HIATUS WINDING DOWN

• Long time, Searchers. I've been off for a while dealing with things I won't go into detail about here. Greetings to a Searcher, Jason of Illinois.
  
  Very quickly, as I'm taking care of other things at the moment, I wanted to touch base about two books I picked up from the Library the other day. One is by Deena Guzer, Divine Rebels American Christian Activists for Social Justice. The other is Conscience of a Liberal by Paul Krugman. Both are phenomenal.
  
  In Krugman's book, granted I am only a few pages in, he writes about the similarities between what he calls The Long Gilded Age, the period between 1870 and the 1920's. There is a table he inserts that appears on page 16 of the book, I will attempt to recreate it here:
  
  
  



• 
  
  
  Table 1. Share of High-income Groups in Total Income, Excluding Capital Gains



• 
  



• 
  
  



• 
  



• 
  
  
  Highest-income 10% Highest -income 1%



• 
  



• 
  
  



• 
  



• 
  
  
  Average for 1920's 43.6% 17.3%



• 
  



• 
  
  



• 
  



• 
  
  
  2005 44.3% 17.4%

In the table and the writing explaining the table, he discusses the inequality of income and the resemblance between the Nation in the 1870's and today, albeit a few years ago. Since 2005, it has not gotten better, it has gotten worse. As a direct result of the abysmal economic policies of the Republican party, including Ronald Reagan, and his political offspring, George W. Bush.

The Republicans are tearing down our Nation, make no mistake. Another quote from his book that appears on page 11 of Conscience of a Liberal:

Ronald Reagan, more than anyone else, showed the way. His 1964 speech "A time for Choosing," which launched his political career, and the speeches he gave during his successful 1966 campaign for governor of California foreshadowed political strategies that would work for him and other movement conservatives for the next forty years. Latter-day hagiographers have portrayed Reagan as a paragon of high-minded conservative principles, but he was nothing of the sort. His early political successes were based on appeals to cultural and sexual anxieties playing on the fear of communism, and, above all, tacit exploitation of white backlash against the civil rights movement and its consequences. (Bold mine.)

One key message of this book, which many readers may find uncomfortable, is that race is at the heart of what has happened to the country I grew up in. The legacy of slavery, America's original sin, is the reason we're the only advanced economy that doesn't guarantee health care to our citizens. (bold mine) White backlash against the civil rights movement is the reason America is the only advanced country where a major political party (the Republicans, this is inserted by me) wants to roll back the welfare state. Ronald Reagan began his 1980 campaign with a states' rights speech outside Philadelphia, Mississippi, the town where three civil rights workers were murdered; Newt Gingrich, (who by the way is running for President for the 2012 election, against President Obama, parenthetical commentary mine) was able to take over Congress entirely because of the great Southern flip, the switch of Southern whites from overwhelming support for Democrats to overwhelming support for Republicans.

Without a doubt, the Republican party is against American families, and against America herself.

Wisconsin Representative Paul Ryan's dangerous plan to turn Medicare into a coupon or voucher program is but one of the many examples of the Republican nightmarish plans for our country. For those of you who don't know about his plan to destroy medicare, study up. Same for the plans by the now infamous Scott Walker, the current Governor of Wisconsin. He will be up for a recall vote one year after his term began. There are currently several Republican State Senators facing recall next month in Wisconsin.

The Republican party is not for America's families. They are attempting to haul us back to the time before the Great Depression, and they are trying to destroy the New Deal designed by FDR, as well as the middle class and the elderly, students, young families, American industry, the list goes on and on.

Listen, Searchers, get off your asses and get involved. It is time to take our country from the Right Wing of America that seeks to destroy it.

Peace-

By the way, I will write about a couple of comments I received a while back that come directly from the useless Flanagin rabble in the state of Arkansas. And, there is a circuit judge I will post about before long, also in Arkansas.


The table is kinda jacked up, I know, but figure it it. Better yet, go to your library or local bookstore and pick up a copy of Paul Krugman's book. I don't have the time to perfect the table right now, in the future I will work on it.

Till next time...
Where's my sitemeter?????? Must get that back on....

CLASS WARFARE? YOU BET YOUR ASS

I have swung from the right to the left; if you have read this at all you know. There was a time I supported big business, I believed the Republican and right wing Christian nonsense about profit, Capitalism, (God's own economic way, don't ya know) and the ability for the poor to get rich, because of "trickle down" economics. However, I have come to my senses. I was watching CNN yesterday and a commercial came on railing against taxes for energy companies. "Madness!" "Crazy!" and other such adjectives hurled at me by blue collar actor portrayals...and people are buying this crap hook, line, and sinker. Here is a story from Newsweek, CEO's are lamenting their poor abused status as the victimized rich.

The Book of James states in chapter 5 v.4: "Look! The wages you have failed to pay the workmen who mowed your fields are crying out against you." NIV.

Let me take it a step further: The companies in the United States are on a wholesale robbery spree against the workers. The CEO's are empowered, the workers are weak. Such is the legacy of Ronald Reagan, and George W. Bush. They are stealing from us, and screaming about taxes. Wake up, a country cannot be operative without revenue, and that revenue comes form taxes.

I am working toward reversing this trend, and it begins with education. It is high time to end the utter exploitation of the worker, the farmer, the average person in the U.S.

Let me be clear: The Richest in this country are never going to come off their money unless forced to by the people. There has been a massive redistribution of wealth-from the bottom up to the top. The economic policies of Saint Ronald have done nothing except grow the coffers of the already rich. Reaganomics have failed, George W. Bush is a failure, and Conservative are morally bankrupt.

Listen middle class and poor-you are in the financial straights today as a direct result of the Conservative and Republican economic policy. And yes, Bill Clinton is to blame also.

In a few days I am going to post some pics of a little town in Arkansas that has gone completely in the shitter as a direct result of Conservatives and the Republicans. Home after home after home has been abandoned and houses are falling apart, yet the people are embittered against the left, and they are voting Republican to get even with Wall Street. (thanks Thomas Frank for putting that into perspective for me.)

Stuffing Their Pockets

For CEOs, a lucrative recession.

One of the most startling things about the post-crisis landscape is how tone-deaf the wealthiest Americans remain to outrage over their Croesus-like pay packages. The award for complete obliviousness would have to go to Blackstone cofounder Stephen Schwarzman, who earlier this summer compared government attempts to raise taxes on financiers such as himself to Hitler’s invasion of Poland. Silver medals should certainly be handed out to the many executives and corporate lawyers who were grousing last week about the new Dodd-Frank bill, which includes a rule requiring companies to disclose the difference in pay between their chief executive and their lowest-level workers. It would be a “logistical nightmare,” these titans of industry wailed, for firms to compile this information.

Well, maybe, but if you issue pay stubs, surely you can tally them up (and perhaps keep a few more workers on board to do just that). The real nightmare will be when the public sees the numbers, which will illuminate just how egregious the U.S. pay gap has become. According to the Institute for Policy Studies, a liberal think tank based in Washington, the average S&P 500 CEO takes home 263 times what his cheapest laborer does. While CEO pay is indeed down from its pre-crisis highs in 2007, it’s still double what it was in the 1990s, and eight times the level in the 1950s.

Meanwhile, American workers are taking home less in real weekly wages than they did in the 1970s. So much for the idea that the financial crisis would somehow even things up by wiping out a good chunk of the paper wealth of the plutocrats. Indeed, stock prices have surged so much since last year that many CEOs, who receive a good chunk of their pay in equity, are wealthier than ever before.

Such facts are inevitably followed by the impossible-to-answer question, do they deserve it? While the corporate world has certainly gotten more complex over the last 50 years, it’s hard to make the case that CEOs themselves have gotten any smarter, or that investors are doing a better job of judging a CEO’s success. Compensation levels are all too often driven by short-term thinking. The CEOs of the 50 firms that laid off the most workers since the onset of the economic crisis took home 42 percent more pay in 2009 than their peers did—largely because cutting workers boosts short-term profits and appeals to Wall Street. Yet a growing body of academic research suggests that downsizing doesn’t always lead to increased profitability over the longer haul, or even lower costs. There are many reasons for this, ranging from the fact that companies going into layoff mode often lose their best workers to competitors, to the toll taken on R&D spending, which is what produces the revenue and growth potential of the future.

While one can argue the merits of layoffs on a company-by-company basis, what’s striking is that the executives who are the most willing to ax workers also seem to be the least likely to tighten their own belts. Management guru Peter Drucker once noted that after CEO-to-worker pay ratios went above 25–1, major moral questions started to be raised. It will be hard to make employees believe that “we’re all in this together” when it becomes clear in public documents that company leaders have largely insulated themselves from any financial risk.

The larger issue of growing inequity in the Western world is a tough one to tackle; the forces of globalization that have led to stagnating wages aren’t going to disappear. But executive pay could be made fairer and more transparent. For starters, corporate America might take a page out of the European playbook. In countries like Germany, which boasts many of the world’s most competitive and productive companies, worker representatives often sit on corporate boards, providing a check against bloated pay packages.

On the other hand, U.S. corporate boards are full of very rich people who have no incentive to complain about each others’ pay. That’s why politicians might consider getting rid of tax rules that let companies write off unlimited amounts of corporate compensation. And whatever arguments there might be about the complexity of the Dodd-Frank rules, the notion of publishing pay numbers is a good one. If nothing else, it could be the starting point of a conversation in which America’s business leaders explain, to their shareholders and to the wider public, exactly why they need so much money to get the job done.

Thanks Newsweek-peace

REPUBS AND CONSERVATIVES CANNOT HIDE THEIR RACISM

This is a repost from the AP...just a thought, the Right wing, the right wing christians (small "c") and the republican in general expose themselves on a regular basis for their racism and hate of those without a Euro-Cauc heritage...Drunk Lindsay Graham and his bible thumping ridiculous beliefs are behind the yapping from the right regarding the repealing of the 14th Amendment...Citizenship Clause, Equal Protection Clause, and Due Process Clause would all be done away with...makes you wonder just how out of control the right is...answer? Very.

Keep on keeping on exposing these fuckers for exactly what they are...bear in mind haters, I used to vote right wing, then i woke the hell up and saw it for what it is..."Conservatism is a euphemism for social cowardice." Nothing else.


WASHINGTON — Leading Republicans are joining a push to reconsider the constitutional amendment that grants automatic citizenship to people born in the United States.

Senate Republican leader Mitch McConnell said Tuesday he supports holding hearings on the Constitutional right, although he emphasized that Washington's immigration focus should remain on border security.

His comments came as other Republicans in recent days have questioned or challenged birthright citizenship, embracing a cause that had largely been confined to the far right.

The senators include Arizona's John McCain, the party's 2008 presidential nominee; Arizona's Jon Kyl, the Republicans' second-ranking senator; Jeff Sessions, the top Republican on the Judiciary Committee, and Lindsey Graham, a leading negotiator on immigration legislation.

"I'm not sure exactly what the drafters of the (14th) amendment had in mind, but I doubt it was that somebody could fly in from Brazil and have a child and fly back home with that child, and that child is forever an American citizen," Sessions said.

Legal experts say repealing the citizenship right can be done only through constitutional amendment, which would require approval by two-thirds majorities in both chambers of Congress and by three-fourths of the states. Legislation to amend the right, introduced previously in the House of Representatives, has stalled.

The proposals are sure to appeal to conservative voters as immigration so far is playing a central role in November's elections. They also could carry risks by alienating Hispanic voters and alarming moderates who could view constitutional challenges as extreme. Hispanics have become the largest minority group in the United States, and many are highly driven by the illegal immigrant debate.

McConnell and McCain seemed to recognize the risk by offering guarded statements Tuesday.

McCain, who faces a conservative challenge in his re-election bid, said he supports reviewing citizenship rights. He emphasized, however, that amending the Constitution is a serious matter.

"I believe that the Constitution is a strong, complete and carefully crafted document that has successfully governed our nation for centuries and any proposal to amend the Constitution should receive extensive and thoughtful consideration," he said.

At a news conference, McConnell refused to endorse Graham's suggestion that citizenship rights be repealed for children of illegal immigrants. While refusing to take questions, he suggested instead that he would look narrowly into reports of businesses that help immigrants arrange to have babies in the United States in order to win their children U.S. citizenship.

The 14th Amendment, adopted in 1868 in the aftermath of the Civil War, granted citizenship to "all persons born or naturalized in the United States," including recently freed slaves.

Defenders of the amendment say altering it would weaken a fundamental American value while doing little to deter illegal immigration. They also say it would create bureaucratic hardships for parents giving birth.

Quoting a newspaper columnist, Senate Democratic leader Harry Reid of Nevada said Republicans were "either taking leave of their senses or their principles" in advocating repeal.

An estimated 10.8 million illegal immigrants were living in the U.S. as of January 2009, according to the Homeland Security Department. The Pew Hispanic Center estimates that as of 2008, there were 3.8 million illegal immigrants in this country whose children are U.S. citizens.

Thanks AP...giving credit where it is due...and can someone tell me why the people of Alabama keep voting in that squirrely bastard Jeff Sessions? Please Alabama give yourself an anal/cranal-ectomy, and quit fucking up the country for the rest of us...Peace!

BACHMANN 'HEARING VOICES' OTHER THAN GOD'S, SAYS TOP DEMOCRAT

By Chris Steller 9/2/09 1:38 PM, Of the Minnesota Independent

U.S. Rep. Michele Bachmann’s talk of stopping health care reform by fasting, praying and wrist-slitting has prompted not only lefty pundits but a top Democratic colleague to question what’s going on between her ears. Jim Oberstar, chairman of the House Transportation Committee, remarked Tuesday: “I don’t think God’s talking to her anymore. I think she’s hearing other voices.”

Bachmann said in 2006 that she was running for Congress on God’s recommendation (video), and last month said she would run for president if she “felt that’s what the Lord was calling me to do.”

It wasn’t a one-off gag line for Oberstar, who earlier called Bachmann “a sweet woman” but had this advice for elderly health care reform advocates in Duluth who were planning to visit her: ”Tell her that there are voices other than God that are informing her.” [Via Tom Elko]

It wasn’t immediately clear whether one of those voices is that of Rep. Ron Paul, who has Bachmann’s ear on financial policy and will appear with her at a town hall in her district this month.

Oberstar’s comments are of the sort more commonly heard from cable TV yakkers like Ed Schultz, whose show featured her “psycho talk” two days in a row, and Dan Savage, who linked God-inspired politics to hate rhetoric of the worst sort:

"When you have a party that claims to speak for God or says God is on its side, the rhetoric heats up and the anger heats up, because it’s not just a battle about ideas and positions and what’s good for the country and bad for the country. It’s a battle about what God wants and what God doesn’t want. And it’s easier to demagogue about your enemies and to despise them and to dehumanize them in this really personal and vicious way. And the religious right is fomenting this kind of hatred in this country at our peril. I really do think that the Michele Bachmanns of the world and the Glenn Becks of the world are actively and consciously, or subconsciously, trying to get — I’m just going to say it — trying to get the president killed. This kind of rhetoric — this paranoid style on the religious right, from Birchers to birthers — doesn’t usually end well. And somebody’s got to put the brakes on it. Unfortunately in the Republican Party, there’s no adults left in the room. There are only the Michele Bachmanns and the Glenn Becks and the Rush Limbaughs running the show."

Thanks to The Minnesota Independent.

A bit of commentary: the Republican Party does not have a corner of Religious Stupidity, Mrs. Searcher's father Pat the deadbeat Flanagin (and S. Chris Flanagin of Thurman and Bishop law firm, violent criminal extraordinaire) has a "bible fund" and can't keep his dick in his pants. Oh yeah, he also was in office as a Democrat. Pat Flanagin and the ever nuts Dora F. Hughes, Mrs. Searcher's aunt were part of my inspiration to vote for Bush, and until we got out of the south for a length of time, I learned that liberal democrats have a different, a better and less hateful ideology than the Christian Conservative Arkansas Democrat and his sister that have contempt for the poor, supports violent crime and hates his daughter (and she her niece) while hiding behind religion as an excuse for their abhorrent behavior. Shout out to this Democrat that has the balls to say what everyone else is thinking-these right wing bible bangers are nuts, but I know plenty of Dems that are right wing bible thumping psychos, and it's time to push them all into the sea.

Peace

image

ANOTHER ONE BITES THE DUST-AGAIN

So Governor Mark Sanford of South Carolina has been fooling around with a woman from Argentina. His wife isn't Argentinian, I'm pretty sure she's South Carolinian...Perhaps he was using public funds to get to Argentina...It looks like the "Family Values" Party is imploding on itself, more power to it, I'm sick of conservatives, both democrat and republican, this is just another affirmation of my correct decision to turn my back on the conservative movement completely.

Another shooting star for the Repubs in 2012 has shot himself in his (or rather with his) dick. Who do we have left? Sarah Palin? Bobby Jindal? Mitt freaking Romey? Please don't offer up the doofus Haley Barbour from Mississippi. Or maybe that would be a good idea...a sacrificial lamb.

Peace, y'all Obama '12, Health Care now...