Should Signal the End of the Republican Party

This truly is unbelievable- Senate Republicans filibustering to prevent help from going to 9/11 first responders. But they did get their tax cuts for millionaires and billionaires. Tea Party wake up! If these people are willing to let 9/11 heroes die- do you think they really care about you?

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Obama Folds Again!

While campaigning, Obama ridiculed the idea that "we should give more and more to millionaires and billionaires and hope that it trickles down on everybody else." But despite his campaign promise and the fact that most Americans oppose more tax cuts for the very rich, the President has reversed himself and once again caved in to the Republicans. Under a tentative plan, over the next two years, the richest 2% would get large tax breaks they do not need and which are inefficient at stimulating the economy. Further this "bipartisan" plan would irresponsibly add hundreds of billions of dollars to the deficit (as Colbert said "bipartisan" now means the Republicans present a partisan plan and Obama buys it).


We are grateful to Congressman Hinchey (NYCD 22) who has signed on to the Peter Welch letter opposing more bailouts for the rich in the House. There are also signs of a rebellion in the Senate. Bernie Sanders has vowed to do all he can to end more bailouts for millionaires and billionaires. He has not ruled out a filibuster. Go Bernie go!


Call your Senators 202 224-3121 and the White House 202 456-1414 and say you expect them to stand up for hard working American families instead of the richest of the rich. No extra tax cuts for those making over $250,000 a year. The survival of the middle class in America depends on it!

No Bailouts for Millionaires and Billionaires!

Barry Blitt, New York Times

From 2002 to 2006, as American's median income went down and poverty rose, 3/4 of all the economic growth was captured by the top 1%. Today, the disparity in income in our nation is comparable to the Gilded Age when Robber Barons ruled. Plutocracy (government control by the wealthiest) has been growing in the United States for over thirty years. From 1980 to 2005 more than 4/5 of the total increase in American incomes went to the richest 1%.  If Republicans have their way, this ongoing financial coup, that threatens the very existence of America's middle class, will continue with the top 20% getting 60% of the Bush tax cuts.

Proponents of further enriching millionaires and billionaires call our country's wealthiest "job creators" and say America's small businesses cannot afford to be further taxed during a recession. Hmmmm, but the Bush tax cuts for the super rich have been in place for 10 years- how has that worked out in creating new jobs? Also, 98% of small businesses in our country will see NO tax increase if Bush tax cuts are allowed to expire for those making $200,000 or $250,000 for a couple. Further, the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office says that tax cuts are the least effective means of spurring the economy of 11 policy options.

Not letting tax cuts expire for the wealthiest among us will also add $700 billion to the deficit. David Stockman, former budget adviser to Ronald Reagan is against it and says the Republicans "should be ashamed " for proposing it. Stockman also said "the top five percent have a net worth of $40 trillion. The top five percent have gained more wealth than the whole human race had created prior to 1980."

Making the Bush tax cuts permanent for millionaires and billionaires is all about politicians rewarding their biggest donors- it is not about growing the economy or helping hard working American families.

Please call your elected representatives today- 202 224-3121- Tell them no bailouts for the super rich.
Don't increase the annual income to $1 million as Sen Schumer has proposed. If you are making $200,000 as an individual or $250,000 as a couple, chances are you are already a millionaire and can well afford having your taxes increased by a measly 3% or so.

One statistic has stayed with me from the Bush era- under his administration the richest 400 families were enriched by over $400 billion! We should be working to get that money back, not giving them yet more. In our country, the richest 400 have more wealth than 155 million people combined. This is not sustainable for a democracy.

This is a perfect issue for Democrats to be strong on. Decouple the tax cuts for the middle class that everyone agrees should happen. Then make the Republicans make a case for making the super rich even richer at a time when our deficit is ballooning out of control and the middle class is suffering at levels not seen since the Great Depression.

Nicholas Kristoff  recently said the USA is now in the notorious league of banana republics, where there is a vast disparity in wealth. We now have greater inequality in income than countries like Nicaragua and Venezuela. We are in the midst of a class war and we, the 98% who make less than $200,000 a year, are losing.

It is time for America citizens to come together to restore government to "we, the people", and to fight for  fairness, equal opportunity and our democratic way of life.

175,000 for Jobs and Justice!

One Nation Rally  Oct 2                                                                   Huffington Post

175,000 to 200,000 Americans attended the One Nation Working Together Rally October 2 in Washington to promote job creation, education, health care and tolerance. Yet on NBC News (the only major network to even mention it) Sunday night there was a screen shot of the rally for all of about two seconds. Compare that to the Tea Party's rally on the same Mall that was estimated at 87,000 and garnered tons of news coverage. I think it will be harder to ignore Stewart's Rally to Restore Sanity on Oct 30th!

Lou Schultz delivered a fiery message telling the politicians to represent us, the people- not the big corporate special interests. He talked about how Republicans are all about profit, shipping jobs overseas and concentrating wealth at the very top and urged everyone to vote on Nov 2.

"This gathering here today is America’s wake-up call. The giant called democracy is at last stirring again. Citizens are coming together to say freedom does not sleep. It may have been fueled and lulled for the moment into a lethargy, but it’s fully awake now. And we the people are its engine."                                                                                Harry Belafonte

NAACP President Ben Jealous said it was the most diverse gathering on the National Mall ever. “We have environmentalist and mine workers. We have conservative faith groups. We have Black people, Brown people; Jewish, Christians and Muslims; White people, Asian people and Native Americans all working together towards this goal of increase in investment in creating jobs and making sure that every child goes to a great school.”

One Nation                                                                    Huffington Post

This is the real face of America- diverse, optimistic and striving for justice for hard working American families.

This video from Crooks and Liars is shaky- but I think captures the spirit of the day-

Obama Warns about Threat to Our Democracy

I have been writing about the Supreme Court decision since it was decided last January. Five activist justices ruled that corporations with their unrivaled wealth can spend all they like to defeat or elect candidates of their choosing. As our president says- this a a threat to democracy itself.
    CORPORATIONS ARE NOT PEOPLE!        MONEY IS NOT SPEECH!

Thousands of Americans Rally for Religious Freedom

2,000 attended a candlelight vigil for religious freedom 9/10   DNAinfo

9/11 Rally against Racism and Islamic Bigotry      photo: Shirley Warren

A Rally for Tolerance                                       Photo: Shirley Warren

                 
Two thousand came out September 10 for an interfaith candlelight vigil in support of the Muslim community center project in New York City. The next day, on 9/11 thousands more marched peacefully in an Emergency Mobilization against Racism and Anti-Islamic Bigotry. Where was the news coverage? When a fraction of that number of Tea Partiers show up for an anti-mosque rally, the mainstream media is all over it.

The New York Times did quote one young man who attended both  rallies for religious freedom. He spoke of his friends who have been wounded in the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan and said he found it offensive that, on one hand we ask young people to fight in Muslim countries for their freedom, "but peaceful Muslims can't build a community center in New York City in their own country."


Contrast this with the "No Mosque" and "USA" chants from a rally a few blocks away on 9/11. When Muslims were mentioned there, there were shouts of "kill them all". Geert Wilders, who has likened the Koran to "Mein Kampf" and wants it banned in the Netherlands, was one of the speakers at that rally.

So although there is a rising tide of anti-Islamic speech and actions around our country (the stabbing of a Muslim taxi driver, the destruction and desecration of mosques, the hate speech) there is also a rising up of ordinary Americans who are standing in solidarity with Muslims and speaking out against racism and religious intolerance. Leaders of three dozen mainstream US religious denominations recently said, "We stand by the principle that to attack any religion in the US is to do violence to the religious freedom of all Americans."

Feisal Abdul Kauf, the coordinator of the Muslim community center project, was Bush's "go to guy" to represent moderate Islam after 9/11. He has a 37 year history of countering radical ideology. In a recent Op Ed in the New York Times he spoke of wanting to cultivate understanding among all religions and cultures. The center would have separate prayer spaces for Muslims, Christians and Jews. He said he saw it as a "center for unification and healing." And just for the record, the mosque will not be "looming up from the ashes of Ground Zero" but will be two city blocks away and will not even be able to be seen from the World Trade Center property.


Voices of reason, compassion and tolerance are needed now more than ever. Voices like Pastor Steve Stone, who when he heard a mosque was being built next to his Heartsong Church rushed out to erect a banner- and this is what it said:

                                                   screengrab from MSNBC's "Countdown"

That is the America I know.





 

Stand for Religous Freedom and against Intolerance!

PLEDGE:
We are proud to live in the United States, a country founded on constitutional principles of tolerance and religious freedom.

We affirm America's commitment to these principles.

We condemn bigotry and intolerance by any and all, especially those who murder others in the false name of their religion.

We condemn the act of burning the Koran, a sacred text for millions of Americans and others around the world, as we would condemn the burning of all sacred texts.

We pledge to remember Americans and others from around the world, including Muslims, Christians, Jews, and people of other faiths, who were murdered on September 11, 2001, American service men and women of all faiths who have lost their lives in the wars since then, and innocent civilians, of all faiths, who have died in those wars, and to honor their sacrifice by reaffirming our commitment to the principles of tolerance and religious freedom.

We encourage all to light a candle on the evenings of September 10 and 11 in memoriam and in reaffirmation of these principles. 

SIGN THE PLEDGE AT:
http://salsa.democracyinaction.org/o/632/p/dia/action/public/?action_KEY=4685
 

Rich's Op Ed in NY Times

Op-Ed Columnist

Freedom’s Just Another Word

Barry Blitt

by Frank Rich
Published: Sept 4, 2010

What was so grievously missing from Obama’s address was any feeling for what has happened to our country during the seven-and-a-half-year war whose “end” he was marking. That legacy of anger and grief is what “Freedom” mainlines to its readers. In chronicling one Midwestern family as it migrates from St. Paul to Washington during the 9/11 decade, Franzen does for our traumatic time what Tom Wolfe’s “The Bonfire of the Vanities” did for the cartoonish go-go 1980s. Or perhaps, more pertinently, what “The Great Gatsby” did for the ominous boom of the 1920s. The heady intoxication of freedom is everywhere in “Freedom,” from extramarital sexual couplings to the consumer nirvana of the iPod to Operation Iraqi Freedom itself. Yet most everyone, regardless of age or calling or politics, is at war — not with terrorists, but with depression, with their consciences and with one another.

This mood has not lifted and may be thickening as we trudge toward Year 10 in Afghanistan. But Obama only paid it lip service. It’s a mystery why a candidate so attuned to the nation’s pulse, most especially on the matter of war, has grown tone deaf in office. On Tuesday, Obama asked the country to turn the page on Iraq as if that were as easy as, say, voting for him in 2008. His brief rhetorical pivot from the war to the economy only raised the question of why the crisis of joblessness has not merited a prime-time Oval Office speech of its own.

That Obama did consider Iraq worthy of that distinction — one heretofore shared only by the BP oil spill — was hardly justified by his tepid pronouncements of progress (“credible elections that drew a strong turnout”) or his tidy homilies about the war’s impact. “Our unity at home was tested,” he said, as if all those bygones were now bygones and all the toxins unleashed by this fiasco had miraculously evaporated once we drew down to 50,000 theoretically non-combat troops.

Americans are less forgiving. In recent polls, 60 percent of those surveyed thought the war in Iraq was a mistake, 70 percent thought it wasn’t worth American lives, and only a quarter believed it made us safer from terrorism. This sour judgment is entirely reality-based. The war failed in all its stated missions except the toppling of Saddam Hussein.

While we were distracted searching for Iraq’s nonexistent weapons of mass destruction, Iran began revving up its actual nuclear program and Osama bin Laden and his fanatics ran free to regroup in Afghanistan and Pakistan. We handed Al Qaeda a propaganda coup by sacrificing America’s signature values on the waterboard. We disseminated untold billions of taxpayers’ dollars from Baghdad’s Green Zone, much of it cycled corruptly through well-connected American companies on no-bid contracts, yet Iraq still doesn’t have reliable electricity or trustworthy security. Iraq’s “example of freedom,” as President Bush referred to his project in nation building and democracy promotion, did not inspire other states in the Middle East to emulate it. It only perpetuated the Israeli-Palestinian logjam it was supposed to help relieve.

For this sad record, more than 4,400 Americans and some 100,000 Iraqis (a conservative estimate) paid with their lives. Some 32,000 Americans were wounded, and at least two million Iraqis, representing much of the nation’s most valuable human capital, went into exile. The war’s official cost to U.S. taxpayers is now at $750 billion.

Of all the commentators on the debacle, few speak with more eloquence or credibility than Andrew Bacevich, a professor of history and international relations at Boston University who as a West Point-trained officer served in Vietnam and the first gulf war and whose son, also an Army officer, was killed in Iraq in 2007. Writing in The New Republic after Obama’s speech, he decimated many of the war’s lingering myths, starting with the fallacy, reignited by the hawks taking a preposterous victory lap last week, that “the surge” did anything other than stanch the bleeding from the catastrophic American blundering that preceded it. As Bacevich concluded: “The surge, now remembered as an epic feat of arms, functions chiefly as a smokescreen, obscuring a vast panorama of recklessness, miscalculation and waste that politicians, generals, and sundry warmongers are keen to forget.”

Bacevich also wrote that “common decency demands that we reflect on all that has occurred in bringing us to this moment.” Americans’ common future demands it too. The war’s corrosive effect on the home front is no less egregious than its undermining of our image and national security interests abroad. As the Pentagon rebrands Operation Iraqi Freedom as Operation New Dawn — a “name suggesting a skin cream or dishwashing liquid,” Bacevich aptly writes — the whitewashing of our recent history is well under way. The price will be to keep repeating it.

We can’t afford to forget now that the single biggest legacy of the Iraq war at home was to codify the illusion that Americans can have it all at no cost. We willed ourselves to believe Paul Wolfowitz when he made the absurd prediction that Iraq’s oil wealth would foot America’s post-invasion bills. We were delighted to accept tax cuts, borrow other countries’ money, and run up the federal deficit long after the lure of a self-financing war was unmasked as a hoax. The cultural synergy between the heedless irresponsibility we practiced in Iraq and our economic collapse at home could not be more naked. The housing bubble, inflated by no-money-down mortgage holders on Main Street and high-risk gamblers on Wall Street, was fueled by the same greedy disregard for the laws of fiscal gravity that governed the fight-now-pay-later war.

Our attitude toward the war’s human cost was no less cavalier. We were all too content to let a volunteer army fight our battles out of sight and out of mind, on a fictional pretext yoked to a military strategy premised on a cakewalk. For too long we looked the other way as the coffins arrived in Dover off camera in the shroud of night, as the maimed endured inhumane treatment in military hospitals at home, and as the Iraqi refugees who aided Operation Iraqi Freedom at their own peril were denied the freedom to seek a safe haven in our country.

Both President Obama and Glenn Beck, in his “Restoring Honor” rally in Washington last weekend, were fulsome in their praise of the troops, as well they should have been. But the disconnect between the civilian public, including the war’s die-hard advocates on the right, and those doing the fighting remains as large today as ever. As one Iraq war vet e-mailed to me after hearing Beck’s patriotic sermons: “What does gathering in D.C. do for the troops?” He was appalled at the self-regard of those who thought their jingoistic rally would help returning troops abandoned by the military’s “criminally poor mental health care” or save any soldier who was “two seconds away from getting his leg blown off by an I.E.D.”

The other American casualties of Iraq include the credibility of both political parties, neither of which strenuously questioned the rush to war and both of which are still haunted by that failure, and of the news media, which barely challenged the White House’s propaganda about Saddam’s imminent mushroom clouds. Many pundits, quite a few of them liberals, stoked the war fever as well. Some eventually acknowledged getting it wrong, though in most cases they stopped short of apologizing for their failures of judgment and their abdication of journalistic skepticism about the government’s case for war.

Even now those think-tank types who kept seeing light at the end of the Iraqi tunnel are ubiquitous on television and op-ed pages making similar stay-the-course prognostications about Afghanistan. Their embarrassing track records may have temporarily vanished into the great American memory hole, but actions do have consequences, and there must be an accounting. America does have a soul, and, as Franzen so powerfully dramatizes in “Freedom,” when that soul is violated, we are paralyzed until we set it right.
And yet here we are, slouching toward yet another 9/11 anniversary, still waiting for a correction, with even our president, an eloquent Iraq war opponent, slipping into denial. Of all the pro forma passages in Obama’s speech, perhaps the most jarring was his entreaty that Iraq’s leaders “move forward with a sense of urgency to form an inclusive government that is just, representative and accountable.” He might as well have been talking about the poisonous political deadlock in Washington. At that moment, there was no escaping the tragic fact that instead of bringing American-style democracy and freedom to Iraq, the costly war we fought there has, if anything, brought the bitter taste of Iraq’s dysfunction to America.

Stewart Nails Fox!

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Terrific "Target Ain't People" Video!

This action was in response to Target donating $150,000 to a far right, gay-bashing candidate. Sign the petition to boycott Target. This is the beginning of corporations swamping our political landscape to defeat or elect candidates of their choosing. Sign the Fight Washington Corruption pledge to restore democracy to the people! Here are 10 great reasons why you should! (Thanks to MoveOn.org!)

10 Outrageous Reasons to Fight Corruption in Washington

What Happens When Corporate Influence Goes Unchecked:

1. Exxon Mobil made billions in profits, and yet paid not one dime in federal income taxes in 2009.
2. The 2005 energy bill had a little-known provision, commonly called the Halliburton Loophole, which exempted natural gas drilling from the Clean Water Act. The result? Water so contaminated that you can light it on fire.
3. Massey Energy was cited more than 2400 times for safety violations in its mines, but chose not to fix potentially lethal problems because low penalties made it cheaper to simply keep paying the fines. This spring, 29 miners were killed in an underground explosion at a Massey mine in West Virginia.
4. Michael Taylor was the FDA official who approved the use of Monsanto's Bovine Growth Hormone in dairy cows (even though it's banned in most countries and linked to cancer). After approving it, he left the FDA—to work for Monsanto. Until last year, when he moved back to the government—as President Obama's "Food Safety Czar." No joke.
5. Internal Toyota documents outline how the company was successful in limiting regulator actions in the recalls last year—saving hundreds of millions while the death toll continued to climb.
6. GE and its lobbyists—including 33 former government employees—have successfully lobbied Congress to override Defense Department requests to cancel a GE contract to work on a new engine for the Joint Strike Fighter jet. GE will need $2.9 billion to finish the project.
7. Top executives at 9 big banks including Citibank, Bank of America, Goldman Sachs, and Morgan Stanley paid themselves over $20 billion in bonuses just weeks after taxpayers bailed them out to the tune of $700 billion.
8. During the waning days of the Bush administration, officials responded to a long-term lobbying campaign by pre-empting product liability lawsuits for dozens of entire industries. They bypassed Congress entirely and rewrote rules ranging from seatbelt manufacturing regulations to prescription drug safety.
9. Sunscreen manufacturers including Johnson & Johnson and Schering-Plough, in the interest of profits, are opposing an FDA proposal requiring full reporting on sunscreen labels. The New York Times just confirmed that current SPF ratings don't even measure sun rays that cause cancer.
10. And of course BP—a company with a record of 760 drilling-safety and environmental violations—was granted safety waivers in order to operate the deepwater drilling rig that ultimately created the worst environmental disaster in US history.

Sources: http://s3.moveon.org/pdfs/top10outragesources.pdf

Hinchey Signs the Pledge!

Good news. Congressman Hinchey agreed to sign the "Fight Washington Corruption" pledge last Friday. We are grateful to him for that and for his work to overturn Citizens United and for fair, clean elections! Call his office and thank him! We also need to call Senators Gillibrand (518 431-0120) and Schumer (914 734-1532) to make sure they join the dozens of elected officials signing the pledge. Almost half million Americans have also signed. Sign here if you haven't yet!

Here are a couple more photos from our rally last week. Look for an article on it and this new national movement in this week's New Paltz Times!

Bob Lusk and Gene Cotton lifted our spirits in song!  M. Kretschmar