December 21, 2012

MSNBC Host Goes Off On Republican Rep For ACCUSING Him Of EXPLOITING Newtown Shooting For Political

Rep. Tim Huelskamp (R-KS) accused MSNBC’s Joe Scarborough and other gun safety advocates of politicizing the tragic shooting in Newtown, Connecticut to advance a “political agenda” of greater gun safety, outraging the former Florida Congressman.


“I think it’s an issue of the Second Amendment,” Huelskamp said in response to a question abut why he opposes banning assault weapons. “It says we have a right to protect ourselves.” He added: “but Gosh, let’s step back. Let’s not build on the tragedy in Connecticut and use that to actually push a political agenda.” The charge riled Scarborough who, in the aftermath of the shooting, abandoned his opposition to gun safety and said that he would support sensible gun regulations.


The Morning Joe host quickly reminded Huelskamp that the nation acted swiftly after the terrorist attacks on 9/11 and explained that taking sensible measures to prevent future massacres is not exploitative. But Huelskamp insisted that the government should stay out and said that parents must educate their children to not play violent video games:













cont'

http://thinkprogress.org/politics/2012/12/21/1370251/msnbc-host-goes-off-on-republican-rep-for-accusing-him-of-exploiting-newtown-shooting-for-political-purposes/

December 21, 2012

Obama PROPOSES Social Security CUTS

- " According to press reports Tuesday, the White House counter-offer to Boehner calls for reducing future cost-of-living increases in Social Security benefits by adopting an inflation index that is deliberately distorted to underestimate the amounts that the elderly will have to pay for the essentials of life. The new inflation index, called a "chained" Consumer Price Index, will cut as much as $225 billion in spending over the next 10 years, half of that from Social Security recipients and the rest from the pensions of retired federal workers and other benefit payments. There are other reactionary features of the White House proposal: limiting the expiration of the Bush-era tax cuts to families with incomes above $400,000 a year, up from the longstanding Obama position of $250,000; allowing the partial payroll tax holiday to expire, effectively imposing a two percent tax on the wages of every American worker; and maintaining the 20 percent rate on dividend income, which goes overwhelmingly to the wealthy, instead of allowing it to rise to 39.6 percent as provided for in current law.



- All told, the White House plan would cut $400 billion from spending on federal health care programs, mainly Medicare, $122 billion from Social Security, and another $400 billion from other domestic spending, as well as saving $290 billion in interest costs. The historical implications of a bipartisan deal on such a basis were spelled out in a New York Times analysis by Eduardo Porter, who wrote: "The truth is that both the president and House Republicans have agreed to shrink a critical part of the government to its smallest in at least half a century. This is regardless of which trillion-dollar proposal gains the upper hand."



- "To put it in perspective," Porter continued, "this would cut the government's civilian discretionary budget to the smallest it has been as a share of the economy at least since the Eisenhower administration -- when a quarter of the population lived under the poverty line, thousands of children still contracted polio each year and fewer than one in 12 Americans older than 25 had a college degree." In other words, what is being worked out in the talks between Obama and Boehner is nothing less than the terms of a social retrogression of unprecedented dimensions. Using the concocted threat of a December 31 "fiscal cliff," when some $600 billion in tax increases and spending cuts are scheduled to begin because of previous Washington agreements, the representatives of big business, Democratic and Republican, are proposing to begin the dismantling of the social reforms enacted in the 20th century.



The White House decision to propose cuts in future Social Security benefits is of enormous political significance. Social Security has long been characterized as the "third rail" of American politics -- touch it and you die. Obama and Boehner are seeking to break this taboo and create a new political framework for imposing brutal austerity measures on working people. Whatever the immediate outcome of the talks in Washington, whether or not a deal is reached before December 31, the overall direction is clear: entitlement programs like Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid are to be gutted. The only significant area of federal spending will be the military-police agencies required to defend the interests of the financial aristocracy -- overseas against foreign rivals and revolutions, at home against the American working class.






cont'


http://opednews.com/articles/Obama-proposes-Social-Secu-by-Patrick-Martin-121220-170.html

December 21, 2012

FOX NEWS == TERRORISTS

For years, a terrorist network has been breeding in the heart of the United States. It uses its power and influence to incite violence, and has gallons of blood on its hands. It fills the heads of millions of people with its propoganda and lies in order to create an army of people willing to surrender their lives for the cause.


The name of this terrorist organization: FOX NEWS.


Fox News, run by Roger Ailes, engages in a form of terrorism known as Stochastic Terrorism. Using its media empire of both televised and radio broadcasted affiliates, it purposefully distorts, lies, and desceives its audience with the results being all too common in todays day and age.





This is the method of terrorism performed by Osama Bin Laden during his life. He would “suggest” that it would be “nice” if something were to happen. His network of brainwashed affiliates would then carry out the suggestion. It is a very old tactic, as Henry II of England famously uttered “who will rid me of this turbulent priest?” The death of Saint Thomas of Canterbury thanks to these words being carried out by four of Henry’s knights, Reginald fitzUrse, Hugh de Morville, William de Tracy, and Richard le Breton, has been forever etched into history as a result. King Henry did not order them to kill Saint Thomas, but the death came from his words none the less. The role of Fox News in terrorist activity has come to the forefront in the war on terror with the guilty plea by Randolph Linn in the case of the arson of the Islamic Center of Greater Toledo. During the court hearing, Randolph had this to say according to a mosque member who attended the hearing:





&feature=player_embedded





http://www.addictinginfo.org/2012/12/20/fox-news-terrorists-video/


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December 20, 2012

The American Legion & Disabled American Veterans OPPOSE The CHAINED-CPI

SPEAK UP NOW!! Let them know that they were elected to SERVE THE PEOPLE and NOT THEIR hidden agendas.




The American Legion opposes the Chained CPI

Disabled American Veterans oppose the Chained CPI





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December 20, 2012

Nancy Pelosi Says Social Security CUT Proposed By Obama Would 'Strengthen' Program

Was this their plan from the get-go? Did we swallow their seasoned tripe hook, line and sinker?





WASHINGTON -- Congressional Democrats, led by House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (Calif.), signaled greater willingness on Wednesday to cut Social Security benefits, with the party now considering a change to the way inflation is calculated for recipients. Pelosi told reporters on Capitol Hill that a cut proposed by President Barack Obama in the fiscal cliff negotiations would in fact "strengthen" the program, echoing the claims often made by Republicans about entitlement programs they want to slash. Her remarks come a day after she said that liberals in Congress who are unhappy with Obama's concession to the GOP would nevertheless support them.



The cut involves swapping out the traditional method for calculating cost of living increases, based on the current standard for measuring inflation, for something called a chained CPI, or chained Consumer Price Index. The chained CPI works by assuming that when the price of a product, such as beef, gets too high, consumers don't keep paying the higher prices. Instead, the model predicts they will switch to something cheaper, such as chicken, keeping their cost of living lower and leading to a lower rate of inflation, as measured by the chained CPI. The lower rate of inflation would mean a downward adjustment in cost of living, and thus stingier benefits.



The cuts would start small, but wind up costing beneficiaries thousands of dollars over time, which is why Democrats have traditionally fought the idea.But Pelosi wrapped both her arms around it Wednesday, insisting she does not regard it as a "cut." "No, I don’t," she told reporters. "I consider it a strengthening of Social Security, but that’s neither here nor there."



"There’s no use even discussing that because we don’t even know if we have plan," she continued. "And if the savings that the Republicans are talking about is $300 billion, then the cuts to be made on the other side are far lower. And that’s how we see it. But it is interesting to see that even with the concessions on cuts and, what you just described, the chained CPI and things like that -– the president put on the table what everybody has been discussing for quite a long time. And once again, as he did 18 months ago, the speaker walked away. The speaker walked away. There’s an attempt to try to put it at the president’s doorstep, which is completely ridiculous. In fact, some would say, 'befuddling.'"





cont'

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/12/19/nancy-pelosi-social-security_n_2333285.html

December 19, 2012

EZRA KLEIN: The TRICK Washington Is Using To CUT Social Security and Medicare

Let’s get something straight: “Chained-CPI” cuts Social Security benefits and increases taxes. That’s why it’s part of the negotiations. Full stop. But you often wouldn’t know it. The policy typically gets sold on extremely technocratic grounds. Here, for instance, is the case made by Erskine Bowles and Alan Simpson’s Moment of Truth Project:





Chained-CPI, in this telling, is simply an effort to correct a measurement error in the way we calculate inflation. It’s a tweak, a fix, a policy designed to achieve a higher level of technical precision. And who could be against that? There’s something to this line of argument. The way we measure inflation right now really does mismeasure inflation. Chained-CPI really is a bit more accurate. But that’s not why we’re considering moving to chained-CPI. If all we wanted to do was correct the technical problem, we could make the correction and then compensate the losers. But no one ever considers that. The only reason we’re considering moving to chained-CPI because it saves money, and it saves money by cutting Social Security benefits and raising taxes, and it’s a much more regressive approach to cutting Social Security benefits and raising taxes than some of the other options on the table.



The question worth asking, then, is if we want to cut Social Security benefits, why are we talking about chained-CPI, rather than some other approach to cutting benefits that’s perhaps more equitable? The answer is that chained-CPI’s role in correcting inflation measurement error is helpful in distracting people from its role in cutting Social Security benefits. Politicians who are unwilling or unable to offer a persuasive political or policy rationale for cutting Social Security benefits are instead hiding behind a technocratic rationale. We’re not “cutting benefits,” we’re “correcting our inflation measure.” A similar dynamic is behind the popularity of raising the retirement age, or the Medicare eligibility age: Its advocates can pretend that it’s not a cut, but a technical adjustment made to account for the fact that Americans are living longer. Compared to other approaches to cutting benefits, raising the retirement age is, again, a substantively unwise, regressive approach. But it can be justified as a mere technocratic tweak.




This is bad policymaking. If we want to cut Social Security and/or Medicare, we should have a conversation about how to cut Social Security and/or Medicare, decide what our priorities are — Progressivity? Making the health-care system more efficient? Total deficit-reduction? — and find the policy that does the best job achieving those goals. The effort to mask cuts in technical adjustments just leads to worse cuts, as the top priority isn’t protecting the poorest or improving the program, but finding a policy sufficiently confusing that you can pass it before most people realize what it is.




http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/wonkblog/wp/2012/12/18/the-trick-washington-is-using-to-cut-social-security-and-medicare/

December 19, 2012

Jake Tapper Challenges Obama On Gun Violence: 'WHERE'VE YOU BEEN?'

December 19, 2012

CREW Names The TOP 12 SCANDALS Of 2012

Washington, D.C. — What were the biggest ethics scandals of the year? Today, Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington (CREW) released its Top 12 Scandals of 2012, a dirty dozen that includes congressional corruption, public officials cloaking their actions in secrecy, and the biggest scandal of all: millionaires, corporations, and shadowy non-profits taking advantage of America’s lax election regulations in a blatant attempt to suppress voters and buy elections.


Relatively trivial matters like CIA Director David Petraeus’ affair, revelations that a few House Republicans went skinny-dipping in the Sea of Galilee, and political posturing over “Fast and Furious” got more coverage than they deserved, while some of the real scandals flew under the radar.


“The Petraeus affair was titillating, but the failure of our government to enforce our election laws is disgraceful. What is more outrageous than the damage done to our democracy this year?” said CREW Executive Director Melanie Sloan. “The combination of a few incredibly wealthy people attempting to buy our elections and the widespread efforts to prevent many Americans from voting are the real scandals of the year.”



CREW’s Top 12 Scandals of 2012 (in order of significance):








http://www.citizensforethics.org/press/entry/crew-top-12-scandals-2012

December 19, 2012

Can We Please Stop Pretending Obama is “Capitulating” on Social Security?

FireDogLake

Jane Hamsher:


Everywhere you look, the media narrative is that President Obama is “capitulating” to Republicans by agreeing to cuts in Social Security benefits. And I have to ask, where is this collective political amnesia coming from? Obama has made a deliberate and concerted effort to cut Social Security benefits since the time he took office. FDL reported on February 12, 2009 that the White House was meeting behind closed doors to consider ways to cut Social Security benefits, and that the framework they were using was the Diamond-Orszag plan, which was co-authored by OMB Director Peter Orszag when he was at the Brookings Institute.




The birth of the now-ubiquitous “catfood” meme came on February 18, 2009 with this FDL headline:






As I wrote in August of 2010, Peterson’s keynote spot was the worst kept secret in town; I knew about it because I had been on a conference call with about 40 representatives of various DC interest groups, many of whom had received written notice from the White House that Peterson was scheduled to headline the event. But nobody wanted to go on the record for fear of jeopardizing their relationship with the administration in its early days. After FDL broke the news, Peterson was “disinvited” from the summit. Both he and the White House denied everything, but Robert Kuttner subsequently confirmed in the Washington Post that Peterson had, in fact, been scheduled as the keynote speaker that day.



The administration backed off its immediate plans for reforming Social Security. The New York Times reported that they were “running into opposition from his party’s left” who are “vehement in opposing any reductions in scheduled benefits for future retirees.” But NYT columnist David Brooks reported that shortly after the summit, “four senior members of the administration” called him to say that Obama “is extremely committed to entitlement reform and is plotting politically feasible ways to reduce Social Security.” Undeterred, the White House began telling journalists off the record http://www.time.com/time/politics/article/0,8599,1881223,00.html that they were interested in “establishing an independent commission (outside the congressional committee structure) to look at creating a specific reform plan.”



In January of 2010, a bill sponsored by committed Social Security slashers Judd Gregg and Kent Conrad which would have created an official commission to make recommendations about the nation’s deficit was defeated by the Senate on a bipartisan vote — 22 Democrats and 24 Republicans voted no. After the Senate defeat, on February 18, President Obama issued an executive order creating what subsequently became known as the “Catfood Commission” anyway. Unlike Bill Clinton’s Danforth Commission, which ended in deadlock, Obama set this commission up in such a way that it was stacked with deficit hawks who largely agreed on what needed to be done: 12 of the 18 members were to be appointed by Senate and House leaders in each party, and 6 would be appointed by the President. This virtually guaranteed that Social Security privatization fetishist Paul Ryan would be on the commission, as would Gregg and Conrad.










cont'

http://fdlaction.firedoglake.com/2012/12/19/can-we-please-stop-pretending-obama-is-capitulating-on-social-security/
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December 19, 2012

The Right’s ‘Limited Government’ SCAM

A favorite line from the American Right – both well-educated libertarians and know-nothing Tea Partiers – is that the Founders believed in “limited government” and the United States must return to that constitutional principle. But the argument is both nonsensical and insulting. Everyone believes in “limited government” – unless you’re a totalitarian or a fan of absolute monarchies. Liberals, conservatives, socialists, free-market ideologues and pretty much everyone in between believe in limitations of government power. The point of having a constitution is to set the limits and rules for a government.




That is what the Framers did with the U.S. Constitution in 1787. They set limits, but they also vastly expanded the central government’s powers, a fact that today’s Right doesn’t want to acknowledge. Indeed, that’s why the Articles of Confederation, the Constitution’s precursor, has disappeared from the typical right-wing recitation of early U.S. history, which starts with the Declaration of Independence in 1776 and jumps to the Constitution in 1787 and the Bill of Rights in 1791. Left out of the chronology is what governed the country from 1777 to 1787, i.e. the Articles of Confederation.




The reason that the Articles of Confederation are an inconvenient truth for the Right is that the Articles represented what the Right pretends the Constitution stands for now, strong states’ rights and a weak federal government. The Articles even made the 13 states “sovereign” and “independent” and left the central authority as only a “league of friendship” dependent on the states. However, under that structure, the young nation was coming apart as states went off in their own directions, the economy struggled and European powers looked to exploit the divisions. Then, in 1786, when a populist uprising known as Shays’ Rebellion rocked western Massachusetts, the federal government lacked the money and means to field a military force to restore order. The revolt was eventually put down by an army financed by wealthy Bostonians.




George Washington, reflecting on the worsening chaos, wrote in support of a plan by fellow Virginian James Madison to give the federal government control over national commerce, declaring: “We are either a united people, or we are not. If the former, let us, in all matters of a general concern act as a nation, which have national objects to promote, and a national character to support. If we are not, let us no longer act a farce by pretending it to be.” When it became clear that the Articles of Confederation could not be feasibly amended to address the country’s problems, Washington and Madison led what amounted to a bloodless coup d’etat against the states’ “sovereign” powers. This coup was known as the Constitutional Convention. It was conducted in secret in Philadelphia and resulted in the Constitution, which flipped the power relationships between the central government and the states, making federal law supreme and dramatically expanding the powers of the national government. Today’s Right doesn’t want to acknowledge this history because it destroys the right-wing narrative by revealing the Framers to be advocates of a strong central government and opponents of states’ rights.








cont'

http://consortiumnews.com/2012/12/18/the-rights-limited-government-scam/