Let’s get back to ‘of the people, by the people and for the people’

Most conservatives believe in the free market, saying it’s better than the government butting in. I have a different take as a Depression-era youngster when FDR was president. The free market gradually was set aside then, and government gradually took on practices that better fit the words, “of the people, by the people and for the people.”
Author and journalist Paul Roberts said it more frankly: “Free market is a cover story for the horror of an extractive, asset-stripping operation by publicly supported banks and the governments that they control that impoverishes people and the environment.”
President Franklin Delano Roosevelt knew that capitalism, under financial tycoons like John D. Rockefeller, had cornered the majority of the nation’s wealth, something that has now happened again. Democracy still was claimed but actually had been set aside. Roosevelt very gradually brought it back.
As only one example, infrastructure needed to be repaired, as is the case today. A change is necessary, and we should not set it aside further.
Today the same conditions exist as occurred during the Depression years. Wealth has been and is steadily being shifted to the upper financial class; and our highways, water lines, bridges, etc., are in need of repair. The very top tycoons keep gaining financially, paying less in taxes and bribing congressmen (via campaign contributions) for favors. Meanwhile, the lower-income folks are receiving increasingly less.
That doesn’t seem moral and democratic to me.
Why does this consistently worsen? One aspect was the Supreme Court’s Citizens United ruling, which allows unlimited contributions by the wealthy elite to control elections. Bribery is a crude term in the minds of many people, but folks in my Depression youth would have said, “Let’s call a spade a spade.”
Undemocratic things are being done in several ways. Government officials are influenced by money as are the tycoons who have cornered so much of it. Money is persuasive. And so our government now is, without shame, favoring the upper crust. Taxes are lowered, subsidies are increased and taxes are altered; folks with sufficient money can study the laws carefully, or hire those who can, and can take advantage. A simple classification of laws has become a complex puzzle that requires much study — and that can be rigged by folks with money.
Let’s stop that. As a starting point, more citizens must vote.
We also need to gradually, as FDR did, move in the opposite direction, acting so “of the people, by the people and for the people” actually guides us.
The Revolutionary War freed us from the control of royalty. But now we have brought about a royalty of our own making. Corporations have that power. Each corporate board is charged by its major stockholders with increasing profit, market share, growth and stock price. They have succeeded immensely, and we need to shift this movement that is burying our democracy.

This was written by retired professor Bernie Hughes from the University of Wisconsin Superior.  I think he hits the nail on the head.

THE TRUTH WON'T SET YOU FREE

 

        

                      

Since  Bill O'Reilly and Brian Williams have been in the news lately about how they lied about their experiences for which Williams has stepped down at least temporarily, and the blowhard O'Reilly is still on the air denying he did anything wrong.

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 I thought I would give my take on why O'Reilly is still on the air.  Instead of just looking at O'Reilly's lies lets look at what has happened in the country in the last 50 years.  The Republicans decided long ago that the American people are stupid.  I don't necessarily believe that, but things that have been worked and fought for are taken for granted now days.  Civil rights is the most obvious. If you look at what has happened with voting rights you know what I mean.  The Supreme Court says everything is fine now.  We all know that is wrong, but the Republicans embrace it. Is it because they are all racists or do they see the advantage of keeping minorities from voting? The answer is a combination of both.
 They have bought into the theory that white people are being oppressed.  Take the fraternity in Oklahoma that was singing their racist song.  These students in this fraternity have probably been singing this song for awhile and probably a lot of other people knew it. As far as I know no one did anything, they just tolerated it and gave those students a pass, all that does is embolden those students and people like them.
The dismantling of the labor movement is happening for the same reason.  People think that there are laws on the books that will protect them.  They are living in a fantasy world.  If they have been paying attention they should know that the Republicans have been trying to dismantle (OSHA) the Occupation Safety Health  Administration. They have also tried do away with the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) both organizations that look out for working people.  Unions are just another group that has to go because they look out for working people, especially when it comes to health and welfare. It's almost like we're going back to the 1800's when business ran everything and workers had no say what so ever. The Republican Senators especially, are almost totally bought and paid for by big business   I don't give the national Democratic party a pass on this.  They seem to have been if not complicit at least passive a lot of times. Back when Governor Scott Walker first went after public sector labor unions, I don't remember any Washington D.C. Democrats showing up to lend support to the unions.  Again, all they do is embolden these people.
We have the global warming deniers who parrot the fringe element and when pressed will say that all the people who say global warming is real are making it up or fiddling with the data. They have gone so far as the Governor of Florida who wants all the officials in that state not to use the term global warming.  If you don't say it it can't be real. It's called the ostrich's head in the sand defense. I don't think the majority of the people actually believe these crazy things, but they don't protest, they don't vote. They think that their lives are fine so they don't take things seriously.
This brings me back to O'Reilly.  I know he is a liar and for my money always has been. But the people who support and watch him and his phony news channel don't think he has lied.  They buy everything he says because he has made them believe that they are the victim. Is it because a lot of these people are so-called Christians who won't believe in anything that they can't justify in the Bible?  Global Warming, union rights and voting rights are not mentioned in the Bible so they can't be very important.
I realize that most of he people here are involved, and take part, but there is a huge sector of society that doesn't who actually believe in the same things we do.  There has to be a bigger focus in showing these people what is happening to our country and eventually to them.

WISCONSIN REPUBLICANS IGNORANT OR JUST CRAZY?

People wonder why Wisconsin has gone to hell.  We all know about Scott Walker and Paul Ryan, but the real crazy guy is Glenn Grothman.

This guy is an elected  Republican Congressman from the 6th district.  He wants people to spy on people who are using any form of food stamps.  Does this sound familiar, spy on your neighbor turn them in if they are doing or saying anything that doesn't comport to the party line?  Grothman has a history of saying some of the most stupid things even before he was elected to congress.  He used to be Republican state senator who said many stupid and bigoted things.  If you protest against the Republicans in any form you are

“a bunch of slobs”

or when he said days off from work are

“a little ridiculous”

He said that Planned Parenthood has a pattern of

“not liking people who are not white.”

He also said that the federal and Wisconsin governments are

“working to encourage single motherhood and discouraging children in two-parent families.”

that giving benefits to single parents is

“in essence a bribe not to work that hard or a bribe not to marry somebody with a full-time job.”

I know this guy is a whack job, and so does everyone else. A Republican operative tweeted when he won his primary,

“Gee, so glad we nominated the guy w/a reputation of being a misogynist.”

So the real question is what's in the water that makes the people of Wisconsin keep electing these kind of goof-balls?  Is it that no one actually pays any attention to whom they are voting for, or are the people so brainwashed in their hatred for President Obama that they will vote for anyone that is against him? The district has been dominated by Republicans for most of Wisconsin's history, but does that mean that the people can't see past that. The district is predominately white, and white collar, does that mean these people are actually living in a bubble and don't see what is happening in the real world? Is the local media complicit, do they report the shortcomings of these people, or like the Minneapolis TV station in the last election decided not to show certain campaign commercials by the Democratic candidate because they decided arbitrarily that the ads were not factual?
Whatever it is it's a disgrace to Wisconsin that these fools are representing us.

 

 

REPUBLICANS ATTACKING WORKING PEOPLE AGAIN

  

You think you have the cockroaches on the run, and then they come slinking out of the woodwork.  That is what is happening in Wisconsin and Minnesota.  I do have to say that the roaches in Wisconsin haven't been lurking they are in the open, and have been for quite awhile.
Wisconsin is trying to enact a right to work law.  For a state whose economy isn't on a level with it's neighbor Minnesota I guess they will try anything, but then again, these people in charge in Wisconsin only answer to the American Legislative Exchange Council better know as ALEC, the Koch brothers or the Chamber of Commerce. They write the laws they want passed, and a lot of the times the legislatures voting on those bills haven't even read them.  They have no concern what so ever for the working people of Wisconsin.
The thing that really bothers me about the right to work law is that it would allow people who are not part of the union the same rights as the people who are in the union.  The hypocrisy of the Republicans who have been decrying the fact that any kind of assistance to needy people is only making the problems worse in this country, for them to say it's okay for the non-union people to get the same wages and benefits that the union negotiates is worse. These people unlike most of the people who get welfare for lack of a better term are deliberate deadbeats who do nothing and get the benefits.  We all know the truth why Republicans are doing what their doing concerning unions. They want to dismantle and destroy all unions, because unions have a little power when it comes to elections.   The power of unions has diminished, but the Republicans aren't going to stop until there are no more unions. The people will hopefully see the light eventually but it might be too late.
Minnesota passed a minimum wage increase last year.  Minnesota has one of the best economies in the country. Now that the Republicans have taken control of one part of state government they have decided to try and change that law.   They want to allow companies to pay tipped employee's less than minimum. This mostly affects the hospitality industry. My question is why.  Do these people deserve less because they get tipped.  Isn't tipping predicated on how well you think the service has been? That shouldn't have anything to do with your base pay.  The Republicans again have no problem keeping people down, and why do they do it? They do it at the behest of the Chamber of Commerce, and ALEC. The hell with the people.  Most voters don't take these things in to account when voting for their representatives.  I don't blame the people who get elected, I blame the people who don't take the time to actually see what these people are actually for, and who are their real masters.

MY LOCAL CONGRESSMAN IS PATHETIC

Sean Duffy voted twice on Friday February 27^th on funding for the Department of Homeland Security. He voted not to fund the agency. One was for a 3 week extension of funding and the other was for 1 week additional funding. Mr. Duffy will claim he voted against the funding because he wants to defund the immigration executive order put in place by President Obama. Two things are wrong with his logic. First, he is trying to defund a organization that actually is suppose to protect the border along with protecting every person in the country from terrorists of any sort. Two, Mr. Duffy doesn't seem to have a problem with putting people out of work, and the ones who are required to be at work, to take away their pay, this coming from a guy who said he has trouble making ends meet with his Congressional salary of $174,000.00 a year plus benefits. He may be right about his salary, but he can join the rest of the real world who are also struggling. Since he is from the Republican party in Wisconsin who all seem to have no trouble hurting working families I am not sure why he thinks he deserves special treatment.

The people who are forced to work without pay if they want to keep their jobs may not be as observant or diligent in doing their jobs. If something happens while the agency isn't funded will Mr. Duffy take responsibility for his part in it?

Mr. Duffy has a history of defunding government. He had no problem shutting down the government a couple of years ago, he even voted not to raise the debt limit which would have caused the government to run out of money, which then would have had to stop or delay making payments to the military and to social security recipients. There is whole list of things that would happen. Most of these people don't have other income or money stashed away for a rainy day, even if that day is man made by uncaring and unfeeling politicians.

JOHN MCCAIN AMERICAN HERO?

Since  the movie American Sniper is in the headlines it got me thinking about another guy who the media labeled an "American Hero."  John McCain.  McCain I am sure everyone knows is the Republican Senator from Arizona.
McCain got the "American Hero" title because he was shot down in Vietnam and held prisoner for a couple of years.  The problem with that is McCain is probably the worst person of the prisoners to be labeled a hero.  There were several others who deserved much more respect and honor. McCain's conduct compared to many of the other prisoners was questionable.
McCain relied on his father and grandfathers pull to get ahead, both of them were admirals in the navy.  He was a poor pilot, and his personal conduct was terrible. According to one of his classmates at Annapolis Phil Butler also a prisoner of war in Vietnam, “He was a huge screw off”
McCain received special treat continuously. He wrecked two separate jets  anyone else would have been grounded, but not him. (daddy).
Early in his Senatorial career he got caught up in the Keating savings and loan scandal.  He survived that with just a mild rebuke. He took special favors from Keating and tried to influence regulators in Keatings favor.  He survived by going on every news show proclaiming  his innocence. I think that is where his media career started.  Every news show wants McCain on it.  Of course we have found out from Chuck Todd of Meet the Press that you can't  ask anyone hard questions because they might not come back on.
The list goes on and on with McCain.  This brings me to my point.  McCain "American Hero" who is always pushing for the American Military to put boots on the ground, which means troops. He doesn't seem to mind that means the men and women who serve will be coming home in body bags.
McCain just tried to put an amendment onto the Keystone pipeline bill to repeal the Jones Act.  The Jones Act protects American merchant mariners and ensures that American companies also employ Americans on domestic ships. It also requires that all goods shipped between ports of the United States be carried by vessels build in the United States and owned and operated by Americans. Merchant mariners are essential to the US economy and repealing the Jones Act will allow foreign merchants to come here and take the jobs of American citizens.
The industry supports over 400,000 jobs. Along with the economic damage McCain's amendment threatens national security, according to U.S. Coast Guard Commandant Adm. Paul Zukunft, “That for me is the real consequence, it will put our entire U.S. (merchant) fleet in jeopardy...and then in time of crisis who are we going to get to carry out our logistics. Very difficult if we don't have  U.S.-flagged ships.
”
“The only parties that stand to benefit from the amendment are heavily subsidized foreign shipping competitors who are not subject to US laws, regulations, environmental standards and taxes” according to Edward Wytkind, President of the AFL-CIO Transportation Trade Department.
Instead of being an American Hero we find out he has no problem selling the military down the river along with American jobs.
The media should actually pay attention to whom they are  bestowing the title of  American Hero.

OBAMACARE UNINTENDED CONSEQUENCES

I'm a big supporter of Obamacare I think all people should have an affordable way to get health insurance.  In the last years I have been hearing from the Republicans all the imaginary bad things with health care that are happening or are going to happen.  Most of their horror stories are imaginary and should be ignored.
Now I come to the problem.  I personally know a couple who have retired, but are not eligible for Medicare yet.  The difficulties they are facing to get insurance is I think an unattended consequence of Obamacare.   Their premium is around a $1,000 a month before any subsidy.  Their deductible is over $12,000 a year before the insurance pays anything. That basically puts their out of pocket expense at around $25,000 a year if they have any medical problems at all.  They are not poor, but they still fit into the middle of the middle class.  It seems to me that paying that much money a year for medical insurance shouldn't be happening if Obamacare has had the desired effect of lowering costs.
The other consequence of Obamacare is to union members who have had good insurance and still do, but now the insurance companies have changed the way they do business.  The deductible has to be paid in total before the insurance pays anything.  If you are a single person or a couple it might be fine, but if you have kids or have on-going medical problems you have to come up with the total deductible before the insurance kicks in. It's much harder for a family to pay for their insurance even with a good union policy.
I'm sure that Obamacare has helped millions of people, but it is also costing many people a lot more to get insurance.  It is not the wealthy people who are picking up the tab for the lower income people, it is the middle class, and the middle class is struggling and this is another cost that they shouldn't have to bear.

JOSHEPH GOEBBELS WOULD BE PROUD

 

I'm going to do something that the right-wing propaganda machine, (Fox News, talk radio, and unknowing and often lying right-wing pundits)  are  constantly doing, and something I despise. They compare liberals and Democrats to Nazi's or Communists. The real problem is the right-wings embrace of Joseph Goebbels Nazi propaganda machine.
Their goal is to de-legitimize this government.   They want to take over.  All you have to do is look at how they disparage the President.  They have said he was unqualified, wasn't born in this country, and of course that he is secretly a Muslim.
Lets look at how the Nazi's acted.  Liberals and undesirable can be interchanged with Jewish. Undesirables in this country are the minorities and the people who support their struggle.
The Nazi's burned books. We haven't gone that far yet, but the propaganda  machine and their troops try to take out of history books anything they don't like. They wanted to tear pages out of biology text books, again about things they don't like. In Florida the legislators there want to make it mandatory that convicted criminal Dinesh D'Souza's movie is shown to all school children. They want to indoctrinate the children into their way of thinking.
Stand your ground laws are based on the false presumption that white people are being attacked by minorities and we should have the right to use deadly force when we feel threatened.  I am waiting for the day when a black person shoots a white person, and uses that defense.  I am sure the propaganda machine will find fault in that defense then.
We have a militarized police force that has no qualms killing unarmed people as long as they are a minority. It's always amazing that police investigations into deadly force seldom find that anything was done wrong. The justification for militarization is 9/11.  The politicians have used scare tactics to justify all this.  The Muslims are coming to rape your wife, and kill you and your children.  They are all for torture as anyone can see by their support of it, and their denunciation of the Senate report.  They say torture saved lives in this country, and you know these people are undesirables.  When do the so-called undesirables in their minds from this country become fair game to them?  We lost are right to privacy under that threat.
Voter ID laws and the like are meant to keep minorities from voting.  The propaganda machine tries to make the argument that there is so much voter fraud, but they never produce the fraud.  Pennsylvania's Mike Turzai (R-PA) famously said “voter ID, which is gonna allow Governor Romney to win the state of Pennsylvania done”  I'm sure he didn't mean that ID laws were going to allow more people to vote.  Sometimes the truth slips out.
They attack other religions, mostly notably the Muslims.  Most people don't really get upset about that because it isn't their religion.  These people should be worried.  The machine has recently attacked the Pope because of his economic view.  Sarah Palin said that the Pope's statements sounded kind of liberal.   Fox News editor Adam Shaw said “Catholics should be suspicious when bastions of anti-Catholicism in left-wing media are in love with him.” The assumption being that the media is left-wing, and they are anti-Catholic, and the Pope has some how become untrustworthy because he doesn't agree with their doctrine.  The Catholic Church is being demonized.
Michigan wants to enact a law called the Freedom of Religion Act that makes it okay to discriminate against gays.  Of course gays are part of the undesirables that the right-wing is protecting us from.
Executions have always been a topic that is fought about with good reasons on both sides up until now.  The states are using drugs that they don't want anyone to know what they are. In fact some states are trying to pass laws that would keep secret from the public and the press everything related to executions.  These drugs are causing in some case  cruel and unusual punishment in direct conflict with the 8th amendment to the Constitution, just like the loss of privacy is in conflict with the 4th amendment to the Constitution. The propaganda machine doesn't see a problem with this because undesirables are being put to death.  They also don't have a problem with an innocent person  wrongly being put to death.
The people who think both parties are the same are going to wake up one day and ask what happened to this great country.

THE RIGHT-WING CRAZIES ARE WINNING

For many years now the right-wing zealots in this country have been portraying democrats and liberals of any stripe as Communists; Socialists, or Nazi's.  For the longest time I thought that these people were just plain ignorant.  I have come to the conclusion they aren't. This is a coordinated campaign to demonize and disparage their political rivals.  It's well know that corporations are taking over all political decisions.  We have a Supreme Court that really doesn't take the law into consideration when making their decisions.  When almost every decision is 5 to 4 along political lines how does the law come into play?  No one can tell me that the law is so ambiguous that it can be looked at that way.  The right-wing is winning.
 Think back to when the Supreme Court decision "Citizens United" legalized big money to buy elections and politicians.  President Obama at the State of the Union address mentioned that decision and the affect it will have on our political discourse by allowing all that money to flow.  Supreme Court Justice Alito shook his head no during the speech like the President didn't know what he was  talking about.  I think the years that have followed have shown that President Obama was right.  When corporations are looked at as people you know things are going down hill fast. The right-wing is winning.
Lets look at their campaign to demonize unions.  They do this because unions are one of the last entities that have any power to fight back.  They have tried to convince the workers that the "UNION BOSSES" have been using the money they pay for dues for things that workers don't want or need.  The sad thing is that many workers have bought into this scenario even though there are no facts to back this up. The attack on public unions and the so-called "right-to-work" laws have pitted employee against employee much to the glee of the right-wing. The right-wing is winning.
The so-called liberal media is a fallacy that has been  perpetrated on us.  Most newspaper and television outlets are owned by big business.  There are very few investigative journalists left.  We have Fox News which is not a news station but a propaganda outlet for the right-wing.  They attack PBS and NPR at every opportunity.  The major network news shows are dominated by the same guests every week.  John McCain, Lindsay Graham, Ted Cruz, or their ilk.  The same panelists George Will, Bill Kristol, David Brooks and so on.  All right-wing zealots.  They attack science at every opportunity.  They spout their take on the bible when it suits them, but in my opinion most of them have probably never opened the bible and read it through, they cherry pick passages to suit their warped outlook. The right-wing is winning.
Twenty years ago I don't think some of the elected officials in this country would have been elected.  You have Louis Gohmert and Steve King.  We had Michelle Bachmann and Steve Stockman all complete morons.  We have a new one in Wisconsin Congressman Glenn Grothman who thinks woman are bribed to have children out of wedlock.  He also thinks that no one is entitled to a day off from work.  I'm sure the list goes on and on. The point is, with voter suppression happening, and the uninterested voters who don't take part in our democracy, we are heading for a disaster.  If the Republicans can't stop the crazy people in their party we are headed back to the time when you have no individual power to make your own decisions.  The right-wing is winning.
The police state isn't far from becoming a reality.  The deaths of people recently have brought this problem to the forefront, but this has been going on for awhile.  It isn't just black men that are being killed or harassed, whites who try and protest or are on the undesirable list face the same problem.  Look back to the Occupy Movement. People were abused many many times by the police with no consequences.  The police have the same mentality as the Catholic Church has when it's dealing with the pedophile priests.  They circle the wagons and don't admit that they have bad individuals working for them. The right-wing is winning.
We have laws being written and put into law by legislators who don't even read them before voting on them.  They rely on the American Legislative Exchange Council  (ALEC), a pro-business front, and they do their bidding. The right-wing is winning.
I could go, but the point is our country is being taken over by corporations and their stooges IE the right-wing who don't care about the country. Their only concern is that they have power.  When these people are caught in lies what do they do?  They say they were taken out of context, or they give some lame apology then go back to their lies with no consequence.
The liberal and progressives in this country are partially to blame.  We focus on an issue to the exclusion of others.  We let the right-wing frame the conversation in this country. It's time for people of both parties to start standing up and fighting back. The main thing is that we have to is get out and vote, if you sit home and let the right-wing tea-party types control things there might come a time when you  will see what's happening, but by then it might be to late.