Republican Dirty Tricks

It seems like just yesterday that corporate tool Justice Alito mouthed “not true” during the State of the Union address after the President expressed concern about unfettered money corrupting our electoral process (even more than it already has).   Well, here we are two years later into post-Citizens United America, and what do you know?  The President was right… and… Alito was simply playing his part in the CON mission to ensure the American government exists solely to further the interests of billionaires.

Being that the CONservative agenda is so anathema to the health, wealth and happiness of 99% of the population, they must resort to every dirty trick in the book to get and keep their boney fingers around the neck of power.  The Reich Wing corporatists attack on all fronts, from blanketing the fruited plain from sea to shining sea with pro-corporate/anti-worker propaganda, rampant election fraud, incessant voter surpression tactics and now… thanks to a fascist Supreme Court who never met a transnational corporation they wouldn’t let smash their boots across the necks of the working class, uncorked the spigot of unfettered funds to corrupt our political system with their insipidly fascist Citizen’s United v Federal Elections Commission ruling.

It’s not the first time in American history that the Supreme Court ruled in such an appalling fashion.  They were the ones who originally decreed in Dred Scott v. Sandford that human beings who happen to have darker pigmentation could not be free citizens of the United States.  They were the ones who originally deemed in Bailey v. Drexel Furniture Co. that companies could not be penalized for employing children in their factories… and, of course, they also ruled in Bush v. Gore that George W. Bush would be “irreparably harmed” if the state of Florida finished counting all it’s votes and Al Gore was actually allowed to assume the office of Presidency he legally won – the “irreparable harm” to the people of the United States be damned.

For years, Bush v Gore was considered by many scholars to be the Supreme Court’s worst decision of modern times… until they topped themselves with Citizen’s United and ruled that corporations are people, money is speech and no limits could be put on corporate entities influencing the political process with their “speech”…. er…. money… effectively giving the 400 richest Americans the same amount of political speech as the poorest 50% (over 100 million households)… and giving birth to a new type of political action committee, the super PAC.

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This MLK day, as in years prior, people all over the country will learn that Martin Luther King, Jr. “had a dream” that black children and white children would one day play and go to school together without having to call National Guard to protect them from the red-blooded CONservatives who can’t deal with, among many things, non-white people and/or progress.  With the election of our first black President, surely, we are told, King’s dream is now a reality…  so much so, that we can can now congratulate ourselves on our evolution by adding the made-in-China MLK statue to the National Mall.   Tragically, among the many myths we’re told in America, it’s no surprise that MLK has undergone the standard whitewash from which he’s been transformed from an anti-militarism revolutionary for social & economic justice into an orator who spoke, Rodney King-style, “why can’t we all just get along” platitudes.

On King’s national holiday, our so-called “leaders” from sea to shining sea will give their standard speeches meant to, not rally us to change the structures that create poverty for the many and affluence for the few, but convince us all of the importance of the maintaining of the status quo.   “See!  We have a biracial President!  Surely our system must be working.”  As King said himself, “the arch of history is long, but it bends towards justice.”  But what he ALSO said was, “The dispossessed of this nation – the poor, both white and Negro – live in a cruelly unjust society.   They must organize a revolution against that injustice, not against the lives of the persons who are their fellow citizens, but against the structures through which the society is refusing to take means which have been called for, and which are at hand, to lift the load of poverty.”  

Far from criticizing our broken system, they’ll no doubt remind us all of King’s dream that “men,” ”not be judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their character.”  A palatable phrase our corporate-sponsored government can regularly regurgitate for the masses to swallow, while easily neglecting the message King concentrated on in the last years of his life – economic justice… of which we’ve not even come close to bringing to fruition.

WATCH: Georgetown University’s Christopher Chambers discusses the whitewashing of King’s message:

In fact, income inequality is higher now than when Dr. King died in 1968 and the working class is worse off now than when King organized his first “Poor People’s Campaign,” in which he meant to confront the issues of jobs, income and housing.

Dedrick Muhammad, Senior Director of the NAACP Economic Department and Nicole Kenney, NAACP Economic Program Specialist posted, “Dr. King states,

“There is nothing new about poverty. What is new, however, is that we now have the resources to get rid of it.” We are currently funding three unpopular wars that, like the Vietnam War, are diverting a significant amount of dollars that could be used to aggressively combat poverty and provide opportunities to reclaim the American Dream.  It is simply a matter of priorities. Therefore, in the spirit of Dr. King’s legacy, let us reevaluate our country’s commitment to the groups Dr. King sacrificed his life to protect- the economically vulnerable and recognize that advancing a strong middle class economy must have progressive policy as the center of the struggle (e.g., social safety net, government investment in opportunity and equity, and progressive taxation on the wealthiest of Americans).  Let’s not commemorate Dr. King’s memorial without recommitting ourselves to fulfilling the vision he and so many brave men and women fought for – economic justice for all.”

King said, “We believe the highest patriotism demands the ending of the war and the opening of a bloodless war to final victory over racism and poverty.”  Then, as it is now, ensuring that society works for ALL is the highest form of patriotism.

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On December 22, 2011, Republican Speaker of the House John Boehner pondered, “Why not do the right thing for the American people even if it’s not exactly what we want?” letting slip a stark fact of life under Republican rule, namely that by doing the “People’s work,” Republicans are doing us a favor.

The fact is, the Republican Party has NEVER introduced, sponsored or supported a single piece of legislation that benefited the working people of this nation – NOT A SINGLE ONE.   So, as we head into 2012, it’s time to reflect on this undeniable truth and compile a list (with help from the DSCC) of 2011’s Greatest Republican Dirty Tricks:

1) Republican Assault on America’s Health. 

All Republican Presidential candidates promise to repeal “Obamacare,” thus promising kick people off the health insurance racket rolls by re-instating pre-existing conditions as a qualifier to obtaining insurance on the private market and and kick 2.5 million young adults, once again, off their parents’ health plan.

When the Republican majority took control of the House, they wasted no time wasting America’s time with a symbolic vote to “repeal Obamacare” – a move that solely benefits the for-profit health insurance racket.

Here’s what that ACTUALLY means (compiled by The Gazette):

• • Medicare beneficiaries would no longer be eligible for free preventive services, such as mammograms and colonoscopies. Nearly three-quarters of these beneficiaries (71.1 percent) have taken advantage of the benefit for at least one free preventive service between January and November 201
• • The infamous Medicare Part D “doughnut hole”—the huge gap in prescription drug coverage—would grow rather than diminish through rebates and ultimately close. About 46,000 Iowans received a rebate check for prescription drugs in 2010, thanks to the Affordable Care Act. In 2011, a similar number received even larger discounts—an average of $581 per person through just October—while in the doughnut hole. The gap in Part D coverage will continue to shrink each year, unless health reform is repealed.
• • Insurance companies could again deny health coverage for children with a pre-existing condition, a practice that is now prohibited. More than 51,000 children in Iowa have been diagnosed with a pre-existing condition that could have resulted in denial of coverage in the individual market prior to reform.
• • Many young adults would no longer be able to remain on their parents’ insurance. In Iowa, 25,700 young adults are now eligible to continue receiving coverage in this manner.
• • Women would continue to pay higher premiums than men. In Iowa, every one of the best-selling individual market plans currently charges a 40-year-old, non-smoking woman higher premiums than a 40-year-old, non-smoking man. Gender rating will be made illegal in 2014, unless the Affordable Care Act is repealed.
• • Tax cuts to help lower- and middle-income individuals and families pay for health care premiums would be taken away. Under the current law, 261,200 people in Iowa will be eligible for these premium tax cuts in 2014.

2) Republican Assault on the Elderly.

All Republican Presidential candidates back Ayn Rand ideologue Paul Ryan’s plan to turn Medicare into a coupon program.  Thus, throwing Granny to the mercy of the private health insurance racket.

Johnathan Chait of New York Magazine wrote,

“The Republican budget would very dramatically change Medicare. The plan would turn a single-payer system into vouchers for private insurance, and the value of those vouchers would fall steadily behind the cost of that insurance, so that within a relatively short time it would cover only a small fraction of the cost of insurance.”

3) Republican Tax Giveaways to Corporations and the Wealthy

It’s no accident that the top 1% control 42% of the wealth in America.  That appalling statistic came by design of a tax structure favoring the rich that took us from the MOST to the LEAST upwardly mobile with the widest income gap of all industrialized nations.

As Justice Lewis D. Brandies famously said, “”We can have democracy in this country, or we can have great wealth concentrated in the hands of a few, but we can’t have both.”  But you see, the Oligarchs can’t afford a vibrant democracy on the grounds that it’s bad for business.  An “uppity” worker is a worker not-so-easily controlled.   So the rich use the “mad money” from their low tax rates to further corrupt government and turn it into, as FDR explained, a mere appendage to their own affairs.

Case in point is Paul Ryan’s “bold” kiss up/kick down budget proposal that, not only, throws granny to the mercy of the for-profit health insurance racket, but also drops the top tax rate for rich people from 35 percent to 25 percent.  As Matt Taibbi wrote, “All by itself, that one change means that the government would be collecting over $4 trillion less over the next ten years.”

Republicans are fond of repeating the lie that “we don’t have a revenue problem, we have a spending problem.”  In the typical Republican fashion, the truth is exactly the opposite of that statement.

The Republican answer to the problems caused by unfunded tax-cuts for the wealthy will always be “more unfunded tax cuts for the wealthy” because the real Republican mission is to destroy the uppity middle class so the “right” people rule, run everything and have all the wealth.

In fact, we DO have a revenue problem.  If Congress simply did NOTHING and let the Bush tax giveaways expire, the deficit Republicans scream about as an excuse to destroy the social safety net would be gone by the end of Obama’s second term.

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It’s time to face facts. Republicans are nothing but anchors on society actively acting against the interests of the majority of the population.  From their now front runner Presidential candidate, ethically-challenged Newt Gingrich, championing the end of century-old child labor restrictions, to the feeble attempts to blame the whole financial meltdown on the poor, the compulsively pro-corporate, GOP class war agenda is out of the closet – despite Republican propagandist Frank Luntz’s directive for Republicans to stay on their fake populist message.

Today’s case in point is “The Middle Class Tax Relief and Job Creation Act of 2011″ …Otherwise known as the Payroll Extension bill.

Though I am AGAINST a Payroll Tax holiday for the fact that it is, in itself, a poison pill that weakens Social Security, it is to be noted that Republicans couldn’t let themselves just pass a clean bill preventing working class Americans from receiving what amounts to a $1000 dollar tax hike.  Instead, the Republican-controlled House approved a bill stacked with a veritable laundry list of CONservative giveaways to their corporate masters, assaults on the environment, and assaults on those of us not born with a trust fund… with 10 Democrats in Name Only joining them.

These giveaways and assaults include:

1)  The approval of the filthy “game over for the environment” Keystone XL pipeline… based on discredited job numbers.

2)  Blockage of federal regulations against toxic air emissions from industrial boilers (…because Republican masters can’t figure out how to operate a business unless they can leave filth and poison on everything they touch and/or sicken and kill thousands of Americans.*)

3)  The Freezing of Pay for federal employees until 2013 and increase the amount they must contribute to their pensions. (…because people having money to spend in order to stimulate the economy and create DEMAND is counter to the Republican plot to convince Americans to hand them the White House in 2012.)

4)  Turning Medicare into just another welfare program for Republicans to eventually de-fund.

5)  Gutting of the health care reform law by $20 billion… because Republicans aren’t happy unless some filthy rich health insurance racketeer can make a buck from denying someone the health care they need…  or some bankster can swoop in and confiscate a home from under someone declaring a “uniquely American” medical bankruptcy.

6)  Limiting unemployment benefits to 59 weeks…. because who needs the $2.00 in economic stimulus that comes from every $1.00 in unemployment payments if you’re trying to crash the economy?

7)  Drug testing of people who applied for jobless benefits….  “Benefits,” let’s remember… that THEY paid into.  It’s called “Unemployment INSURANCE” for a reason… but you see… mandatory drug testing is a boon for the “lucky” contractor, with the added benefit of teaching the Plebs the Republican trickle down polices created for the 99% preventing the unemployed from finding employment – it’s the unemployed!  They’re HIGH!

8)  Limiting of unemployment insurance only to those who have earned a high school diploma.  (More punitive action against the “lazy,” and “undeserved” people who paid into an insurance program.)

9)  Selling portions of the broadcast spectrum…  another “lucky” boon for their Reich Wing cronies to help “catapult the propaganda.”

10)  “Privatization initiatives.” for Federal Flood insurance.  To, no doubt, screw the American people who fall victim to natural disaster… of course… because “we’re broke,” don’tcha know?  The wealthy need to keep their appallingly low, wide income disparity/low social mobility-creating, tax rates… you know… in order to ensure that they have enough “mad money” to corrupt the government and the politicians they own.  As Joe Weisenthal wrote in that Socialist rag Business Insider, “Washington, We Have A Revenue Problem,” “any politician who says Washington has a spending problem, rather than a revenue problem, is speaking from a position of anti-tax ideology, rather than empirical data, so a rebuttal is probably pointless.”

Of course, the filthy Repug assaults on regulations and attempts to drag America down to the level of the Third World are all masked as “job creation,” despite all evidence to the contrary.  Rex Nutting wrote for that other Socialist rag, MarketWatch

“When Moses came down off Mount Sinai carrying the stone tablets, the Chamber of Commerce immediately fired off a press release denouncing the job-killing 10 Commandments.

And it’s been the same story ever since.

Whenever the people (that is, the government) propose some restriction to right some wrong, you’ll always find a businessman protesting that the costs would be too great and that, in the words of Charles Dickens in Hard Times, he would “sooner pitch his property into the Atlantic” than comply with the rules.

Of course, no property is ever pitched in the ocean. The businessman does what businessmen do: He fights the regulation tooth and nail, but if it is approved, he finds a way to make money without poisoning the water, fouling the air, employing toddlers or killing his customers.

Lately, though, the business lobbyists have become emboldened. In our current economic calamity, they see the opportunity to roll back all the restrictions that — like a hangnail — have absolutely ruined their very comfortable lives. And the Republican Party is a willing tool.

…Under the law, agencies such as the Environmental Protection Agency are required to do an assessment of both the costs and benefits of their regulations. If the costs exceed the benefits, the rule must be killed.

The EPA has found that the benefits of the Clean Air Act regulations since 1990 have outweighed the costs by about 30 to 1: By 2020, the benefits will total $2 trillion vs. costs of $65 billion. Read the EPA study.

It turns out that sensible environmental regulations are actually good for business, as well as for the trees, fish and birds. Smart regulations create new jobs in industries that make pollution-control equipment or that provide environmental services. They encourage businesses to employ the most efficient equipment and methods. They help other industries to flourish that couldn’t otherwise, such as fishing, agriculture and tourism. They increase productivity by keeping workers alive and on the job. They benefit our children by keeping them free of poisons that can weaken their bodies and minds. Read a study by economist Dale Jorgenson on the economic benefits and costs of environmental regulations.

And as for “job killing tax hikes,” well… that’s just another canard. (click link below to continue)
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Newt Gingrich has renewed his attack on President Obama as “the finest food stamp president in the American history,” as if being a member of the “starvation” party is something to crow about.  But logic and morality are no virtues in Republican circles.  Newt, another Republican champion of “small government,” is actually the one who proposed taking children away from mothers who received welfare, proving once again that the Republican consistency in hypocrisy is only outweighed by their hatred of the poor. A funny thing, considering Republican policies create so many of them.

Though I hardly imagine Newt encountering many poor children on the way to racking up $250,000+ running tab at Tiffany’s & Co., he assures us that poor children have “no habits of working and have nobody around them who works.”

Now, in the history of Newt’s “bold” and bad ideas, he’s got more.  Give 10 lucky, lazy poor kids to Donald Trump – just in time for Trump’s latest book release.

As the AFL-CIO blog posted on Dec 6,

Newt Gingrich, who says child labor laws are “truly stupid” and wants to put low-income children in poor neighborhoods to work cleaning schools after he fires “all the unionized janitors,” has found an acolyte—Donald Trump.

Billionaire Trump—who most Republican presidential candidates are genuflecting before in hopes of a laying on of hands—endorsed Gingrich’s call to put poor kids to work. He told reporters, “I thought it was a good idea” and suggested they also work for him–as “apprenti.”

Gingrich apparently thinks all poor kids are lazy and says his plan will “get them into the habit of showing up and realizing that effort gets rewarded and that America is all about the work ethic.”

Last week he also inferred that low income-kids are crooks. He said “They have no habit of ‘I do this and you give me cash,’ unless it’s illegal.”

But, you see… Newt is just doing what Republicans do – kiss a rich man’s ass while taking shots at easy, politically unconnected targets – poor children – just like his lord and savior de jour, Jesus Christ, would have done.

WATCH: Rachel Maddow’s top segment from December 7th which explains just how vile Newt actually is:

As Occupy Wall Street protesters massed in Lower Manhattan on November 17th, just days after he shut out the press and evicted them – Gestopo style – from Zuccotti park, New York City tinpot tyrant Mayor Michael Bloomberg addressed an enthralled audience of his compatriots in the 1% and in his typical, dismissive, patronizing style, said, “Occupy Wall Street had this great saying, and they were chanting it: ‘We don’t know what we want, but we want it now!’”  This, apparently,  prompted the crowd, which included filthy wiretapper Rupert Murdoch, to chortle with laughter.

These morally bankrupt, impotent, bankster thugs, need to laugh, you see… it’s a nervous reaction to that gnawing fear that their party is coming to an end.    In their hearts they know that the 99% ACTUALLY HAVE an agenda – to end the corrosive influence of wealth on our government – and they are catching on to the fact that Bloomberg and his buddies are problem.

The meme is out there.  Occupy Wall Street doesn’t know what they want… they’re unemployed and unemployable… they just have nothing better to do… and they SMELL – just ask Newt Gingrich!  He’ll tell you!  But, you see… Newt, the only Speaker of the House to ever be sanctioned for ethics violations,  like the rest of his pals in the elite catbird seats of power, has a vested interest in maintaining a corrupt government system that operates solely as an appendage to the affairs of billionaires.

End Corporate Welfare… Stop Corporate Control of Government Banks… Banks Got Bailed Out We Got Sold Out… Bring Back Glass Steagall Act… Wall Street Bailout is Socialism for the Wealthy… Gee… What could they want? WHO KNOWS?

As usual, some poor Faux News victims actually repeat the disparaging refrains against the 99% movement, comfortable in their role of disenfranchised wage slave clinging to the hope that a billionaire might one day meet them for a beer.  They think the Occupiers  should just “occupy” a job… hopelessly clueless to the reality that 30 years of ever-encroaching Corporate ownership of government has shipped jobs that used to pay a living wage to cheap labor nations… thus turning America from a growing democracy where the majority of citizens enjoyed comfortable, middle class, lives into the LEAST upwardly mobile with the widest income gap of all industrialized nations.   It’s pretty damn tragic that any member of the working class would cheer on these policies, but that’s the power of propaganda – and the 1% knows it.
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Attempting to grasp the American Dream during this New Gilded Age is as futile waiting for Dick Cheney to repent for his war crimes.  Thus, the ranks of the 99% Movement swells daily.

Lately, we’ve been told the system is “broken,” but the truth is, it’s not.  The “system” that has slowly been slipped back into place over the last 30 years – one  supported by all Republicans and some CONservative Democrats  – has cultivated exactly the economic environment it was designed to create – one where the rich own and run everything and everyone else is relegated to their “natural place” as cheap labor serfs who (hopefully) compliantly await their rewards in Heaven.

Since the rumblings that eventually became the Occupy Wall Street movement were heard, Republicans are feigning outrage and attempting to shame those who question the rigged system as lazy, envious and engaging in the “class warfare” Republicans themselves have inflicted on workers for generations.   The true offenses have been committed against the workers who have simply been trying to live their lives in dignity despite the ruling class’ rapacious desire to exploit their lives for all they’re worth.

The fact is, the rich only whine about “class war” when the workers finally fight back.  They know what they hoped the workers would never catch on to – that government policy as it stands primarily favors the rich and keeps the middle class and poor forever in the grips of their power.

As Jake Blumgart wrote for Truthout,

the rich “…are able to preserve their wealth from the forces that decimate the earning power of your average American. While government programs for working or jobless Americans are under constant attack, the state frequently intervenes on behalf of the rich, or at least lets them keep their earnings, tax free (leaving the rest of us to pick up the tab).
Republicans in Congress, and to a lesser extent the Obama administration, seem to believe that austerity is the best way to deal with our recessionary woes (despite all economic evidence to the contrary). Instead of unraveling the safety net, voters should consider all the ways the government aids and abets the one class of people who clearly don’t need help”
Blumgart lists 4 ways government policies blatantly favor the rich:

1. Protectionism for high-income professionals, free trade for everyone else

…But while many Americans are forced into low-wage work with no benefits, our doctors are thehighest paid in the world. (Every year the medical profession dominates the Forbes list of best paying jobs in the U.S.) How did this happen? They protected themselves from overseas competition…

2. Rich and own a big house? Here’s some money!

…Rich people have larger mortgages and higher income taxes. Therefore, they get the most out of their mortgage interest tax deductions. Households earning more than $250,000 annually enjoy 10 times the remuneration of households with income between $40,000 and $75,000. Those homeowners earning $30,000 basically get nothing (check out the chart). Those without the income to buy a home, or who just choose to rent, are probably a bunch of impoverished Communists anyway, so they don’t get a damn thing…

3. A sales tax for bread but not for bonds (or stocks or futures)

…Sales taxes, which disproportionately hit low-income families, are in force across the nation. Taxes on financial transactions, which would disproportionately affect the rich, barely exist…

4. Tired of payroll taxes? The wealthy aren’t because they don’t have to pay

…When most people get their paychecks, income taxes are taken out up front, before they ever get their hands on the money. Not so the super-rich, that blessed class of executives, movie actors, big business owners, hedgefund managers, and star athletes. Through a variety of byzantine loopholes, they get to pay their income taxes years, if not decades, in the future. (There’s no interest on this late payment either)…

read the entire article with expanded explanations here.

So… you’re not imaging things.  Our entire system is rigged to keep the rich in their catbird seats, and to limit the power of the working class.  It’s no accident that most societies throughout history have been defined by small pockets of vast concentrated wealth who run everything and a small mercantile (middle) class, ruling over large pools of cheap – and exploitable – labor.

As George Carlin famously said, “The upper class keeps all of the money, pays none of the taxes. The middle class pays all of the taxes, does all of the work. The poor are there… just to scare the shit out of the middle class. Keep ‘em showing up at those jobs.”

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Since “Occupy Wall Street” began, Faux News, the corporate media and those in the top 1% have tried to paint the protests as nothing but a misguided rally of anarchists, simply looking for an excuse to sleep in a public park.  Contrast that depiction with the framing of the Teabag Party movement – drawn as well-meaning, “average Joe,” political neophytes… finally awakened to action by the frightening “Socialist” takeover of government spearheaded by the Obama Administration.  To live in the Reality-Based Community, is to know how laughable both assertions are.

We’ve seen those like Bill O’Reilly, in the traditional Conservative manor of “fixing the ‘facts’ around the policy,” and his producer-monkey skulk down to Liberty Square, and in their best impression of Andrew Breitbart, selectively-edit a piece making the protesters all look like fools.
As Media Matters reported:

“Fox News has begun attacking participants of the “Occupy Wall Street” protests across the country, claiming they are “deluded” and have “absolutely no purpose or focus in life.” Fox’s attacks stand in stark contrast with its relentless promotion and support of the tea party protests of 2009 and 2010.”

Rather than cause for demoralization on the part of working people everywhere, what these examples illustrate is the fact that the establishment elite are frightened and know their days of partying off our weary backs are numbered.

Normal people (non-Republicans/non-Teabaggers/non-transnational corporate sock-puppets) know what those in the foreign press, such as George Monbiot, know: that billionaires and their fake populist astroturf front groups like the Koch Brothers’ “American for Prosperity” have “mobilised the anger of people who found their conditions of life declining, and channelled it into a campaign to make them worse. Tea Party campaigners take to the streets to demand less tax for billionaires and worse health, education and social insurance for themselves.”

They know what Comedian Bill Maher knows… That Teabaggers are “sad, unfortunate people” because they are “corporate America’s useful idiots.”

The also know that the Occupy Wall Street protests reflect a very-real crisis in America – the Conservative-policy-induced decline of the American Middle Class.

That is the difference.  One, very real, populist movement is based in fact… and another, faux-populist movement is based in a fiction the transnational corporate Oligarchs need people to believe if they are to continue pulling off the greatest transfer of wealth upwards since the FIRST Gilded Age. 

All one has to do is listen to the concerns of the people at Occupy Wall Street and contrast them to those at the Teabag Party rallies to see that while the Teabaggers are railing against mythical “Sharia Law” invasion,  demanding Obama’s birth certificate, the OWS protesters are drawing attention to the corrosive influence of money in our government and fighting for the restoration of the America Dream.  In fact, as Lee Fang wrote, the Occupy Wall Street protests are the true heirs to the values of the Boston Tea Party. for these 5 reasons:

1.) The Original Boston Tea Party Was A Civil Disobedience Action Against A Private Corporation.

2.) The Original Boston Tea Party Feared That Corporate Greed Would Destroy America.

3.) The Original Boston Tea Party Believed Government Necessary To Protect Against Corporate Excess.

4.) The Original Boston Tea Party Was Sparked By A Corporate Tax Cut For A British Corporation.

5.) The Original Boston Tea Party Wanted A Stronger Democracy.

Read the rest of Lee Fang’s article with expanded explanations here.

A REAL Populist Movement Armed With FACTS:

A Faux Populist Movement Loaded with Misinformation and FEAR:

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From the time of our founding, we have always been a nation struggling to live up to our ideals.   We’ve often fallen short, yet we’ve at least pretended to be ruled by better angels.  Not so when in the grip of Conservative ideologues who thrive on appealing to the worst aspects of the human condition to achieve their “cheap labor” class war agenda.  In fact, to the current crop of Conservative presidential candidates, to appear as anything less than an arrogantly ignorant, science-denying bully is nothing short of an offense to the baby Jesus himself.

As of late, we’ve been forced to listen to our fellow Americans yell “let him die” when confronted with the hypothetical ethical question of whether an uninsured man should die without care because he couldn’t afford the luxury of buying a piece of our “uniquely American,” for-profit health insurance racket.  We’ve heard the cheers of teabaggers, gleeful that the rumored closet-case Republican governor, Rick Perry, presided over record numbers of executions in American history – including the execution of a man who was actually innocent.  And now we’ve listened to the audience at the latest Republican debate audibly boo an active—and gay—member of the military for having the audacity to be courageous enough to live an authentic life.    These unconscionable forays into the true Republican heart come at a time when a record 45 million Americans are living in poverty – a rate of 15.1% in 2010 -  the largest since the government first began publishing estimates, in 1959.  After the 30 year Republican dismantling of the New Deal,  America under right wing rule is feeling the strain and getting uglier by the minute.

In James Gilligan’s new book, Why Some Politicians Are More Dangerous Than Others (Polity Press, 2011) he explains that Republicans are very bad for your health.   Gilligan, Professor and MD at New York State University, has combed the statistics on violent deaths (homicide and suicide) for over a century, from 1900 through to 2007, and found an interesting – but not unexpected -  political causation.
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As the nation reflects on the 10th anniversary of the September 11th, 2001 terrorist attacks on the nation, Evangelical Christians are doing what they do best – whining that they aren’t the center of attention.

Never mind that 10 years ago, as the country was still numb from the attacks, two of America’s most well-heeled Jesus® hawkers, Jerry Falwell and Pat Robertson, didn’t miss the opportunity to blame the attacks, not on the religious fundamentalists who were the mirror image of themselves (if you subscribe to the official story, that is), but on the secular society our Founding Fathers left to us.

The New York Times reported:

“For a decade, New York City has conducted the same ritualized ceremony on each anniversary of the attacks. The heart of the ritual has been the reading aloud of the names of the victims. In 2003, the victims’ children read the names; in 2004, it was their parents; and in 2007, the honor went to first responders.

The names are read in a continuous stream for hours, with four breaks to allow moments of silence at the times when hijacked planes struck the two World Trade Center towers, and when each tower fell.dse

This year, there will be six moments of silence, to acknowledge also the planes that hit the Pentagon and the ground near Shanksville, Pa., said Stu Loeser, Mr. Bloomberg’s press secretary.

“The structure for this program was designed 10 years ago, with the consultation of a lot of families of those who died, and it is primarily for the families,” Mr. Loeser said.

It is wrong to say the ceremony excludes prayer or clergy members, Mr. Loeser said. Chaplains for the Fire and Police Departments and the Port Authority police often attend, and “we think most people use those moments of silence for reflection and prayer,” he said.

Thankfully, Mayor Bloomberg is not caving to the religious fanatics whose agenda is to co-opt a solemn ceremony to proselytize about THEIR brand of organize myth in their continuous crusade to erase the dividing line between church and state.

A recent study found that besides not being the nonpartisan political neophytes Faux News makes them out to be, Teabaggers share a common desire to turn America into exactly into the kind of Theocratic nation our Founders fought a revolution to escape.  An alarming fact, given the political pandering to the Teabaggers that seems to be epidemic in Washington.  One need only look at how the Middle East, once the cradle of civilization, now stays permanently stuck in the dark ages as secular world sends human beings into space, to see modern examples illustrating the dangers of religion in politics,

Make no mistake, Jerry Falwell, Pat Robertson and Osama Bin Ladin have a lot in common (take the Pat Robertson/Jerry Falwell/Osama Bin Laden quiz as proof)… and there isn’t a hare’s breath of difference between Islamic fundamentalists and Christian fundamentalists – and Heaven help us if they get a hold of our government (more than they already have, I should say.)