public and announce what the 11 of you have decided…..

One is the nice way, sanctioned to due process of law. The other is the American Way.

It’s time to initiate the kavipsian policy of expression or what is otherwise known as “Show Us How You Really Feel”… Who knows? It could become the next great movement? The next time someone you know (or don’t), says anything about how millionaires should keep their tax cuts and the poor should pay, nod your head in agreement, smile a little bit, then hit them as hard as you can in their mouth, I mean as hard as you can! Put them flat on the ground holding their jaw… Then loudly say, “Don’t every talk that stupid way to me again!” Who knows, if 99% or all 303,930,000 would respond that way to our fellow congressional delegates, and the other 3.9 million of their like who advocate such madness, we might actually get the very progress we need, not because of intimidation, but because such policy is right….

For those who argue expression of violence is un-American, I’ll remind them that tonight, is John Wayne Night on AMC: view it!… I argue that such action is VERY American and perhaps it has been the lack of such spontaneous expressions of frustration from working American people, that has caused the logjam where nothing gets done because of one holdout, who thinks he can sway the world to his opinion and face no consequences… ….

Practice now, by punching brick walls.

WTF

photo by SUCHAT PEDERSON, News Journal

More on the Controversy

Liberal Geek turns us on to some news. This news has gotchu written all over it. Perhaps too much so……

Could it be a hoax? One should certainly hope so, for if not, then the implications are severe enough to warrant the beginning of the impeachment process that conservatives are at least privately acknowledging may be necessary to retain the good name of Conservatism past the next two months.

What is to be believed, is that the 04 Ohio election, where only 60,000 votes gave Bush the majority, was settled not in the election booth, but by the computer company that handled all the Republican computer needs and those of the extreme Christian right.

Why is this coming to light now? Because tracing the emails around the attorney general blowup, led us to interesting results in the Ohio Department of elections.

Now if you believe the party is guilty, the evidence is damning. If you forever believe and trust the motives of your party, sort of the same way some in the 41st support Adkins, then you no doubt will dismiss the evidence as far fetched.

Here is the scoop. During the attorney general information dump, an email account surfaced : SJennings@gwb43.com.

gwb43.com? What kind of email address is that? Nah, it is too obvious. But then, we are talking Republicans here, not the most computer literate of the world’s citizens, as George W. Bush himself admitted here:

“I tend not to e-mail – not only tend not to e-mail, I don’t e-mail, uh, because of, uh, the different record requests that could happen to a president. I don’t want to receive e-mails, ’cause, you know, there’s no telling what somebody would e-mail me and it would show up as, uh, you know, part of some kind of a story that – and I wouldn’t be able to say, ‘Well, I didn’t read the e-mail’ – ‘But I sent it your address; how can you say you didn’t?’ So, in other words, I’m very cautious about e-mailing.”

Who is gwb43? Well, a simple WHOIS gwb43 yields this:

Domain Name: GWB43.COM

Administrative Contact, Technical Contact:
Republican National Committee dns@RNCHQ.ORG
310 First Street SE
Washington, DC 20003
US
999 999 9999 fax: 999 999 9999

Record expires on 16-Jan-2008.
Record created on 16-Jan-2004.
Database last updated on 21-Mar-2007 17:45:46 EDT.

Domain servers in listed order:

NS1.CHA.SMARTECHCORP.NET
A.NS.TRESPASSERS-W.NET

Okay, RNC too smooth. Couldn’t a fake name be used if this was for real? But Smartechcorp ? Where have we heard of that name before. Oh, yes, they hosted the internet needs of the Republican National Convention back in 2004. They received from the Republican National Committee 2.3 mil in 2004. In 2006 they received from Republicans 3.3 mil according to campaign records.

So why does Ohio’s election’s IP address flip over to Smartechcorp on election night? Smartechcorp was the carrier for the GOP domains of all the states that just happened to be too tight to call. Notice they carried PA, Ohio, and Florida GOP sites, but none of the GOP sights in either heavily Republican or heavily Democratic states.

Perhaps the Ohio election sent their data to Smartechcorp because they did not feel up to the challenge. Or perhaps Blackwell did it for other nefarious reasons. One wonders why they never got their results back. The link leads nowhere.

So if Ohio Department of Elections did indeed transfer its IP address to this company, than anyone with administrator priveleges anywhere, GWB43, or any other Republican operative, could, and it is traceable, have:

” linked between the tabulator and the election results host for the updating. That would have been configured either by the tabulator company (Diebold) or the RNC. If badly configured, this could have allowed open access to the tabulator results from anyone with admin access to the RNC owned SMARTECH host. This would have given Blackwell plausible deniability. “Just let our techies configure that uplink there…).

If the SMARTECH host server was used in this way, it’s illegal because political parties aren’t allowed to access raw election data.

If this is not a hoax and insuppressible evidence over the entire internet determines this to be true, then for the past three years we have had an imposter president setting policy for our nation’s future. No wonder he feels accountable to no one, be it Congress, voters, or our own military leaders.

And that, in most people’s opinion, would be a good enough reason for impeachment. Just one request, can we get Cheney out the way first?

.

Impending Economic Collapse?

Donvitti brings up some interesting news. The rich are getting richer.

Whoopi, what’s wrong with that?

Nothing, if it happens as it did during the 1990’s. when each layer of income experiences some growth. However a potential problem occurs whenever an upper bracket increases its own prosperity at direct cost to everyone else.

This is dangerous. Throughout most of the economic cycle, whenever a large percentage of wealth remains locked into goods and services, the economy remains more resilient to little fluctuations.

But as more and more of a higher percentage of any nation’s GNP is invested in speculative markets, throughout history, a crash has occurred immediately after.

In plain talk, if your business reinvests some income in itself, it is better able to weather the little hills and valleys covering the economic landscape. But if that business, rapes its assets, to utilize them on speculation, and an economic pitfall unexpectedly materializes, then ALL is lost in an instant.

That happened to this country in 1929.

Every water heater or boiler is built with a safety valve. That was because houses in the old days used to explode. For our sake, before it is too late, a safety valve needs to be reinstalled on our economy.

A start would be the expiration of tax cuts. That is a quick, if not unsavory, method of returning to fiscal sanity. Being conducted in open forums with spirited debate, may just stave off a financial meltdown that data shows us may lurk right around the corner.

Halliburton to IRS: “Return to Sender….Address Unknown….”

If I were in charge of an oil company, very few would think it unusual for me to move my headquarters to Houston or Dallas. After all, how could I be a player in oil, if I didn’t rub shoulders with Cliff Barnes and J. R. Ewing………………

So why should it be a surprise that Halliburton, an oil field servicing company, should announce it’s intention to move their headquarters to Dubai, in the United Arab Emirates? This move marks the high tide mark of American energy. America’s oil and natural gas resources are in decline.

We are expected to believe they are moving there for the weather. Due to the clouds surrounding this company, because it’s former owner is our country’s Vice President, one would be remiss not to wonder if this was a covert attempt to cover up wrong doing, just in case some future political climate change  were to rain down corporate subpoenas.

The US government has paid Halliburton over 25 Billion $ in government contracts. Halliburton earned over 2.3 billion last year in profits. 60% of that came from, operations in the US: servicing domestic oil fields. That conversely means that up to 40% was earned overseas, mostly from Iraq. Roughly over $920,000,000 in profit was earned just last year from services rendered in and around Iraq.

Remember, no American company would ever be allowed to get close enough to even sniff Iraqi oil, had we not chosen to go to war…….

So when one hears of the shadowy steps that this administration took to justify its military action in Iraq,… and if one faintly remembers how they went to war, despite all public arguments to the contrary, ….and finally, if one remembers that not one of the reasons for which we invaded, turned out to be correct, ……………..then one has to ponder, how the sole creator of this nation’s energy policy, wound up turning out to be the war’s strongest advocate, and………. who’s company in just in one year has profited just under one BILLION$ from our actions, ………………One has to wonder how this person will look when his action is investigated by a Democratic House and future Democratic Senate.

Moving this company to Dubai, offers protection from legal liability. It preserves records where the Federal Government cannot touch them.

It also keeps American hands out of the lucrative oil field cookie jar. For having sunk 25 BILLION $ into Halliburton’s pockets, it would be quite un-Republican to pay a tiny fraction of that back in the form of taxes……………………………………….