Hosed For Christmas

The Republicans and the Democrats who appeased the Republicans gave lavish Christmas presents to just about everyone who can afford to buy elected office holders. The lavish gifts the oligopoly received were neatly wrapped in the CRomnibus and were purchased at your expense; which means Congress hosed you for Christmas!  Some of you ( particularly poor children) always get hosed worse than the rest of us do.  A partial list of who is getting reamed the hardest includes Truck Drivers, College Students, Anyone Who Has Blue Shield or Blue Cross Health Insurance, And Children Who Eat In School Cafeterias or Depend On Food Aid.

To see a list of the Democrats who allowed the Greedy Old Plutocrats to hose you for Christmas   Click Here!

Losers

The poison pills the Republicans embedded in the, so called, CRomnibus budget will make the American people the biggest losers for all the reasons I gave in my previous post. The individual politicians who are going to lose the most because of this bill are Barak Obama and Hillary Clinton.

When the big banks crash our economy again and we have to bail them out again historians will point out that Mr. Obama lacked the courage to prevent the big banks from engaging in the risky behavior that caused the crash. I do not know what Mr. Obama thinks he got in the budget bill that could possibly be worth the damage it is doing to his reputation. This does not bode well for the future! I hate to think about what President Milquetoast will allow the Greedy Old Plutocrats to do to the American people over the next two years.

If I were Hillary Clinton I would be fighting mad at President Obama and the other Democrats who voted for CRomnibus, because the poison pills embedded in that bill, particularly the one gutting Dodd-Frank, greatly magnify the danger of her ties to Wall Street and the big financial institutions. Believe me, it is not just liberal Democrats who are leery of Hillary because of those ties! Now she will have to anger her largest contributors by saying she will restore the provision of Dodd-Frank that prohibited the FDIC from insuring derivatives or she will have to acquiesce to the FDIC insuring the risky behavior of the big banks and thereby anger everyone who is smart enough to understand the causes of George W. Bush's recession. The CRomnibus has really put her in a difficult position!

The only bright side to this abomination (I am so angry I almost wrote Obamanation) is the courage of Elizabeth Warren and the others who risked incurring the wrath of the leaders of their party by opposing CRomnibus.

Fight Back!

I am so angry I want to give all but 139 members of congress the finger and piss in their eyes. The Republicans buried in the budget bill passed by the house enough poison pills to place our economy in grave peril. One poison pill allows corporations to avoid still more taxes through overseas investments; another increases the power of money by raising the limits on how much a person or company can contribute to a political candidate's campaign. By far the most dangerous and egregious of the poison pills, however, is the one written by Citibank. This poison pill threatens our economy by forcing the FDIC to insure derivatives. What this means is that the same banks that crashed our economy under Bush can reap all the benefits of taking the same risks they took back then, and when those investments go sour, as they did under Bush, we will have to bail them out again! This is the Republican Party's recycling plan; we are forced to eat shit while the oligopoly feasts on anything and everything of any value. The only reason why I cannot call those poison pills class warfare is because no one is fighting back. President Obama and the other Democratic appeasers simply do not have the will or courage to defend a middle-class (mainly white) that is too stupid to recognize and oppose its enemy. This does not portend well for the future.  Is there anyone who can and will prevent the middle-class from going the way of the Dodo Bird?

Thus far, I have viewed Elizabeth Warren as a wonderful and valuable gadfly. But the weakness of the Democrats and the unconscionable efforts of the Republicans to satiate an oligopoly that is insatiably greedy have made me change my view of Ms Warren.  The middle ground has become quick sand.  I am now on the Warren for President band wagon.

WE DESPERATELY NEED AN ECONOMIC WARRIOR WHO WILL DO WHATEVER IT TAKES TO PROTECT US FROM THE INSATIABLE GREED OF THE OLIGOPOLY! GO ELIZABETH!

Well, Excuse You!

“BEFORE President George W. Bush left office, a group of conservatives lobbied the White House to grant pardons to the officials who had planned and authorized the United States torture program. My organization, the American Civil Liberties Union, found the proposal repugnant. Along with eight other human rights groups, we sent a letter to Mr. Bush arguing that granting pardons would undermine the rule of law and prevent Americans from learning what had been done in their names.

But with the impending release of the report from the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence, I have come to think that President Obama should issue pardons, after all — because it may be the only way to establish, once and for all, that torture is illegal.”

The forgoing quotation is from a brilliant Op Ed in the New York times by Anthony D. Romero in which Mr. Romero argues that President Obama should issue explicit pardons to George W. Bush and those who tortured rather than letting what amounts to tacit pardons stand . What Mr. Romero is advocating is a bit like saying “Well, excuse you!” to a quest who farted at the dinner table, only the offenses committed by Bush and the torturers rise to the level of crimes, and the pardons recognize the criminality of those acts (click here).

Cops And Race

Thus far I have avoided commenting on the shooting of Michael Brown and the subsequent events in Ferguson Missouri because so many people were saying so much about it that I did not see where I had anything to add. Obviously the shooting of an unarmed black man by a white police officer is going to raise questions about the racial attitudes of that officer, and the almost military response to protests are going to raise questions about the racial attitude of the entire police department. The recent rash of incidents in which police officers have killed unarmed black men is a rude awakening; it says we have not made as much progress as we thought we had in regard to racism.

I should like to point out, however, that the use of excessive force by police officers is not strictly a racial issue. I will grant you that black men are far more likely to be beaten or shot by police officers than are white men, but I can think of at least three fairly recent instances where police officers have used excessive force against white men. One of those instances happened close to home when sheriff's deputies sadistically beat and tased a man to death for running a stop sign and being frighteningly large. In fact, anyone who has studied it will tell you that law enforcement officers are macho guys who live in a dangerous physical world. They have to use force far too often, and they will get out of hand if you do not keep an eye on them. While I certainly do not want to unreasonably increase the risks they face every day, I do think that we often give them too much leeway in regard to not holding them accountable when they go too far! Policies, procedures, and behavior should be reviewed frequently, and in the case of departments where there are too many instances of questionable behavior on the part of its officers some outside agency should be called in investigate and make changes.