General politics

[Lokkii]

Illinois Republican candidates for governor call for cutting minimum wage.

Reason #834 why I'm a Democrat.

they are not taking into account illinois' extremely high cost of living. it is so high here that no minimum wage job can cover living in the chicago land area without some sort of federal aid.

[skaje]

They're suggesting that cutting the minimum wage will improve the economy. How much? Even if it's just a dollar, that amounts to a 12% pay cut for those at the bottom who will surely see their pay decreased. Yeah the stockholders will see a nice increase though as the companies become more profitable. Fuck Republicans. For all the amount of crap they spew about how evil wealth redistribution is, cutting the minimum wage would amount to just that...redistribution towards the top.

As it is, minimum wage is not enough to support a family, no matter where you live in this country. Maybe that was the goal at one point but the minimum wage hasn't kept pace with inflation, not even close. To suggest cutting it, in the midst of the worst economic crisis since the Great Depression, is really a special kind of stupid.

[skaje]

A small win for Ron Paul

An amendment he co-sponsored to audit the Federal Reserve was successfully attached to and passed with the larger financial regulation bill. Other aspects of the bill will regulate the trading of derivatives, add transparency to the credit rating process, and create a new agency for consumer protection with authority over mortgages and credit cards.

I guess Ron Paul didn't like the final bill though because he voted against it, lol.

About time they got to addressing the causes of the financial meltdown, and not just obsessing over the effects.

Still, most of the stronger reforms were knocked down by Republicans with conservative Democrats. The banking industry has way too much sway over them.

[skaje]

The Prime Minister of Italy got his fucking nose broken by some random dude at a rally

[Smith_the_Gunslinger]

*cough*

[skaje]

That article goes way over the edge, but the gist of it is true, to an extent.

[Smith_the_Gunslinger]

Jewish conspiracy.

[skaje]

I've been massively busy the past few weeks, and a lot has happened politically. But for now, I will just leave you with this recent statement by former New York City Mayor Rudy Giuliani, on the recent foiled terrorist attempt:

"We had no domestic attacks under Bush; we've had one under Obama."

As politicalwire.com notes, Rudy apparently forgot one day.

This isn't an isolated incident, there have been several other Republicans attacking Obama for terrorist threats against the US, compared to the supposedly spotless record of Bush's presidency....ya know, AFTER the single worst terrorist attack this country has ever experienced.

[Teknorat]

UN-Backed Troops Wreak Havoc in Africa

United Nations-backed peace-keeping troops are accused by a UN report and dozens of human rights and humanitarian organizations of murdering civilians, rape, pillage and destruction throughout Africa, from the Congo to Somalia

[skaje]

Absolutely horrifying.

[Tesseract]

They'll get their comeuppance when they find out they all have AIDS.

[Smith_the_Gunslinger]

"But she said I was her first, while raping her! "

[skaje]

So the Senate seat of Ted Kennedy, the man whose entire life mission was to bring universal healthcare to America, was won by a Republican campaigning on killing the healthcare bill. In Massachusetts. This country has lost its fucking mind.

[skaje]

HOWEVER. While this does indeed reduce the Democratic majority from 60-40 to 59-41, it doesn't entirely kill the bill as Republicans seem to think. While 59 is no longer filibuster proof, Republicans got along just fine and passed a ton of terrible, controversial bills with far less Senators from 2002 to 2006. As John Stewart put it: "Democrats will only then have an 18 vote majority in the Senate -- which is more than George W. Bush ever had in the Senate when he did whatever the fuck he wanted to do. In fact, the Democrats will have a larger majority than the Republicans have had since 1923."

Republicans were very comfortable with using reconciliation to bypass the filibuster process, and now Democrats are publicly talking up the possibility again.

There is another alternative, which I sincerely hope does not come to pass though. And that would be, since the Senate has already passed a bill, the House simply passes the exact same one and sends it to Obama who will sign it. No filibuster. But as we all know the Senate bill is fucking terrible from any political perspective you approach it with. Liberal, conservative, libertarian it doesn't matter the Senate bill is a massive giveaway to the insurance industry with little benefit to the American people.

It's time to use reconciliation and pass something with a simple majority the way Republicans did for years.

[skaje]

Oh fuck. This is huge:

Supreme Court strikes down campaign finance laws

The Supreme Court threw out a 63-year-old law designed to restrain the influence of big business and unions on elections Thursday, ruling that corporations may spend as freely as they like to support or oppose candidates for president and Congress. The decision could drastically alter who gives and gets hundreds of millions of dollars in this year's crucial midterm elections.

By a 5-4 vote, the court overturned two of its own decisions as well as the decades-old law that said companies and labor unions can be prohibited from using money from their general treasuries to produce and run their own campaign ads. The decision threatens similar limits imposed by 24 states...

Critics of the stricter limits have argued that they amount to an unconstitutional restraint of free speech, and the court majority agreed.

''The censorship we now confront is vast in its reach,'' Justice Anthony Kennedy said in his majority opinion, joined by his four more conservative colleagues.

This is insanity. Corporations are NOT PEOPLE. Good god what the fuck is going on do they not realize what this is going to lead to??? Companies can now spend whatever the fuck they want on elections. Millions? Billions? Say goodbye to the Ron Paul/Barack Obama method of fundraising, why bother trying to get money from tons of average citizens when you know businesses will drop hundreds of millions to see you elected. This is possibly the worst decision the court has made this past century, and we will see the effects very soon.

[Smith_the_Gunslinger]

There has to be at least one corrupt billionaire CEO who's a Ron Paul supporter.

God bless America!

But seriously though, I hope I never have children, because I dread to imagine the state of this country in 20 years.

[skaje]

Response from Obama:

"With its ruling today, the Supreme Court has given a green light to a new stampede of special interest money in our politics. It is a major victory for big oil, Wall Street banks, health insurance companies and the other powerful interests that marshal their power every day in Washington to drown out the voices of everyday Americans...

That's why I am instructing my Administration to get to work immediately with Congress on this issue. We are going to talk with bipartisan Congressional leaders to develop a forceful response to this decision."

As you all know from 5th grade civics, the way the legislative body checks the power of the judiciary is through constitutional amendments, no easy feat, but that's exactly what is being proposed.

I am normally very hesitant to jump on the "Change the US Constitution!" bandwagon whenever a court ruling I don't like happens. The rightwing does it every time and it gets irritating. But this is probably one of the most important causes of our day. If we don't limit corporate money at least somewhat in our politics we will cease to be a democracy in short order. That is not hyperbole. The sheer amount of money they could drop would dwarf anything Ron Paul or Barack Obama raised online. If Wal-Mart is allowed to spend a billion dollars, using their top well-paid advertising experts, convincing America that Mike Huckabee is a kind and humble man who just wants to go to Washington DC to help us common folk, a good number of people would believe it and vote accordingly.

Overturning this ruling is the most important task this Congress faces. If certain key representatives and senators defer to their corporate masters this year, we will never be in a position to seriously challenge corporate control of our democracy again.

[skaje]

Sensing the political instability of this coming year, former Republican Congressman JD Hayworth of Phoenix, Arizona plans to challenge Senator McCain in the coming GOP primary.

This isn't some rightwing fringe guy mounting a hopeless longshot bid. Hayworth was congressman for 12 years, and built up a lot of political power within the state. He was widely seen as the next senator once McCain retired. But then he got dumped on his ass in 2006 by the mayor of Tempe, part of the wave that put Democrats back in power. Since then he's been on talk radio.

Hayworth was my congressman while I was living in Arizona, and from the first time I saw his picture I couldn't help but think he looked like an idiot.



You listen to him talk and he does the "I'm just an average joe like you" thing pretty well. For a party that is far, far further to the right than the plenty conservative McCain, this guy actually stands a pretty good chance of defeating the man they just nominated for president two years ago.

Crazy, volatile times we live in...

[skaje]

Lieutenant Governor of South Carolina compares feeding poor people to feeding stray animals:

"My grandmother was not a highly educated woman, but she told me as a small child to quit feeding stray animals. You know why? Because they breed," Bauer said, according to the Greenville News. "You're facilitating the problem if you give an animal or a person ample food supply. They will reproduce, especially ones that don't think too much further than that. And so what you've got to do is you've got to curtail that type of behavior. They don't know any better."

His explanation?

"There's no way that I was trying to tie animals to people, but what I was trying to talk about is the dependency culture, and just like when you feed an animal, you create a dependency," he said.

The crazy thing is he wasn't talking about beggars on the street or anything, he was talking about poor children in public schools getting reduced price meals at lunch. Yes, poor children.

It's astonishing the level of hatred lazy fucking rich people like Andre Bauer (who was born into a wealthy family and never had to work a day in his life) have for poor people.

[skaje]

Bauer also adds:

Noting that he has raised money for a group that protects animals, Bauer also said he is "not against animals."

Well. That's good then.

[skaje]

Crazy times we're in. Oregon passed two tax increases by popular referendum the other day. This is a state that used to be considered one of the most anti-tax states in the country, going so far as to amend their state constitution to cap property taxes and to refund surplus tax funds. And these referendums mark the first tax increase any state has passed by popular vote since the 1930s, kind of astounding actually.

The two taxes targeted corporations and wealthy people respectively. The money will go towards education which was facing drastic cuts among other things. They were talking about reducing school days to 4 days a week to close their $4 billion deficit. People disagreed, and thought the taxes were worth it.

People who say that the current political atmosphere is purely a reactionary conservative one are deluded. There is pushback against the Democrats in Congress who have fumbled over their own idiocy and Republican opposition, but conservative ideas are under attack to. People are upset at everything and everyone in office, and the lingering resentment over the bipartisan bailouts that saved business without saving the American people is going to hit all of them.

There is massive anti-tax sentiment brewing but also massive pro-tax sentiment against the wealthy.

[skaje]

Horrifying article about Colorado Springs cutting many basic city-level services due to the recession

While a lot of the focus on the effects of the recession have been on the national level, much less is said about how the states and cities are dealing with the plunging tax revenue that accompanies every downturn. States and cities that aren't allowed to borrow to cover their deficits, and if the ends don't meet people simply don't get paid and things stop working.

COLORADO SPRINGS — This tax-averse city is about to learn what it looks and feels like when budget cuts slash services most Americans consider part of the urban fabric.

More than a third of the streetlights in Colorado Springs will go dark Monday. The police helicopters are for sale on the Internet. The city is dumping firefighting jobs, a vice team, burglary investigators, beat cops — dozens of police and fire positions will go unfilled.

The parks department removed trash cans last week, replacing them with signs urging users to pack out their own litter.

Neighbors are encouraged to bring their own lawn mowers to local green spaces, because parks workers will mow them only once every two weeks. If that.

Water cutbacks mean most parks will be dead, brown turf by July; the flower and fertilizer budget is zero.

City recreation centers, indoor and outdoor pools, and a handful of museums will close for good March 31 unless they find private funding to stay open. Buses no longer run on evenings and weekends. The city won't pay for any street paving, relying instead on a regional authority that can meet only about 10 percent of the need.

"I guess we're going to find out what the tolerance level is for people," said businessman Chuck Fowler, who is helping lead a private task force brainstorming for city budget fixes. "It's a new day."

Some residents are less sanguine, arguing that cuts to bus services, drug enforcement and treatment and job development are attacks on basic needs for the working class.

There you fucking have it. The anti-tax Republican dream come true. Government small enough to drown in the bathtub. Colorado Springs is becoming a third-world shithole. But hey, at least their taxes are low! Rich assholes will get to enjoy their little Ayn Rand utopia while everyone else is suffering. As you know, the pattern repeated across all third-world nations with barely functioning governments and massive disparities in wealth.

Rich people don't need to ride the bus. Rich people don't need public pools...they got ones in their backyards. Rich people don't need any of these programs that the city is cutting because of lack of funds.

I used to live in Colorado Springs, spent a good portion of my childhood there and still have a lot of family there. While the watering thing isn't the most important or harmful cut, it will be the most immediately visible one. The thought of driving back into my old hometown and seeing fucking dead grass everywhere is kind of depressing.

[FoXDie]

Really Skaje? Epic fail.

This is the failure of a shit government, there's nothing to do with a free market "Ayn Rand utopia" here at all. You think they would let a private company own the roads so that they can take care of them? No, they are just neglecting them.

There's a huge difference between a shit government still existing but not having enough money to function, and a voluntaryist society.

[skaje]

The conservative mantra is that government doesn't work. They cut taxes on the wealthy, underfund everything else, and then when everything goes to shit they get to say "See I told you government doesn't work". Republicans have pulled that shit with military veteran hospitals for years...cut their budgets until the care is horrific, then claim that government being involved in healthcare was the problem to begin with. It's a self-fulfilling prophecy that I'm getting tired of. Of course the politicians who claim government is the problem are just going to make it even worse once they get elected.

But yeah, I guess the Ayn Rand thing is non-applicable. Colorado Springs is just going to turn into an ugly, litter-filled, dying dump. It's not going to be nearly as awesome as Rapture.

[Teknorat]

You are a fool sir falling easily for the rallying cries of both of these dipshit retard fuck parties.

[skaje]

I only fall for the rallying cries of ONE of these dipshit retard fuck parties.


btw, THIS IS WHAT REPUBLICANS REALLY BELIEVE.

predictably, GOP mouthpieces like Bill Oreilly are dismissing the results of the poll, fully confident in the ability of their listeners to listen to crazy bullshit 24/7 without coming to believe that crazy bullshit. It's this game they play, calling Obama a racist, then getting all defensive when it turns out Republicans now believe Obama is a racist. Run stories about ACORN stealing the 2008 election, and then act surprised that Republicans now think ACORN did in fact turn out 10 million extra votes for Obama. Call Obama a terrorist sympathizer and then laugh off a poll that shows plenty of Republicans do in fact think Obama wants terrorists to win.

It's a game to them.

[Smith_the_Gunslinger]

The Game.

[skaje]

In other news, Ron Paul won the annual CPAC straw poll. For three years now Mitt Romney has won, so this is something of an upset.

[skaje]

Ron Paul's son Rand Paul leads in the GOP primary for Kentucky Senator 44% to 23% over establishment pick Trey Grayson (the secretary of state).

[skaje]

btw, THIS IS WHAT REPUBLICANS REALLY BELIEVE.

predictably, GOP mouthpieces like Bill Oreilly are dismissing the results of the poll, fully confident in the ability of their listeners to listen to crazy bullshit 24/7 without coming to believe that crazy bullshit. It's this game they play, calling Obama a racist, then getting all defensive when it turns out Republicans now believe Obama is a racist. Run stories about ACORN stealing the 2008 election, and then act surprised that Republicans now think ACORN did in fact turn out 10 million extra votes for Obama. Call Obama a terrorist sympathizer and then laugh off a poll that shows plenty of Republicans do in fact think Obama wants terrorists to win.

A different pollster confirms that Republicans have in fact gone insane

67% of Republicans believe Obama is a socialist.
57% of Republicans believe Obama is a Muslim.
45% of Republicans believe Obama was not born in the USA, and is ineligible to be president.
38% of Republicans believe Obama is doing the same things Hitler did.
24% of Republicans believe Obama may be the anti-Christ.

The full results of the poll, which will be released in greater detail tomorrow, are even more frightening: including news that high percentages of Republicans—and Americans overall—believe that President Obama is "racist," "anti-American" "wants the terrorists to win" and "wants to turn over the sovereignty of the United States to a one-world government." The belief that Obama is a "domestic enemy" as set forth in the Constitution is also widely held—a sign of trouble yet to come. It's the same claim made by Marine Lance Corporal Kody Brittingham in his letter of intent to assassinate President Obama.